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!

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!

New Lens, New Modules

Well, I decided to go ahead and create a new lens yesterday.  This time it was on Tricks to Quick Cleaning and I tried a lot of new things with this lens.  There was actually a lens Squidoo HQ published that talked about a few new modules that you could try this weekend and I tried a couple of those, which included a sticky note, along with an Amazon MP3 module I had never used before.

What is a module?  Well, as Squidoo puts it they are the building blocks of your lens.  The text itself is actually a certain module. Depending on how you use them, they add character, can feature products or songs, and just all around help your article become a little more interesting.

My process for writing my lenses goes a little like this; I type out my thoughts, give it structure, and as I enter the content into the dashboard I add modules that bring a little something extra to the article, I publish it, then view it and start to go through every little detail, republish a few times, and finally leave it alone when I think it is looking great.  Did I ever mention I have an AA in Business Marketing?  That's probably why I love doing this so much!  I have to be careful of word "useage"and spelling, as I've never been very good at that part of writing, but the visual part of this is right up my alley.

On a side note, my Five Feel-Good Movie Favorites lens is currently ranked at a little over 75,300, which I believe means I should start seeing some money come from this soon!  I still need to do more reading, but if I'm remembering how this works clearly, there is about a two month lag time on the payout and only the articles that have Tier 3 ranking or higher by the beginning of the next month are counted.  I think that means if I were to get paid on this lens it would be counted at the beginning of next month and I would get paid two months later.  I have to look into this a little more....stay tuned, as next time I will try to explain little more about Tiers and pay.

Feel-Good Movie Favorites

 Five of My Favorites; I finally have you up to date on all my lenses thus far!  Woo, hoo!!!  I think this was my funnest lens yet.  I was watching the movie The Holiday when I started writing this lens.  I wasn't feeling too great at the time and there are some movies that can seem to make me feel better no matter what!  I picked out five of them and started writing until 2am, took pictures, and published the lens.  I find it is the easiest to write about something that you love because you could go on and on.  I limited myself to five because I knew it could quickly get to twenty or even thirty.  I find that I lose interest or scroll through the lens quickly when it is too long, I don't have anything to confirm it yet, but I'm guessing others probably do the same.  I also tried out my first poll on this lens and have added some to others since.  I think you also find out a little more about who I am and what I like from this article.  Do you love movies as much as I do?!?!