I've Been A Busy Squid-Bee and I Became an Angel

First, I'll give an update on my new lenses. I realized that I am a little behind on posting about these, so here is a list:
Stuffed Animal Storage Bag - 09/18
Halloween Holograms - 09/20
Delightfully Easy Fall Casserole - 09/22
Scary Halloween Rats - 09/26
Instant Costumes With Hats and Ski Masks - 09/29
Carved Gourds-The Perfect Fall Decoration - 10/02
Take Along Toys for Babies - 10/05
Haunted Hayride Madness - 10/12

Holy cow, I didn't even realize how much I have done in the last month until I listed it all out like that!!! I've been writing a lens about every three days, with the exception of the last one.

Now, for the story behind them...better get some popcorn, this is going to be a long blog entry!




Stuffed Animal Storage Bag: I created this article to complete a quest to write about an Amazon product.  I absolutely love this product!  My son loves it too and everyone that comes over asks us where we purchased it.  I am so glad that we bought this, as there are no longer a pile of stuffed animals all over the house.  I thought those that completed the quest would be spotlighted or featured somewhere, but I haven't seen anything.

Halloween Holograms:  I LOVE holograms!  I can't get enough of them.  When I was little my dad worked at a mall or something where they had this really neat studio (a different store from where he worked, not that where my dad worked wasn't neat or anything) that featured all holographic art.  The pictures looked like they were moving and could jump out at you and I was just mesmerized by them and I have fond memories of going there.  What better time to feature these awesome creations than Halloween?

Delightfully Easy Fall Casserole:  I also was completing a quest when I shared this recipe.  It was something I was waiting to make until it was officially fall.  It is great resolution for Thanksgiving left overs too!  My grandmother made it the best, but couldn't remember how when I asked her, which I talk about in the article.  It is a comfort meal for sure!

Scary Halloween Rats:  A Halloween quest had gone out to write about a Halloween creature.  Some examples were listed, but I didn't want to write about what everyone else was writing about.  I bounced a few ideas off my husband, who really didn't add much input.  I had almost settled on crows, but that night I was sitting watching my son's favorite movie with him, which is Disney/Pixar Ratatouille.  That was it!!!!  After that I just started searching for the scariest rat items I could find on Amazon.  I also discovered Zazzle, while I don't sell anything on that site directly, there are some great images you can use and the HTML code is already provided and your readers have another product option that they might love.

Instant Costumes With Hats and Ski Masks:  I felt like I hit the jackpot with this one and it has been viewed a lot, but not the most.  I think it is a great idea; put on a hat or ski mask that is a character and you've got your costume!  No hassle, inexpensive, and simple.  It was featured on the Happy Happy Halloween Squidoo Online Magazine and on their Facebook page.

Carved Gourds-The Perfect Fall Decoration:  I literally got goose-bumps from writing this article!  I wrote this to complete my final RocketSquids challenge, which was to use the new autumn theme.  I was looking at the fall decor we have and realized my all time favorite piece is the carved gourd we have.  Growing up, my family always loved to go into art and gift shops and thankfully my husband still likes to do this.  We were is a tourist town that we visited often in the fall and we picked out this great decoration there and also bought an owl gourd tree decoration for my mother-in-law, as she loves owls and these were just so beautiful.  The lamps I found for this lens are AMAZING, I can't say enough about them and can not do them justice.  Thank goodness the creature puts pictures of his latest projects on his site and includes the RSS feed - I used the RSS module for the first time for this lens and it was great because I didn't have to site the pictures or include links, it is already done and when that page gets updated, so does my article!  I was just a little sad to realize I would no longer be part of this group, so I immediately applied to be a Squid Angel.

Take Along Toys for Babies: I completed yet another quest when I created this article.  It was for a Gift Guide topic and there is going to be a new Squidoo online magazine called Celebrate that will be coming out soon.  I thought this might be featured on there, but it doesn't look like they have it up and running yet.  I'm guessing it won't come out until after Halloween.  Here is a thought though, to keep sales lenses and fresh and up to date I'm guessing that you could keep the Gift Guide topic and change the subtopic to the holiday or event that is most popular at the time, especially if it is a gift for any occasion.  I might play with this theory and get back to you on my findings. ;)  Also, check out this great lens that I found to get great tips about writing sales lenses: Why I Write Sales Lenses on Squidoo.

Haunted Hayride Madness: This was a big quest sent out from the Happy Halloween Magazine, the first 250, I think it is, will be featured on Halloween!  I sure hope I made it, I completed it two days after the challenge went out I believe.  I shared a true story about the hayride I will never, ever, forget.  I had been saving this story for the perfect moment and I hope I did it at the right time.  It has been very popular already (already 60 visits and counting) and it just got featured on the Squidoo main page, not lens of the day, but still awesome!  The child that was on this ride was actually rushed off by the adults that brought him as soon as the mishap occurred, as they thought it was part of the scare as well.  When we were walking back to the parking lot in the dark one of the actors was guiding us and an actor was just sitting out in the field and scared the living day lights out of me!!!  It was also so dark that I stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle.  My mom has this sixth sense kind of gift when it comes to her kids that she just knows deep down when something will go wrong and we took my sister who was older because she could make the decision on her own at that age, but we really tried to convince my mother to let us bring our brother.  For whatever reason she said she felt he shouldn't go.  Boy, was I glad he didn't go on that ride with us, it was too scary and his leg had already been injured from sports or something, so the walk back would have made him hurt even worse!

 ^ Haunted Hayride

I also reached some major mile stones this last month that I'd like to share:

~ First Sale! ~

My goals now are to update all my lenses at this point and write a lens about my RocketSquid experience and then I will be applying to be a Giant Squid, hoping to join soon!  I am so excited this experience is going well and hope I am giving people added motivation to join or stick with it!  I love this community!  Many blessings to everyone!

For more Squid Images like the animated SquidAngel visit: http://www.squidoo.com/animatedsquids.

Food, Kitchen, Cooking and Featured Articles!

Wow, these were a couple of BIG weeks for me and it has taught me that I need to be patient and just keep the creative juices flowing.  I have a feeling this journey on Squidoo will continue to be a roller coaster of feelings, doubts, success, emotions, and more, but in the end I really enjoy it.  Writing has pulled me through some tough times or just helped me get thoughts out into the world that I didn't know how to share.

Video not for viewing - screen shot only.

Well, for me it seemed to be a food, kitchen, and cooking focus these last couple weeks.  I may have even found my niche, but I am not going to single out an account for it and all things pertained to those subjects are very broad...I feel I found that things have helped me when it comes to being in the kitchen or foods I really enjoy and it seems this is what people are looking for and that is exactly what I've been looking for.  First, I finished the Letter "A" Lens Challenge from RocketSquids with the article Anytime Foods. It was number two on the list and after having some time to play with it I can safely say that submitting your lens (article) sooner will put you higher on the list. They may change that in the future, but it has worked for me so far, so it is worth giving a try if you are a member and take part in the challenges. I actually had the idea for this article a long time ago and jot my ideas down somewhere when I have them. When the challenge was presented I suddenly thought to merge the words any and time to make one word to include in the title; the original title I wrote down was Foods You Can Eat Any Time of Day....pretty long, huh? The idea came to me after eating a breakfast burrito for lunch and it suddenly hit me that there were foods I liked to eat any time of day, then I started checking the internet and seems I wasn't the only one that didn't care what time it was to enjoy this delicious foods, which so far includes pizza, chicken sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and burritos, but I will probably add more as time goes on.


Then I received a Monday Squidoo quest that said to create a lens that talked about something you did the day before.  Well, I was thinking about how we go to church, then relax, sometimes watch a movie, but then it came to me that Sunday has been deemed our easy dinner night.  Suddenly my Easy Dinner Sunday lens was born!  I usually outline my articles, but the deadline was 24hrs, so I created the entire thing on Squidoo and published it all in a matter of hours.  I didn't think anything would really come of it, to be honest, as it was just a fun quest and I threw it together so quickly that I wasn't sure if it was really had good quality stuff.  I fiddled with it for a few days and then yesterday saw it featured on the the front page of Squidoo!!!  I was sooooooo excited!  I certain amount of lenses that they choose, I'm not sure how many, get rotated in 15 spots on the front page and about every third time I clicked on the page it was one of the 15 and I think they run the same ones for a week!

*Side note:  we are about to potty train my first born and this lens was also one of the 15 that day, this article had some great books for kids on potty training: Top Toilet Training Books for Children.

When Monday rolled around it was time for another RocketSquids challenge.  Go figure, it was a food or cooking challenge!  It was a sign for me that I needed to keep going on this route.  This time I wrote about Must-Have Kitchen Gadgets.  There a some items in my kitchen I just can't imagine being without, so I went through my kitchen and picked out all the gadgets that I believed would help if everyone had them in their kitchen.  Once again it was listed as the second lens to complete this challenge, as I completed it early.  To keep up with all the RocketSquids lenses visit: The Rocketsquids Lensography.

My article is highlighted in yellow.

Well, if this wasn't all great enough, in between all these great happenings, I finally got my points for the Favorite Toy Quest, which I was already really excited about, but then I found out that my lens about the Skip-It Toy was featured as one of the top 30 favorites.  I also found out this quest was sent to the "top lensmasters in the Hobbies, Games & Toys category," which I apparently was because of my spoon collection lenses.  This is all so awesome and I very happy and excited to be receiving all this great exposure!  I so appreciate it and am really happy people are enjoying my writing.

I haven't made any money yet, but we will see what next month turns out, as I have said before pay outs lag by two months, so I won't see the profit from this month until November I believe.  I really hope it turns out well.  A quick update on my little boy; he is doing better, saw an allergist two times, and he may not need ear tubes.  Hoping his ears start to drain properly soon.


Good luck to anyone else that is also going on a Squidoo journey and may you have a great week!

Have I Got Some Tips for You!!!

Okay, I don't even know where to start.....first, I'll just say to manage your widgets!  What are widgets?  They are kind of like modules available for the right sidebar of your lens.  You can find them to the right of your workshop tools when editing your lens.  There are three available right now - RSS feed, Featured Lenses, and Amazon Spotlight Personal Review.  The RSS feed is great!  I now have my three latest blogs showing on each of my lenses.  The featured lenses rotate 3 lenses, even though I think you can put as many as you want to.  Right now, and I might change my mind down the road, but I like to only put three of my lenses that I think people will be interested in that are reading that lens.  Hopefully that will domino effect, as they click on the next lens which will have other featured lenses.  The Amazon spotlight can help you feature any product you want, as it works more like an ad; it can be some related to your lens or a product that you personally just love and want to promote.  I can't believe I wasn't using these before!  Find more about widgets and tips using them in these lenses: Sidebar Widgets and Spotlight An Amazon Product Using the Sidebar Widget.

More about RSS feed....so I could have sworn that I saw an option like this on blogger.  I did a little searching and found this link: How to Add an RSS Feed on Blogger.  Well, then I realized that I didn't know what the RSS feed URL would be in order to show my Squidoo articles, so I did a search on Squidoo - just typed in RSS.  Which led me to this lens: RSS Feeds Submission Directory, (loving this lensmaster for writing this lens) clicked on one of the links and it sent me to Squidutils.  A lot of people have actually mentioned this site and I don't know if it was because I was so new or what, but I was confused about it and just kind of went past it - BIG MISTAKE!  Once I logged in I found my RSS Feed URL, followed the directions from the "how to" link and BOOM - I've got my Squidoo lens feed showing on my blog!  How cool is that?!?!

Squidu: The Lensmaster's Lounge...this is a forum for Squidoo members that I first checked out when I discovered more about linkage and increasing your lens ranking.  It has good and bad points, but I think an important thing to do is to restrain yourself from saying some things that might not make you look good.  There have been some amazing members I have met on there that are super helpers and so supportive, a few that just want to bring everyone down, and some that think they need to be the "Squid police."  It is my belief that this world would not be as interesting as it is without so many different characters, but I have really had to bite my tongue on some things. Anywho, someone was posting a question about needing help on their lens or something along those lines - I can't quite remember.  Well, you have a signature that you can have show up at the bottom of your posts and this person had two different lensmaster profiles!  I knew this was a ligit thing to do, but a light bulb finally switched on when I checked out both of his profiles.  This lensmaster had different niches that he had and every lens or anything having to do with that profile was about that niche.  For example, if you live vacuums you could have a profile named Vacuummaster and then write on nothing but vacuums.  This is is how people are really making the big bucks on Squidoo.  To be honest, from a personally point of view I am still on the fence on what or how I feel about doing this.  One of the things I HATED about being in the business world was that everyone was a shark, take out the competition kind of mentality and I feel like this kind of is the same concept.  Once you have written so many lenses on the subject and do it really well, then no one can really compete.  Is it smart and make sense, for sure, is it a good thing to do the other writers, not sure how I feel about that.  What do you think?  Leave a comment for me.
UPDATE:  This forum has been transferred to SquidooHQ at the following link: http://hq.squidoo.com/forums/forum/chatterbox/

Back to Squidutils...there are sooooo many useful tools on this site!  Basically it is the all time lens manager.  You can check your links, Amazon stuff, content...you name it!  My next goal is to go through each of my lenses using this site and find out what is lacking and then fix it.  Little tid bit I've already found out - make sure when you take the allowed pictures you can use for your lenses and save them that you put similar words in the document name that you have in your lens title or tags.

Are you liking, bookmarking, or taking notes?!?  Well, these are mine and I wanted to share them because there some key tips in this blog entry, not only for those on Squidoo, but bloggers as well.  Hope I helped someone out and if I did maybe you could send me a little credit? lol  Keep writing and reading!!!

Once you join or if you are thinking about joining Squidoo, check out this lens (article): What's Your Story?

I joined to do exactly that, to "write about what I know and love".