Has there been another mini Google slap on Squidoo?

A couple of my lenses have absolutely bombed in Google over the last 2 weeks. One in particular is very topical and reached a high of 350+ visits in a 7 week period. It then plummeted when it was completely de-indexed by Google.

I presumed that this was a blip, but now a couple of my other lenses have followed suit. It is also becoming apparent that other lensmasters are encountering the same situation.

Maybe it's too early to say whether Google has penalised Squidoo yet again, but there is definitely something afoot. We have yet to hear the official line from HQ so it will be interesting to hear their views on the matter when Gil gets back from his holiday.

Another Squidoo Challenge

I am always interested to see other lensmaster's Squidoo blogs. They are the best place to learn new ideas and measure performance after Squidu. Lensmaster Magicality has a particularly interesting blog documenting his progress in creating a lens portfolio which will generate $500 per month by the end of 2008. To check out his stats see Squidoo Challenge.

The Joy and the Pain!

Today I my Golden Compass lens the No1 position in the Movies and TV category. I also reached a ranking of 58 overall which has made me indescribably happy!!!!

The downside is that Google has completely dropped this particular lens 3 weeks before the release of the movie so now there is no indexing, no traffic, nada.

I think my Top 100 ranking makes up for it though!

50% There!

I published my 50th lens today after creating 5 brand new ones at the weekend!

A couple have picked up traffic immediately, notably the gift lenses created in the standard Squidoo format, but many of the SquidWho and both Ever lenses are still at zero, which is not as depressing as it sounds as these have probably taken the least amount of effort to create.

I also had a go at several SquidVids lenses to see how these fare

Ferris Bueller's Day Off Video Showcase
Dead Poets Society Video Showcase
Simon and Garfunkel Video Showcase

I am guessing that these may languish at the bottom ranks, but hopefully they will pick up a minimal amount of hits by the end of the year. In the meantime, I am aiming to build another 5-10 lenses by the end of November.

My 3rd Payout!

My earnings have doubled this month to $36.93 and are based on income from 30 lenses and one affiliate sale of $0.58. If I deduct my charity donations - my total earned to date is $48.

In December, my income will be generated from 40 lenses (the active amount of lenses in October) and I am guessing that approx $15 affiliate earnings will be added to this total.

So far, I am very pleased with my progress although there is still lots to be learned. The key is just to keep on building and tweaking. And have some patience!

The Big $$ Lens Challenge

I now have 8 lenses which have made $20 affiliate income between them (this is from sales of products on Amazon & eBay via my lenses).

My aim is to have 25 active earners by the end of 2007 - generating $100+ in total. There are at least another 5 'dormant' shopping lenses waiting for traffic right now so I need to build another 5-10 and hope that the rest of the income is generated via existing creations.

All of my affiliate income (apart from the monthly adwords payout) has been made via the Amazon & Ebay affiliate modules, but recently I have experimented with some direct Amazon Associate links. These lenses have not yet been picked up by Google so I don't know how they will fare. I intend to keep them to a minimum so that Squidoo still benefits from 50% of my commission.

The Ever Project

Last week, a new page template was launched by the Squidoo team. The Ever Project allows you to pick a superlative (best, worst, smartest, cutest) and add it to your chosen subject to create a lens that looks somewhat like an old-fashioned newspaper article.

As I haven't played around with the other recent templates, I decided to give this a go and made two lenses - Roald Dahl: The Best Children's Author Ever (sorry JK) and Scrabble: The Best Board Game Ever.

The template differs from SquidWho etc in that it generates automatic Plexos (votable 'link' lists) and it also includes a bullet point module. I found the latter the most useful as I haven't worked out the HTML for bullets yet! I'm still not sure about the plexos. I have used them, but I find that unless traffic is high or the subject contentious, then people don't engage with them at all.

I'll be interested to see how quickly these get indexed by Google. I'm still waiting for lenses created in the last fortnight to be picked up by the search engines.