Affiliate Sale!

Ahead of next week's payout (due 6th September), I've had a sale on The Golden Compass Merchandise Lens totalling US$0.18!

This is my second affiliate sale in 6 weeks which gives me a lot of hope for the next six months.

SquidWho

A new Squidoo layout has just been launched - SquidWho - which is specifically for people-centric lenses. It's a lot cleaner than the original layout and also includes a 'magicbuilder' facility which automatically draws in information from the web - making it a lot faster to build a lens.

The feature was accidentally discovered last week and until now was thought to be pre-Beta. However, a SquidWho search bar is now visible on the Squidoo dashboard which suggests that the leak is now public. As with Squidoo, lensmasters are encouraged to give to charity - in this case payments go to the Acumen Fund.

Weekly Stats Update

As I create more lenses, the more I realise that they need constant maintenance. The consensus is that Lensrank is created through a combination of hits, stars, clickouts and updates (no one knows the exact formula) so everything needs a regular stir to keep it moving.

My routine at the moment is to go through each of my lenses on a Monday and check for any new ratings so that I can reciprocate. I also click on Stats/Traffic to update my tags. These are the list of keywords down the right-hand side of the page. If they have a little plus sign, you can click and add them to your lens tags. This improves your searchability. You then need to go back to your dashboard, select edit on your lens and press publish. It took me ages to work this out, but it does have an impact on your traffic.

I also like to add in information or delete modules that are not working for me during this review. It all helps to keep content fresh.

Old and New

I had a lot of fun making my Borough Market lens this week. This is one my my favourite London haunts and well-deserving of it's own page. The only frustration on this lens was the lack of working links. It seems as if all the major London attractions are vamping up their websites. Also, I could have done with the UK Google Map feature. I know that Squidoo HQ is working on this, but I'm not sure how long it will take to activate.

One of my oldest lenses also had a surprising hike in rank. How to get a better night's sleep has been languishing in down in the 15Ks and a single star has boosted it to 4972. I think it's a useful topic, although it looks a little dowdy as it was one of my first attempts. I think I'll tart it up a bit.

100 Most Profitable List Deleted from Squidoo

There's a useful leaderboard on Squidoo which shows the Top 100 lenses. Until yesterday this also included the 100 most profitable.

The MP list was helpful in obvious ways. It revealed how the top money-making lenses were constructed and what products were selling best. However, it seems that some people abused this resource by tactically voting down the lensmasters involved. Certain individuals also copied successful lenses verbatim in an attempt to reap rewards from someone else's hard work.

Personally, I don't miss the 100 MP list and I wouldn't mind if it was deleted permanently (so far suggestions indicate that this could only be temporary). I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't interested in making money out of lenses, but I don't think it can harm to downplay the money-making component. The cash should be a bonus, not the sole motivator.

Other People's Lenses

One thing I really love about Squidoo is the myriad ways in which people express themselves using only a few simple tools. Here are a few of my favourites:

Bigfoot Sightings
This is pure class because it's about an intriguing mystery and written by someone who lives near to the Bigfoot epicentre. I really like the poll too - it adds a touch of human interest to the lens.

The Power of Kindness
I am ashamed to admit that I would never have thought of creating a lens about kindness, but I'm glad that njg has! This is an important contribution to Squidoo and I hope that lots of people take time to read it properly.

Smoothies: Healthy Smoothie Recipes & Smoothie Drinks
A great example of how a passion can translate into a lens. The lensmaster has linked his blog recipes to his content to create a smoothie bible. You can see how popular it is from all the ratings!

Build Your Own Backyard Pond with the Pondlady
Ranking #1 in DIY and Hobbies, this is an example of pure squidoo-ing. Written by an expert - not too long and not too short. A nice mix of content, image, links & affiliates.

New England Fall Foliage
Jazzdog's lens is absolutely beautiful. It uses flickr/YouTube to full advantage without sacrificing content. If only all lenses were this stunning!

This is just a small selection of ones that stand out for me at the moment, but there are lots of other impressive creations out there. I'd be really interested to hear about other people's favourite lenses (their own excluded!)

Squidoo vs HubPages

I have 5 hubs on HubPages at the moment. I started these about the same time as Squidoo and for a while, I definitely preferred HubPages. This site works in very much the same way as Squidoo, plus the hubs are easier to build and net you more cash (60% of royalties as opposed to 50% at Squidoo). I would even go so far as to say that many of the hubs have a better content/links/affiliate ratio (in that content is key) than Squidoo. The expert lensmaster Relache has created a great lens explaining the differences (and similarities between the two).

All sounds good, doesn't it?

Only problem is that so far it just hasn't captured my interest in the same way as Squidoo. There's a sense of community and gameplay on Squidoo that I don't detect as strongly on HubPages at the moment. In HP's defence, I know that the community isn't as large so it could be down to size. Also, a big bugbear for me is the dull visual display and cranky affiliate HP add-ons. It's a real pain to have to log into Amazon, eBay and Adsense one by one to check payouts (although the transparency is good). I think both Squidoo & HubPages have got some work to do in this area.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to dabble with both sites. I hope that Paul Edmondson & the HubPages team will succeed, but I suspect that they still have some tweaking to do.

Bookmarking Your Lens

Today I've had a rest from launching new lenses. Instead I've been linking my existing ones to see if I can make them more successful.

One of the areas that I've been working on in particular is bookmarking in order to create backlinks. As a general rule, I add all my lenses to del.icio.us and the better ones to Stumbleupon. If I think that there is a good story, I will also add to digg, but I'm careful about overdoing this. Of course, this blog also offers a great opportunity for linking as well as being a way to chart my progress.

It's worth checking out other lensmaster's websites as well. I occasionally post quality lenses on Lensroll and roll other people's contributions. I've also been dabbling with Fluffanutta's latest offering, the fantastic Squidutils. This is a marvellous advanced dashboard that gives easy access to loads of bookmarking sites and lets you view your stats in a detailed way.

I'm very much a newbie when it comes to understanding the copious opportunities for lens promotion out there, but I'm learning fast. It's not all about lensrank, it's about traffic too.

14th lens Live!

My 14th lens went live today.

Alexander Girard

It was a total labour of love and it took a couple of days to assemble. Infact, I was so proud of it, that I posted it on the SquidU forum for comments and I managed to bag 4* from 3 people so that's a good start.

Sadly, I don't expect this lens to do particularly well. My URL is very obvious and perhaps not long-tailish enough to rank high in Google. Also, Alexander Girard is still relatively unknown in comparison with Charles & Ray Eames etc.

To be honest, I'm still trying to work out the magic elixir of lensrank. The Top 100 are so eclectic that it's hard to recognise common traits. However, I do suspect that my racing to create 100 lenses is not helping my ratings. The more lenses there are, the less concentrated the stars become...

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable - Seth Godin

In the spirit of all things Squidoo, I bought Seth's book on marketing to try and get a glimpse of the Godin brain at work. Who on earth would devise something as outrageous as an information service based on Squids and lenses...?

This book explained a lot.

It argues that the traditional age of mass market advertising has come to a close. People are savvy to marketing in this way and they already have everything that they need to cover their general needs. What they are looking for is something remarkable, something that will sate their need for novelty and also fulfill a niche. A company won't achieve this success ad-infinitum, but an exceptional push will give the business leverage.

Seth also ties this need for the new in with the adoption curve. Marketeers are looking too closely at the masses when they should be concentrating on the 'sneezers'. These are the people who risk trying a new product/scheme/application and then spread the virus. They are vital for any business, cost very little to target and are the lifeblood of the market.

Compare this to Squidoo and you can see the Godin machine at work. The concept is pretty remarkable. Most people would look at you as if you were a weirdo if you started talking about squids, but a small fraction of people totally get it. And wow - can these people sneeze!!! They not only sneeze about Squidoo, but also about Seth (what I am doing now, eh?) and lots of other social networking sites, not to mention eBay & Amazon. They also get rewarded for sneezing - check out the Top 100 Pagerank and see how long some of the key lensmasters have been on the site.

In all a very interesting little book - Seth is the Paulo Coelho of marketing and it will be fascinating to see how his theories pan out...

One Month

I've been whittling away at Squidoo for 32 beautiful days now and am the proud owner of 13 operational lenses. My most successful lens has been 10 Places to See in the UK Before You Die which has fluctuated between a lensrank in the 300s and 700s. It's had a total number of 512 visitors and is on the first page of Google for it's keywords.

Next in line, come Hayao Miyazaki - Master Animator and The Golden Compass Movie - both in triple figures.

These are followed by two interior design/shopping lenses (in varying states of completion) - Seaside Style Interiors and Arts and Crafts Interior Design. These require some promotion and I will be working on these over the next fortnight.

My remaining lenses are either under-promoted or rising up through the ranks. Fast-movers include Studio Ghibli: My Neighbor Totoro and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. I am hoping to add some content and enrich these this week. There's a lot more to learn and a lot more to try out. There's also the small task of building another 87 lenses to consider!

SquidAngels

I think I was blessed today. I suspect that I received a boost from a SquidAngel...

These sound very bizarre, but they are can indeed be heavenly for any lensmaster that happens to benefit from their contact.

Sometimes, they will increase your lens rank without you realizing. I think that happened to one of my lenses today. I was languishing in the 2000s and then suddenly I was catapulted in the 500s. I would love to believe that this is down to my superb use of text and image, but I doubt it. It's more likely that one of the SquidAngels liked what I was doing and decided to give me a leg up.

There are a couple of ways that you can seek the help of a SquidAngel. You can either ask for your lens to be reviewed directly at the Angels Forum on Squidu. Or you can add a comment to the SquidAngels Headquarters Group.

BUT seeker beware. If your lens is slack or sloppy, Angels can also demote. Make sure you've primped and preened as much as you can before you submit otherwise you could be on a slippery slope. For more advice - check out this lens.

First Payout

I didn't see any payouts on Squidoo for a few weeks. I started posting lenses 12.07.07 and the payday is always on the 6th of each month. To be truthful, I didn't know whether I would receive anything so I was over the moon to see US$1.98 by my Hayao Miyazaki lens!

This is a recent creation for me (only 10 visits so far) and I donated all proceeds to Ecotrust, a charity that is trying to develop Salmon Nation, a place where people and wild salmon thrive in the coastal temperate rain forests of North America. As I don't know US charities very well, I decided to research it on Charity Navigator. Luckily it gets a whopping 4 stars so the money is going to a good cause.

It's very interesting to look at the recent threads on SquidU to see how much people are generating from their lenses. Some are receiving cents and some seem to be covering their living expenses! My initial impression is that:

Quality x Volume = $$

But that takes time. A lot of time! To be continued...

Information Junkie

I'm starting my blog here, but in truth I began to dabble a few weeks ago. It all started when I chanced upon Squidoo whilst trying to create some new links for our internet business. I remember vaguely hearing something about lenses and squids a few months ago, but it all sounded too difficult so I switched off.

However, when I actually saw it on screen - it looked fairly straightforward to use and better still, Seth Godin, the founder of the site actively encourages self-promotion (as long as it also has benefit for the reader). Great for our online PR. So I started to create a few lenses and as I learned more, I started to recognise the many ways that Squidoo could be used to both convey information and make money.

To sum the process up, each user creates a lens (a page) on any topic they choose. They can select and de-select different modules (which can include text, images, links, You Tube, Amazon, Ebay) to shrink or expand the information shown. Royalties can be earned from adsense and affiliate listings. Information can be enriched by connecting other lenses to the page.
It's ideal for an information junkie like me who is also trying to learn about digital marketing - almost a dream invention really.

So I've set myself a target. To create 100 lenses by 25th December 2007. See what happens...