Scrumptious Food = Purple Star!

I received my first purple start on Squidoo!!!!  Before we get to all that though I wanted to talk more about my Spooky Zombie Party Food (Going to make you wait in suspense for a little while.)

I created this lens to complete the "S" RocketSquid Challenge, see more here: Letter S Challenge Lenses.  It was my first Halloween article and I might have over done it!  I found some of the neatest and horrifying zombie food out there!  Unfortunately, it has continued to be a little too gross for some, but when you are having a party theme that is the undead, what can be too icky for that?!?  It is not like I included real brains....okay, maybe I did, but they aren't human brains people!!!  I personally loved making it and know that if anyone tries some of the recipes, candies, food molds, that their party will be a complete hit at Halloween!

Back to the PURPLE STAR AWARD!!!

The purple star is a coveted award that lensmasters (authors on Squidoo) receive for out of this world awesome articles!  I received one for my Scumptious Italian Chicken Sandwich!


This was the first time that I had created a food article (lens) where I actually make the food.  I thought it would be hard, but it was actually really easy because I just took pictures as I made one of my favorite recipes, original recipe courtesy of my amazing sister, and then wrote it all down when I was done.  I had received a quest at the time to write a recipe article that featured chicken.  At the same time I had a RocketSquids challenge to create a super-niche lens.  What is a super-niche?  It is a very specific idea or subject that has been whittled down from a very a very broad subject.  Take the subject photos for example, then from that you could get landscape photos, then trees, then birch trees, Alaskan birch trees, and finally you could have photos of Alaskan birch trees in the fall - it is so specific it is hard for anyone else to cover the topic and it makes it easier for you to STAY on topic.  Anyway, I decided to submit the article for both the quest and the challenge; best decision I ever made!  It received double the amount of views and because it turned out so great it also was mentioned and noticed by some of the top volunteers at Squidoo - you really want them to notice you for good stuff that you do because that is when you will get mentioned and featured!  I actually submitted this later in the week for the RocketSquids challenge and was still number two on the list - kind of blew my timing theory out the window, but I was excited none the less!  My lens was also number two out of six of the "Eat More Chicken" featured from the quest recipes submitted!

 

Once that started happening I received the following email:

Boy, I was elated!!!   I couldn't believe it!  I thought it would take a lot longer to get one, but it just goes to show you that any article can do great.  I am so appreciative of it and very honored!  Part of the honor of getting this star is nominating someone else for it.

People are still saying good things about the sandwich recipe and I really owe a lot to my sister!  She was trying to find something to make for dinner one night and basically just started pulling stuff out of the pantry and fridge, only had enough cash on hand to buy bread and mozzarella cheese, and presto - started something amazing!  When she texted the recipe to me I took it, cut down the time & changed some ingredients to fit my family's tastes and now it is a family favorite!!!  I have included the original EXCLUSIVELY for those that read my blog, no where else will you find this!  If you want the new recipe though, you'll have to visit my lens:
Scumptious Italian Chicken Sandwich.  If you add changes to this recipe when you make it that you love, then let me know what they were and you may get some credit on my article!  There are already some variations listed there, including vegetarian and gluten-free.

 


Doesn't it make your mouth water?!?  It is so good and smells amazing when you make it!  Give it a try!

(For more chicken recipes visit: Eat More Chicken)






To find out more about the purple star award visit: Purplestar - Why You Might Want One

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!

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".

A Little Discouraged

I've been working my butt off and networking like crazy and my lens rankings are getting better, but my top three are getting worse, so it is more or less evening out.  I also worked really hard on my Top Ten Heroine Suspense Movies for this week's RocketSquids challenge and our computer ran out of juice late Saturday night because our power cord had apparently stopped working.  Sunday night I created as much of my lens on Squidoo as I could using my iphone as I could, but it is tough to do it that way and my phone wouldn't let me do everything I can when using the computer.  Monday morning we had a doctor's appointment for my little boy, then went and got a power cord.  I was an hour late submitting my lens.  However, I left a comment on the Rocketsquids Top 10 Lens Challenge lens and the lensmaster kab added my lens to the list, which I really appreciated.  There were so many lenses included for this challenge, which is great, but mine is not getting a lot of views from being so low on the list.  Better luck next time I suppose.

I also completed a squid quest on the 28th that was to write about a toy.  I came up with the idea to write about the Skip It Toy.  It was a quest I was so excited to do and when you completed the quest you were to get 250 points, I think it was, and also have the chance of getting a purple star, which are given to exceptional lenses and really help you to get recognition.  Well, today the quest has disappeared, as the the due date was yesterday, and still no points and don't know who was awarded the purple star.

Upon visiting my blog I also find that I still don't have any followers.  I'm hoping I just need to work on being more patient and that good things will come with time.  I keep reading about how to do better, get more traffic, and all these other great tips and I try to apply them, but I'm not seeing results right now.  It makes it tough, especially when my hubby doesn't really get why it is so important to me.  Although, he has been very supportive when I take the time to publish my lenses, which for me can be quite a process, and wanted to get the power cord ASAP, so I could finish my challenge.  Besides all that, in the all too real world, my little boy has been having problems with his ears, was sick with strep and a chest infection this last week, and has been cranky because of it.  Our vacuum also stopped working and the place we were last renting from is holding part of our rent.  It has just been one of those weeks and I really could use some good news.  Just gotta look towards this week with hope that will go better.  I'm off to get breakfast with my baby boy - I know that will help us both feel a little better! :)

Added a Followers Section!

Photo credit: www.clker.com

I realized I did not have a join this site button on my page, so I added one (right below the about me section) and hope to see some faces added, as I need some followers!  I am still getting use to all of this, so please bare with me.  I hope you enjoy reading and don't be shy to comment.  If you are also a lensmaster on Squidoo, feel free to either leave a link to one of your lenses in a comment on this post or my very first post that I made on this blog.  Welcome to you as you join me on my journey and life behind writing on Squidoo!

I Like to What?!?!

That's right I said I Like to Spoon - the title of my last lens!  Did I mean to put that?  Yes, it was a "play on words" so to speak and I wanted to catch people's attention.  Hopefully it worked!  This was written to complete a quest using the new "Do the Polka" theme - it has pastel colored polka dots and is really fun.  I received 200 points for completing it and I might get featured in an HQ lens - we will see.  You learn a lot more about me, as I write more lenses and I gave away my identity in this lens!!!!  Not sure if I like it or if I am warming up to the idea of sharing my secret life with family and friends.  Whenever I decide to reveal my true identity to those that are closest to me you will have the first notice and inside on how it all goes.  I try to be funny in this lens and hope others share my humor.  I talk about being a spoon collector, which I have to admit is kind of geeky, but I like being different.  What is geeky really anyway?  Definition one, according to Google: An unfashionable or socially inept person.  And number two: A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest.  I'm going to go with the later in this case.  Either way, I don't really care, all I know is I like doing it and it brings back so many good memories for me, as I started collecting them while on a family vacation.  I don't know if it because it is summer or because I am missing my family so far away that this subject seems to be on my mind a lot.  I actually featured my Summer Trips Driving as a Family lens as well as a lens I read that originally inspired me to write about my spoon collecting. (Check out this lensmaster's stuff: Scarlettohairy)  I actually have another lens on this topic already in the works, so stay tuned!

RocketSquids Success!

Well, in less than a week my Summer Trips Driving as a Family lens has made it up the ladder to a little over 17,000 lens rank!  It really helps that RocketSquids publishes a lens with each week's submissions for the challenge (see screen shot taken of published featured lens with a few others from the challenge below).  I hope to see a lot of other future lenses with this group get such a good lens ranking!  I am not sure how they organize the lists, but to find mine it is placed at about 15 down on the the list and if my counting is correct I believe there were right around a total of 75 lenses featured for this challenge.  I know it not meant to be a competition among us, but it would be interesting to see where your article is ranked amongst others within the challenge.  I have been getting a lot of feedback from other lensmasters; some good and some bad.  I really appreciate it when someone has constructive criticism, but have a hard time when someone thinks they just need to tell me what I should be doing creatively.  I guess that is the price for putting your stuff out there, but most times it is good and I am learning a lot!  I would suggest to anyone that is currently in the group or considering joining that you change your comment settings to be notified to approve comments instead of just allowing any comment to be posted, as you will get a lot of critiquing.  Here is some of what I've learned so far:  people like a customized bio for each lens - include key words from title, it is better to break up writing into sections instead of "blocking", choose any featured products wisely, make sure your intro photo is a square photo at least 250pixels in size, always give credit to your pictures (that is a tough one, but worth it and I am currently trying to work on going back to other lenses and add this), and people really like personal experiences included in the lens - which is great because that is how I like to write a lot of my lenses.  All of these tips will help increase your lens rank.  I appreciate that I was sent the invitation to become a member of this group and am eager to see what other creativity and lessons come from this experience.  There are some other really great RocketSquids Summer Travel Lenses, so be sure to take a look at them!

iphone screen shot of RocketSquids Summer Travel Lenses

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?

Learning More About HTML

“Look at what I can do!”

It may not be very exciting to some, as most people writing blogs probably know a lot more about HTML than I do, but I was very excited to find these tips given by another lensmaster: www.squidoo.com/basichtml! I tried some of these neat tricks on my lens www.squidoo.com/dragons-more-reality-than-myth, as well as on this blog entry as you can see, and it really made some things pop and added the color I was looking for. The formatting on lenses seems a little restrictive with certain subjects you may be writing about and I noticed other could change their fonts and add color, but I just didn't know how. I'm excited to use these on future lenses, I just have to make sure not to get too carried away! This is great for anything that you would use HTML for, not just blogs and Squidoo articles. This lensmaster has also written an advanced HTML article...

On a side note, I was invited to join RocketSquids! From the description I was sent, as well as looking at what others have said, this is a work at your own pace Squidoo boot camp. Only those that have less than 25 lenses published can join. Challenges are given throughout the week and you are taught new things as you go. I think this will be a great way to get more involved with the community, highlight some of my lenses, as well as allow me to get some good feed back on how I am doing. I haven't seen my lens rankings changing much and I really need those to get better if I am to make any money from this venture. I am still very new to all this though and have to remember all good things take time - or something like that.

You will notice that I am very casual on this blog and nontechnical, as I want it to be more of a journal rather than a thought out process - my unedited writings, if you will. I take a lot of pride, as well as put a lot of effort into, my writing on Squidoo. I want it to be my stay at home job, not just my hobby. It is fun and very enjoyable, but I also want my lenses to be informative and helpful. Well, wish me luck and I will keep you updated on what happens while being a member of RocketSquids, which I should be starting in about a week!

Squidoo is Addictive!

I've mentioned a couple of times that writing on Squidoo is addictive, but reading lenses is as well.  You don't have to be a member to read or like a lens; you can connect with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, etc.  I like to do searches and just check out what is new and kind of "network" in between writing my own lenses.  There are so many topics that you can pretty much read about almost anything you would want to and if you can't find what you are looking for, then you can write a lens about it - it is a win win situation.  If you aren't careful, you could spend hours on there though.  When I am looking for lenses on a specific topic I tend to get side tracked by all the other great lenses that come up in the search.  For instance, just today I was looking for ideas for a date with my hubby and found a lens on Yorkshire Pudding, which had talked about what they are and even had an easy recipe.  Some of my favorite lenses that others have written, so far, include: Best Travel Toys for Toddlers, Zero Calorie Foods, Centerpieces with Wire Lights, Nap Mats for Preschool, Simple Homemade Fudge Recipe, Forest and Tree Murals...  I'm sure I could add so many more to this list and will probably feature more as time goes on.  You will also find out there are some lensmasters (writers on Squidoo) that almost specialize in certain subjects.  Often with authors such as these, if you like one lens more than likely you will enjoy most of their other lenses.  As for me, I just write about whatever comes to mind that seems like others would be interested in reading, which hopefully hasn't already been done.  I always try to put my own perspective into everything I write, so it can be a different way of looking at the topic.  If you haven't checked it out already, I would definitely recommend that you do, even if you don't want to be a writer on Squidoo, there is so much to look at on the site that it is worth at least one visit!

Making Money - Tiers in Squidoo

                                                                                                         

I did a lot of searching on Squidoo and everyone seemed to explain the tier system in a way that was hard for me to really understand.  Finally, I found a lens that outlined it in a simplified way: Tiers On Squidoo.  Come to find out a teenage boy was the lensmaster of this article!  I was blown away, he is such a great writer - better than some adults, and I took a look at some of his other lenses.  It gave me hope and made me feel like I can reach my goals if this kid can write all these cool lenses, then there is nothing stopping me.  Anyway, tier 4 are the lenses ranking above 85,000, like mentioned last time, and you are only earning pennies (if anything) on these lenses.  Tier 3 is a lens rank of 85,00 to 10,001 and your earnings are right around 30 cents for these lenses.  I like how he adds that, "it really doesn't seem like much, but if you have a lot of lenses it adds up."  Tier 2, 10,000 to 2,001 and Tier 1, 2,000 and higher, seem practically impossible to reach, but if you do you are making anywhere between $7 to $50 per lens.  He also goes on to talk about how sales are an important part of making money on your lenses (not included in the previous projected in earnings) and the lens rank obviously affects that, as more people are seeing your article.   I believe I mentioned this before, but your lens is counted at the beginning of the month, then you get paid about two months later, so I'm thinking that means you have to make sure your ranking is the highest right at the end of the month to get that ranking to stay up through the 1st.  My highest ranking article, thus far, has been Five Feel-Good Movie Favorites with a ranking in the mid 40,000 area.  Your lens rank changes every day though, so there isn't any way of knowing if you will still have such a high ranking tomorrow, so I wonder if there is something I am missing?  I started trying to find out how others felt about this and found a well written lens about how they should change the tiers, so more people get some of the profit.  The article didn't say anything negative about Squidoo, in fact they have over hundreds of lenses, but pointed out that it is hard to make good money on there considering how many people are now members, and so on.  I agree, I think they should add more tiers to the system, so people have a greater chance of making a profit.  We, the writers, are the reason that people do go on Squidoo after all.  It will be interesting to see how everything goes and whether or not I make any money from this venture, but I do enjoy it and feel like the community that has been built is really great.  I will stick with it and you can keep up with my journey here!

CORRECTION:  Perhaps I overlooked it in previous lenses, but I learned from reading this lens: How To Improve Your Lens Rank that the rank, as well as what you get paid for the lens, is based on the average rank it had for the month.  I would venture to say that the month in which you create the lens would be the lowest pay out then, as it seems that all my lenses have started in Tier 4 and stayed there for at least a few days.  I agree with this writer when she says that probably the best way of increases rank is by having good content - hopefully others agree that I have good work and enjoy the way I present the information.  Until next time - have a good one!

Finding Squidoo

For a long time now I've been trying to find something I can do from home that I enjoy, which will bring in a little extra money.  For the first two years I was married I was the bread winner, making around $15 an hour.  I quit because my husband had started a new job.  At that point, I decided I wanted to be a homemaker.  Shortly after relocating with my husband's work, we conceived and nine months later had a beautiful baby boy.  I have reached a point in my life where I want to do something that is just me, something that makes me feel important and brings gratification.  Squidoo allows me to do this and surprisingly has already become somewhat addictive.  I love not only writing, but reading other lenses.  You can interact with the articles and like them through Facebook, Twitter, Pin It using Pinterest, or even recommend it here on Google.  It is the thing I do to get away from every day life.  I usually work on it at night when there are no distractions and I am just left by myself to share my thoughts without any critiquing.  It has also helped me to not snack as much at night because my attention is focused else where.  I don't like to just throw out my opinions, what I really enjoy doing is helping others by sharing my experiences.  I would be lying if I said I don't hope to make a little money while doing this as well, we shall see as time goes on.  There are some amazing stories of those that have been making thousands of dollars a month, which are very inspiring and definitely add motivation.  If after reading my lenses you find you like an article I've written, please make sure to click a like button and feel free to leave me a comment on Squidoo.  While you are there check out some of the other great lenses.  If you are already a Squidoo writer, send me your lensmaster name and I'll make sure to return the favor.  Hopefully this journey will a prosperous one for us all.