AJ is Always Juggling

RedGage, the newest social networking site has created a buzz of conversations in various places on Squidoo, including the SquidU Forum and various blogs. Fellow Lensmasters, who I have the utmost respect for have already joined. But I am holding back - for several reasons.

Recently I made the decision to focus my networking in specific areas. The danger when you first join Squidoo is that you can get so caught up in all the networking that is available, you can end up with very little time to actually make and publish lenses. As a result I do not rush to join new sites, even when they look very tempting.

RedGage DOES look tempting - the thought of getting paid for your content just seems too good to resist. But for the moment I am resisiting.

Why? Call me cautious but……over the next couple of weeks a good number of Lensmasters are going to be looking for other places to publish their content and they will want somewhere to promote that content. Squidoo is cleaning up and there’s going to be a lot of publishers looking for sites that will accept links to the stuff that Squidoo has (and to my relief, by the way) decided to get rid of.

I have checked RedGage’s Terms and Conditions and, like Squidoo now has, they have a no porn policy. However, as far as I can see, all what I call the TAT (Tacky And Tasteless) could well be promoted at RedGage.

It will only take recommendations from the “Gurus” who advise a lot of Lensmasters, that RedGage is the place to promote their articles, blogs and content, once the new TOS are implemented on Squidoo, and before you know it, it could be full of links to all those lenses that may be disappearing from Squidoo, only to rise from the ashes on other sites.

For some time now I have felt that Squidoo’s, and by association its Lensmasters’, reputation has been tarnished by some of the content that has so far been allowed on the site. I was not the only Lensmaster who heaved a sigh of relief when the new TOS were announced. So in my mind I don’t want to be seen to be aligned with this content on another site, when I am happy to see it leave Squidoo.

To be absolutely fair, I have had a look at RedGage and have not found any links that particularly alarm me at the moment, but it is early days yet and I am watching to see what happens before the Squidoo Lockdown in a couple of weeks. Granted, I could be completely wrong here and RedGage could turn out to be all that its promoters think it will be, but I don’t feel in any hurry to join at the moment.

The other reason I am hesitating is that if someone Spams my email (as RedGage did) then it does get me pretty hacked off, as it does a lot of other Lensmasters I know. The site may be great but I cannot believe that anyone who really knows what they are doing and who is mindful of their reputation, would actually cold call people via their email.

So, just watching and waiting….

© AJ2008 - if you see this article reproduced in its entirety on any other site, with which I am not connected, then it is likely to be stolen content

Those of you who followed by lens experiment on Losing weight with a wheat free diet will know that I do like to have a look at the Stats on my lenses. However, over the last few weeks as I slogged away to make my 50 lenses in order to be able to apply for Giant Squid, although I have kept an eye on my rankings, looking at the detail has been neglected due to lack of time.

I have been through all my lenses to sort out which ones I wanted to switch to the new Squidoo templates and I will continue to “tinker” with them over the next week, but yesterday I took some time to try and establish why one of my new Astrology lenses is doing so well and the other three are not.

Taurus in love is a lot higher in the Squidoo rankings than it’s “sister” Taurus, as well as Aries and Aries in love.

All four lenses have been treated exactly the same way and at first I wondered if it was just that Taureans are more interested in their love lives than Arians! The answer was actually a lot more straightforward than that.

Despite being published within a couple of days of each other, over 08, 09 and 10 June, Taurus in love is the only lens out of the four currently attracting Google Traffic. This is a puzzle to me as all the lenses have been promoted in exactly the same way and they have similar keywords and phrases.

They do have the same layout - they are part of a series, after all. However, I have been careful to make sure that any modules that are the same have different text.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves and when I start getting Google traffic to the other three lenses. But I would be glad if anyone has any theories about this to post a comment.

Just thought I would share what little effort it took to make sure that I had brilliant pics on my new lens Hairspray the Musical.

As anyone who goes to see a Musical Show like Phantom of the Opera, Grease etc knows - you are not allowed to take pics during the performance. So if you want to make a lens about your experience it can be hard to use great pics - unless of course pics from the show are on a site like AllPosters

10 days ago I went to see Hairspray the Musical in London. I already knew I would like to publish a lens about it, but I was really stuck for pics because the London Show does not have any pics on AllPosters and Amazon only has posters from the films.

The offical Hairspray website obviously has some great photos and I also found some of the cast on Flickr. I thought it would be quite easy to get permission to use the Flickr pics and it was. But the official website?

I emailed last Thursday. I got a fast response saying yes in principal. I published the lens on Friday but did not promote until I had permission. I sent the website the link.

This morning I got permission and all they want me to say is “Photo used with permission”. They dont even want a link.

So the point of this post is, it may be easier to get permission than you think! And now I am off to promote the lens….

My currently most topical lens: Trooping the Colour has received the biggest number of visits over the past few days that I have ever received - and that includes my Lenses of the Day!

Thanks to the traffic I have finally broken the 2,000 barrier for visits to all my lenses and am edging closer to 2,500!

What this shows to me is that my recently revised SEO methods are now paying off, as the lens was featured very quickly by Google, within days of publishing on 19 May. What it also shows is that, unless you are already confident with SEO when you first arrive, it takes awhile to really get going on Squidoo.

Eleven months on and I am still learning! However one thing I have also learned is to put a positive Spin on Spam!

50 Squidoo lenses, with two weeks to go to the deadline for applications for Giant Squid. I will be making more, just in case, but it is a huge relief to have made the magic 50 with time to spare.

I had planned that my 50th lens would be My Squidoo Story but I ended up publishing that as Lens #43, due to a RocketMoms task that required a Lensography. As this lens was already under construction, (and about a third already completed) I made the decision to publish sooner, in order to save time.

So that left me having to decide what to do for #50. I knew I wanted it to be an extra special lens but was struggling to come up with something a bit different. However, it was not until a couple of days ago that an idea hit me.

I was walking up to Lizzie’s school as she had forgotten to take in a project and I was thinking about our local Community. This then evolved into thinking about Squidoo as a Community. I had already started a thread on the SquidU Forum, called: OK Time to lighten up - give me ONE THING you LOVE about Squidoo and there were some great posts.

So then I thought, it would be so easy to make Lens #50 a “ME” lens but what about making it a “WE” lens - a true Community lens. The lens started out as series of quotes from Lensmasters, but then it evolved as I started thinking about all the various Communities within Communities that are either on Squidoo or linked to Squidoo.

So here it is, my 50th Lens:

Squidoo Community

I took the advice my SquidFriends have been giving me and I have published the lenses in my new niche. They have been months in the planning and so I could not bear to waste that effort. Also, as others pointed out to me, there’s lots of lenses on the same topics and Squidoo is big enough to cope, particularly as Lensmasters generally have very different styles.

So what was the niche? No, it was nothing to do with the Environment, although you could be excused for thinking otherwise as while I was “pondering” I published:

Best plants for bees.

Prior to that I had a go at a TWTTRSTRM lens: Best of Stephen Fry on Twitter, which brought my lens total to 45.

Then over the last couple of days I have hit the publish button on:

Aries

Taurus in love

So no prizes for guessing the next 20 lenses that I have lined up!

That makes a 49 lenses and I am now trying to decide what lens to do for Number 50 - I do feel that it should be something a bit special. Mind you, I won’t be stopping at 50 as I want to do another couple, just in case whoever assesses my lenses doesn’t think all of them are quality enough to qualify.

First of all the boo boo! Its a good job I checked Michey’s blog earlier today, as it would seem I had forgotten to add My Squidoo Story to The JJJJs Giant Squid Challenge Team - unforgivable and please don’t tell Joan!

But thank you Michey for your Blog, which has a record of all the lenses submitted by each Lensmaster.

A couple of days ago I posted in my Blogger Blog about a dilemma I have about publishing some lenses that have been planned for months. I know I will not be the first person that this has happened to - a series of lens planned, some well on the way to completion and then another lensmaster publishes on the same topic.

The series is the biggest I have attempted so far and has been a long time in the planning. It has been delayed due to my involvement in RocketMoms because I was distacted by doing other lenses for the 6 week course. And yes, I admit it I have been procrastinating!

However, two of the lenses are more or less ready to publish now and having spent at least 10 working days on them, I am inclined to go ahead and publish, which, because today I publshed Lens #45, will bring my total to 47.

Lens #45 is:

Best plants for bees.

It is another lens that has been planned for quite some time and fits into my “green and environmental” niche.

Sorry, I cannot resist the pun, but I hope it gives you a buzz!

RocketMoms are here to stay methinks on Squidoo! The first RocketMoms group graduated yesterday and Bonnie surprised us all with our very own individual RocketMoms Graduation Cards, which Lensmasters (and not just RocketMoms) have been visiting and signing the Guestbooks.

As someone who threw in the towel as far as her education was concerned at the tender age of 16, this was my first ever Graduation Card and it really gave me a thrill.

I know that there was a bit of a “kerfuffle” on the SquidU Forum, because people were worried that “exclusive” groups were starting to form but right from the start I have felt that smaller networking groups have to be the way forward on Squidoo.

Think about it. Yesterday I blogged about Squidoo hitting the 1 Million Lensmark. That’s an awful lot of Lensmasters as well. Networking is essential to getting traffic both inside and outside Squidoo and the danger is that new Lensmasters may be so overwhelmed that they get scared and leave. Either that or they spread themselves too thin (and it’s not only newbies who are at risk here) and burn out trying to keep up with it all.

I firmly believe that the only way to be able to support each other effectively is in smaller focus groups. It already goes on outside of Squidoo (SquidLog comes to mind here as people read the articles and network with each other) and for the Giant Squid Challenge, the group leaders have set up Nings and Blogs, not only for their members to network but they also provide those ever valuable backlinks.

I have described RocketMoms as a Girls’ Night Out so:

Sorry fellahs, you are great but just this once I do not want to socialise with you. And if you want to start up your own RocketDads Group and have your own nights out then that is fine by me and I will not be offended!

There’s some great people on Squidoo who have the organisational skills and motivation to start up their own networking groups and LindaJM has already got going with Senior Squids. I have a feeling it wont be long before we see a whole load of groups starting up. I can see them having a great time working alongside each other and perhaps setting up the occasional challenge as well.

It’s all good stuff as far as I am concerned.

There’s a post on the SquidU Forum, that got me pondering as I do a very tedious job (more about that another time), which is highlighting the fact that someone has WIP lenses with a ranking of over a million. Yes, 1,000,000!!!

That is awesome! And my SquidFriends know that I do NOT use that word very often.

But then I got wondering, as I do, and I started thinking about how many of those would actually get published and how many would languish in WIP with premium URLs that were grabbed in haste and will never see the light of day.

Just a thought (and I talk about this in my lens Squid Etiquette) but if you have a lens in WIP, that you just know will never get finished, how about deleting it and letting someone else have a crack at it?

Today I have been thinking about the differences in the way some people give feedback. This was prompted by comments made by GrowWear and Cleanerlife. I had actually posted some inaccurate info on my newest lens about Stephen Fry and both MiMi and Dan took the trouble to point it out in a very tactful and diplomatic way in the comments they left on the Blog. I was grateful that they refrained from listing the mistakes in the Guestbook on the lens, which has since been corrected. Thank you both!

Coincidentally, today I also found a rather different approach to giving feedback in a Forum, which really halted me in my tracks. I am not going to “point the finger” but I would just like to say that when I was teaching adults (and I also do it with my children), no matter how bad I think something is, the First Rule of Feedback is to say something positive. So no matter how much you want to say:

This lens/article/blog/homework stinks!

You are not allowed to! You have to find something nice to say before you are allowed to be critical. It is the nice thing to do and it also helps keep the discussion pleasant as well.

All of this and a lot more about the Do’s and Don’t on Squidoo is covered in my lens Squid Etiquette.