See You Later Halloween, Hello Christmas!

Hello All,

My family went on vacation for two weeks and I tried to make sure to keep up with my lenses while we were gone, but it can be tough!  Halloween brought good success, as I made more sales from those articles - not much, but I am still excited about it!  Not sure how long the high ranking will last from those, but it sure would be nice if it could stay that way throughout most of the month.   My Haunted Hayride Madness did really well, although I'm still kind of kicking myself that I waited so long to write it.  Hopefully it will be just as popular next  year.  It was featured with other lenses on the Squiddo front page through Halloween and, as seen, was mentioned on the Happy Halloween Magazine facebook page.  I was kind of sad to see Halloween go, but am getting excited about Christmas!

"Aren't you missing Thanksgiving?" you might ask.  Well, I have four articles I have already written geared towards November that I hope do well this month: How to Save on Major Appliances at Sears has already started getting some good traffic, as Thanksgiving is the next big large appliance sale - I also updated and pinged this article.  Carved Gourds - The Perfect Fall Decoration, which I wrote a while ago, but didn't really pick up and I feel that these creations are so amazing, so I'm hoping people will get to enjoy them this month.  Delightfully Easy Fall Casserole, this is a recipe people can be used for Thanksgiving leftovers and I may need to edit it a bit to get more of an audience for that.  My latest lens that I wrote right before leaving on vacation is A Great Gift for Black Friday, which features Black Friday hats that are just perfect for that day and as gifts for those joining in the shopping fun!  As it is already November, it is too late to write an article if I want to make money on it this month, so I am moving straight on to Christmas, hoping that these three articles do well while crossing my fingers.

Celebrate, the new Squidoo online magazine, is now up and running!  There are tons of gift ideas on there and right now it is geared towards Christmas.  I have already added some lenses to the magazine, which include: Take Along Toys - The Best Gift for Babies, these are very popular toys and a huge life saver for parents and I am really hoping this one will pick up soon, Stuffed Animal Storage Bag, which I need to update and am thinking about changing the title,  Top Toddler Toys for Playrooms, I originally titled this "top ten..." and then realized I was going down the wrong patch with the article, so I had redo the entire lens,  George Foreman Grill, a gift for him, and A Great Gift for Black Friday.  I also would like to add Must Have Helpful Kitchen Gadgets to the magazine, which also needs to be updated.

In more exciting news, I applied for the Giant Squid Club and was accepted!  After being accepted I also received a purple star for my Tricks to Quick Cleaning article!  I AM OFFICIALLY A SUPER SQUID!!!  I am so excited!  Here is to future lenses and helping fellow Squids!!! :)

Another Pay Day!

August 2012 royalties (paid out 10/12/2012)

• Total royalty-earning lenses on date: 5 lenses
• Total donated to charity: $0.00

                                                                                                  (BREAKDOWN)     

Lens Payments	Paid	Charity Ad Pool Text Link Ads	Total
Skip-It Toy: Childhood Memories	$0.51	$0.00      $0.39          $0.12	$0.51
How to Save on Major Appliances at Sears	$0.51	$0.00      $0.39          $0.12	$0.51
Dragons: Just a Myth or Real Creatures?	$0.51	$0.00      $0.39          $0.12	$0.51
My Top Three Baby Calming Products	$0.51	$0.00      $0.39          $0.12	$0.51
Top Ten Heroine Suspense Movies	$0.12	$0.00      $0.00          $0.12	$0.12
Subtotal	$2.17	$0.00      $1.56          $0.60	$2.17

Reserve Hopper & Other Account Payments	Total
Subtotal	$0.00

Less PayPal Cash Adjustment
Transaction fee	$-0.04

Grand total paid: $2.12

 

(Hmmm, Grand total matches, but the Subtotal should be $2.16)

 

 

First Pay Day!!!

WOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!!!!

It isn't much, but my first pay day has finally come!  My charity lens hasn't made any money yet, the Discover My Mother Had Cancer article, so you won't see that for a while but I hope it will soon.  I also would like to create more lenses (articles) for charity down the road.  My pay out is at a dollar right now, so I will increase that as I make more.  I have been waiting for this milestone!  Feeling good today and got some good motivation from it all!!!

 

  ~ Cash Paid Via PayPal ~

July 2012 royalties (paid out 09/08/2012)

 

• Total royalty-earning lenses on date: 4 lenses
• Total donated to charity: $0.00

                                                                                                                            (BREAK DOWN)

Lens Payments	Paid	Chrty	TxtLnk AdPool Total
Family Vacation – Driving to Your Summer Destination	$0.47	$0.00	$0.11   $0.36      $0.47
Dragons: Just a Myth or Real Creatures?	$0.47	$0.00	$0.11   $0.36      $0.47
My Top Three Baby Calming Products	$0.47	$0.00	$0.11   $0.36      $0.47
Best Ways to Save Big on Large Appliances at Sears	$0.47	$0.00	$0.11   $0.36      $0.47
Subtotal	$1.88	$0.00	$0.44   $1.44      $1.88

Reserve Hopper & Other Account Payments	Total
Subtotal	$0.00

Less PayPal Cash Adjustment
Transaction fee	$-0.04				GRAND TOTAL: $1.84 PAID

Tags and Bookmarks

It amazing to me that I am always learning something new about Squidoo.  I look back and my journey has a cycle; it has been up, then down, then a lot of helpful finds and updating/recreating, and back up again.  I have mainly been focusing on updating all my lenses this week.  I finally went to Squidutils and checked the health of all my articles.  When you do this you can also take a look at the the effectiveness of your tag words.  Tag words are words that are used frequently in your article that people will use to search and find your article.  I found out that even though the default is the put your title as your primary tag, it is best to put a two to three word phrase that has to do with your title, but is frequently searched.  It is good to keep the first letters of each word capitalized to keep it separated from the others and formatted nicely.  You also do not want tags that only you are using because people will not be able to use those to find your article.  You also want to use words and phrases already indexed on Squidoo.  When you type in part of the word, give Squidoo a minute to show you a list of phrases using or different versions of the word.  This great way to find out how your tags are doing and what you might need to change.  You also want to be sure to include SEO or tag words in the titles of your photos.  Don't use the exact same words; vary it, but keep them on topic with your article.

I am really glad I went through to update all my lenses, I was able to change photos, I added movie quotes to Feel-Good Movie Favorites, I completely revamped my very first article Discovering My Mother Had Cancer While I Was Pregnant, and found out that somehow all the tags were gone on my article about how to Save on Large Appliances at Sears (no wonder I wasn't getting hardly any traffic on that lens).  That is an important point, always SAVE!  In every section of the workshop on Squidoo there is a save button, hit that every time you make a change, then make sure to click on the Publish button otherwise your changes will be lost.  Anyway, take a look through my articles, as there have been some great changes and new additions: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Rymom28.

I got my Halloween groove on as well with Spooky Zombie Theme Party Food and entered it to complete the "S" Rocketsquids challenge.  Some people found it too spooky and even though it was the second lens listed from completing the challenge it didn't get as many views, but I just completed a Halloween Party quest with it, so hopefully that will bring some more traffic.  Soon after publishing it I had a shock though.  It was marked for duplicate content and what had happened was that I had put long quotes in the description of two recipes.  However, I had cited my sources with links, so I followed the process it listed on the email notice to contact Squidoo when you believe your lens was improperly locked.  I also emailed one of the top people at Squidoo because I was worried my article I had worked so hard on was going to be deleted.  I am not going to list the person's name, as I'm sure they don't want everyone writing them when they have a locked article.  I was emailed by this person in the past, when joining one of the clubs, if I ever had any questions or problems to let them know, so that is why I felt I could contact them.  (You know who you are and thank you so much!!!!)  They unlocked my lens and confirmed that I had links to my information.  I deleted the quotes and wrote my own description of the recipes and included even more links, linking the pictures and the recipe.  There is a talk bubble module that already has quotation marks that I now have used for my Feel-Good Movie Favorites article and I haven't had a problem with using that to quote things now, but I think you do have a limit on the characters though, so you have to choose your quotes wisely.  That was the first time that had ever happened to me and my heart sank because I get so excited about every lens I create and I NEVER have duplicated content.  In fact, some say that you should not use the first person when writing, but I feel it connects the reader to me as the author and allows me to include my feelings, thoughts, and experiences to make it unique content.  Here are some rules and helpful hints in regards to original content: Squid Don'ts.

This article was an eye opener for me this past week: Social Bookmarking Sites - it talks about promoting your articles, the right way, using social bookmarking and sites that are Squidoo friendly.  This not only was super helpful for promoting my own article, but others as well, and now I have  a place to always have all the articles that have helped me on Squidoo.  First I went to Google Bookmarks, since I already have a profile for my blog, but found out that in the future iGoogle will be discontinued.  I read some user comments and someone had suggested www.allmyfaves.com.  What an awesome site!  You can create tabs for your bookmarks, categorizing them, and you can add their button to your Internet bookmarks bar and when you find a site you love you can just click on that button and it allows you to add the site directly to your allmyfaves list.  If you have an account or will be creating an account, make sure to add my blog and/or Squid Lenmasters Page!

So there you have it, more tips and helpful info for Squids like me!  Coming soon: chicken recipe article, you won't want to miss it!

If you love food, then you will find a lot of great recipes and easy cooking on my Squidoo profile!

Edit and Revise

Well, the last couple days I have just been editing and revising my lenses, which I'm sure I will periodically do throughout the future, as I learn new things. The main thing I've been working on is making sure that all my lenses have right around 20-30 tags. A tag is a word that people use to find your lens. It seems my ranking has gotten better since I've done this, but I have read on some lenses not to have more than that general number of tags. I've also been changing some of the words, as they were not quite as good as others I could have chosen. I also received a message from another lensmaster saying they could not read the fantasy font I had on my Dragons More Reality Than Myth lens.  I really appreciated the heads up on that!  I was worried that not everyone could see that font on their computer depending on the type of computer or web browser they are using.  Thus, I changed it to Times New roman, hoping that will correct the problem.  That is one change I would like to see happen on Squidoo; more ability to format the page and font.  Right now you can't change the font at all except using HTML and there are different themes for your page, but that is about it when it comes for format changes.  I wonder why it is so limited in that aspect?  I also spruced up the Save Big On Large Appliances At Sears page that I created for the upcoming 4th of July sales event that Sears has.  I finally added up all the purchases we made at Sears and found out we actually saved more than I thought, which was great to add to my lens!  I also have added a prediction module and will give credit on the lens to those who get the prediction correct.  I will be updating that at every major sales event that I mention in the article.  I found out about this module from the RocketSquids page and am very glad that I decided to join so far!  If you see anything that needs to be changed on any of my lenses it would be great if you could send me a message letting me know, as I probably don't catch everything.  It is still early, but happy upcoming Independence Day to you all and if you are shopping I hope you find some amazing deals!

PS:  Updated, edited, and reformatted my blog today, what do you think?

Big Savings

This time I wrote a lens, it was something I was excited to write about.  My husband and I are currently having a new home built and we wanted to get appliances for a good deal.  Our budget was under $5,000, which can be very difficult to achieve.  I did a bunch of research online, talked to friends, called family to find out how we could make it all work.  We finally decided to get our appliances at Sears, as they seemed to have the best customer service in the area we live, which can be hard to find, and the best prices at the time.  We visited the store several times both online and at the nearest location to get as much information as could.  We hit the Memorial Day preview sale and bought all new large appliances for under $4,000.  We saved over $1,500 from the original prices, perhaps even more than that general area as I have not sat down and actually punched out the numbers.  I could not believe we had done such an amazing thing and I had a deep desire to help others do the same.  While I wrote this article, I started to look at things from a marketing point of view for the first time.  I started looking through the modules and tried a few out to see which ones might fit the best.  I also started playing more with the themes and format of the lens.  If I could recommend something to a new squid it would be to really play around and dabble in a lot of things before you publish your first lens.  In fact, I should probably do that more with this blog, as it is my first and only one.  If you would like find out more about how we saved, here is the link to that lens: Save Big on Large Appliances at Sears