My blog Year of the Tiger Tattoos is doing so well for traffic and sales are building, so for the first time I took one of my posts and converted it into a Squidoo lens: Chinese Tattoo Translation.
Converting a blog post into a lens is something that Squidoo HQ recommends from time to time, so I thought I would try it to see if I could rank hghly for a specific keyword AND make some sales too.
Watch this space 
Recently I was given a lens to add to my Going Green Ideas niche: Mrs Meyers Clean Day Products. I tell the story of how I acquired the lens on the actual lens, so you will have to check it out to find out what happened 
Another new lens is Firefox Slow?, which came about because I had to work out how to speed up Firefox. Firefox was slow to load on my PC and it was driving me bananas!
One of my biggest priorities at the moment is Professional Squids but sometimes you can be so busy with your head under the hood that you can forget to tell people what you are doing!
Professional Squids was born because when we published the Squidoo Step by Step Guidebook, we wanted to provide a back-up service. We realised that people could download the e-book easily enough, but what if they had questions? What if they needed more help to apply the processes we were recommending?
The whole point was to give people a leg up with their lens-making, so we felt we could not just say
Here’s the Guidebook. Go read it and go make lenses!
Ning provided the ideal platform. It was free, easy to set up and thanks to lots of other Squidoo related Nings, including RocketMoms, a lot of people were familiar with the setup. But like with any free platforms, we were left high and dry when it was announced that Ning was moving to a paid service.
However, this gave us the kick in the butt we needed and within record time a new website had been established. One where WE would be in complete control.
So what is Professional Squids?
Our strap line says:
Empowering you to make quality content
We teach, we support, we help you to make quality lenses and we have regular Lensmaking challenges. It is all FREE and open to any Squidoo Lensmaster.
And if you want to get a feel for who is part of this fast growing group, take a look at this screenshot, which I made just before this post. I think you will recognise quite a few faces!
Recently active on Professional Squids
Green cupcakes is my first lens for the Squidoo Cupcake Club, but is a cupcake lens with a slight difference. In order to narrow the niche I have linked it in to eco friendly baking, which fits in nicely with one of my interests and a blog: Going Green Ideas.
My newest lens however, was born out of a question asked on Ask AJ by Squidoo Lensmaster Spook about how to make a screenshot. I had just started to explain how to do it on the blog when I thought why not make a lens?
The last few weeks on Squidoo have been hectic and also very rewarding. Not only was I made a member of the Giant Squid 1oo club, I have also received two Squidoo Sunshine Awards.
The first was for Free Tony the Tiger and the award benefits Big Cat Rescue, which has offered a home to a 10 year old Bengal tiger who is kept in unsuitable conditions at a Truck Stop.
The second was for Mimi’s Birthday, which will benefit OhMe’s charity Friends of the Park.
Last time I posted I had 96 Squidoo lenses and since then the total has gone up to 111 in what I believe has been my most productive period ever on Squidoo!
Lens #97 was Mimi’s Birthday. A tribute to my very good friend, for her birthday on 21 June, which had contributions from many Lensmasters. The lens was also given a Squidoo sunshine award for Friends of the Park, to which I also donated my winnings – it did not seem right to profit from Mimi’s birthday and FOTP is a very deserving cause.
The next 14 lenses were all about the Squidoo Answer Deck and I explain the thinking behind it, and how I went about what was quite a mammoth task, in a special blog for Professional Squids.
While all this frantic lensmaking was going on, I did get well past the 100 lenses I needed to apply for the Giant Squid 100 club at the end of June and I was really pleased to get the email from Bonnie and Robin to say the application had been accepted.
Eleven new Squidoo lenses since the beginning of May and I am almost at that magic 100 that will allow me to apply to join the Giant Squid 100 Club!
Since I last posted I have published:
Starsigns – a lensography of all my astrology lenses
Squidoo Induction – a How to Squidoo for new lensmasters, that was awarded a Purple Star
Philips Satinelle Epilator – a review of a product I bought last week, which is great
Easy Fish Pie – exactly what it says!
And while all this has been going on, I have been involved in putting together a new Article Directory on Crabbys Beach: Shout Out Loud, which is now open to all!
A new Squidoo Lensography for all my astrology lenses has just been published under the title Starsigns and I have also put together a lens I have been planning for a long, long time: Squidoo Induction.
Feedback for Squidoo Induction has already been very positive as I share the lenses and Squidoo tools that have helped me since I first started on Squidoo nearly two years ago. I also managed to remember to use the Squidoo Answer Deck template!
Only six more lenses to go to the 100!
Following on from a suggestion from Treasures by Brenda I have been looking at making a few more lensograohies and so I finally made a lens on a theme that has been picked up by quite a few Lensmasters with a large number of lenses: My 10 newest lenses.
It is a challenge that LindaJM set for her Senior Squids Group some time ago and I finally got around to doing one. The thinking behind it is that once you get past a certain number of lenses it makes it harder for visitors to your Bio to work out which are your newest lenses.
That was lens #90 and in the last couple of days I have published #91 and 92.
Gemini-in-love continues my Astology theme (which reminds me, there’s another lensography waiting to be made) and this morning I just had to publish a lens about the Squidoo London Meetup that I have volunteered to organise on 10 June, which is the Squidoo Worldwide Meetup Day.
The target of 101 lenses by 30th June is looking more “doable” each day!
My Squidoo lensmaking rate has increased hugely these last couple of days, with three new lenses.
Free Tony the Tiger is a campaign to persuade the owner of a 9 year old Bengal tiger, to hand him over to Big Cat Rescue. The lens will donate all Squidoo royalties to Big Cat Rescue and has been entered into the Squidoo Sunshine Award.
AJ’s Blogs is a “Blogography” – I did not realise how many blogs I had until I put them all together on a lens! Don’t you just love the RSS Feed module!!
Finally, I indulged myself and published Three Lions – my fav football anthem has been released in time for the 2010 World Cup and I love it!
So that makes six weeks in which to publish 11 lenses and I will be following Brenda’s suggestion to maybe do a few more Lensographies.
