AJ is Always Juggling

Well the wait is over. Did I achieve one of my Lensography “September objectives”, which was to get into the Top 50?

Woohoooo! Yes I did! I have a lens at number 49 and what is all the more remarkable is that it did it in just seven days.

Like most “newbies” (and I still consider myself a “newbie”) I am still trying to work out what works and what doesn’t. I joined Squidoo with it in mind to publish lenses about “Children and Parenting” and “Environmental issues”. But to be honest the imp in me is never very far away, so much so that even when I am dealing with really serious stuff, I find it very hard not to see the funny side of things.

So following the publication of three “serious” lenses (Janey Lee Grace, Soapnuts and Bullying at Primary School) I went for something a bit more “lighthearted” when I saw the announcement about the book from the film “Sex and the City” being published. The lens: Love letters of great men did not exactly fly up the rankings but it did OK. All part of the learning curve and I would probably do it differently if I started from scratch. But that’s the funny thing about Squidoo. A lens may have a brief flurry of visitors and then start sliding fast down the rankings, as this one did and then all of a sudden interest is revived. Today it has achieved it’s highest ranking ever of 11,853 and I am sure it is on the back of the two lenses I have in the Top 100.

I have also learned that refreshing a lens is crucial. Leave it to its own devices and it will sink to the bottom of the sea. So I have made myself go back to my existing lenses and see what I can do to update and refresh them on a regular basis. Most of them have had little tweaks here and there, but I don’t bother to Squidcast any updates unless I feel that there is enough new stuff in there to justify another visit from someone who has been before.

Then I did another “serious” lens. I had already done what was an emotionally draining lens about one of my beautiful girls and bullying. Now it was time to turn my mind to Lizzie, who has APD. This lens was not so draining but like a lot of my lenses, it needed a lot of research in order to explain the condition. Thank goodness for the internet, but it still took about three days to pull together. To date it has had 651 visits and is the first lens where I promoted it in other forums, which has resulted in extra traffic and it is the first lens to earn me Amazon commission! Not to mention Lens of the Day - twice!

Then it was the lens about Otosclerosis. Another very personal lens and it actually got me down. I guess up until I started researching the condition so I could write about it properly, I had not really faced up to how serious it could be. For someone who loves performing in musical theatre, it is not good to be facing hearing loss. But through my research I also discovered that if it gets very bad then there is an operation that has high odds of restoring my hearing to normal.

My next lens was my very first “Squidoo lens”: Thanks for the help. I wanted to acknowledge all the help I received through reading “how to” lenses and in the Forum. That too has not been one of my most successful but is picking up again and is a reasonable 9041. This is another lens that I plan to completely overhaul and update in the next month.

The next lens (Does Bullying Run in Families?) was another serious one. Part 2 in the series I am publishing on Bullying and I don’t mind admitting, it’s therapy for me in an attempt to get over what happened to my daughter. Again not that successful but still getting traffic and one that I need to add some modules to (suggested by debnet). I also need to promote it more in the Parenting forums I belong to.

Then it was back to the lighter side of life: Pantomime. A topic that I know a huge amount about as I have actually appeared in lots as well as Directing and Producing. It has done very well and I am hoping it will pick up again as we go into Christmas.

David Miliband is the first “speculative” lens that I have published. It’s success depends on something happening. That something is Gordon Brown being replaced as leader of the Labour Party and David Miliband taking his place. It too needs some more updating as events unfold and I need to be a lot more disciplined in keeping in touch with what is happening. I also have a couple of other “speculative” lenses in WIP that I need to get going on.

During all of this I finally got around to publishing my Lensography. I grabbed the URL and then “the muse” deserted me for a few weeks. I think I was a bit shy about writing about me and for awhile I could not get going. Then I started reading other people’s lensographies and all of a sudden I was off. I really enjoyed creating that lens and I now have no trouble thinking up other things to add to it. Soon I will think about perhaps splitting it. One of the things that helps keep it fresh is that I have a list of objectives (Squidoo and non-Squidoo) and I update the lens if an objective is reached - note to moi: go update the lens as you have reached your objective of getting into the Top 50! I am still very bewildered by the fact that this is also a very successful lens and yesterday it reached its highest ranking of 855.

I also started the Children and Parenting Group. Groups is probably the thing that causes me the most negative thoughts on Squidoo (apart from spamming of course) and I want to pull together some quality lenses that deal with some of the serious issues that families face. Lenses on the “Top 10 Potties for your child”, whilst being of great value to new parents, do not really fit in to the group, so I do spend time, some of which is totally wasted, reviewing the applications before a lens can be accepted. But what makes me really sad is that some of these lenses would fit into the Group if the lensmaster took on board the feedback I have sent them. Sadly, these attempts to help people have failed and I have not had any response whatsoever. Ah well….

My newest and most successful lens is Squid Etiquette. It is very irreverent in places but attempts to get a few important messages across. Being British I have a wonderful, natural ability to be sarcastic, but understand that not everyone will “get it”, so I have had to be very careful to make sure everyone understands that I am trying to be lighthearted.

Since joining Squidoo I have learned a lot of HTML and I have discovered networking sites that I never knew existed. Some I like a lot better than others. I have also made contact with a lot of people (note to moi: clean out your inbox, it’s currently got over 700 messages in it!) who have not only been helpful and supportive but enjoyable to get to know as well.

I do get irritated by the amount of Spamming that goes on, but I do laugh at the daftness of some of it as well. If only these people really took a hard look at which lenses are successful on Squidoo, they would see that most have been written from the heart and not with the wallet in mind.

And the highlight of my time here so far? Well it has to be three things: getting Lens of the Day on 10 September; getting LOTD for the same lens again on 24 September; and of course getting an email from Seth Godin. I followed my own advice from Squid Etiquette and sent Seth an email saying thank you for Squidoo. I never expected to get a reply, but one pinged into my intray within an hour of sending it!

I think only my LH (Lovely Hubby) really understands how Squidoo has saved my sanity. I think he thought when we were told I would have to “take it easy” for a few months that it would be like living with a caged bear, especially as I always find lack of sunshine in the winter very hard. But I can honestly say that it does not matter diddly squat what the weather is doing, when I’m Squidooing. Gosh, did I just make up a rhyme?

Tags: always juggling, apd, auditory processing disorder, children and parenting, Christmas, david miliband, debnet, Does bullying run in families, environmental issues, gordon brown, lensography, love letters of great men, newbies, otosclerosis, pantomime, seth godin, squid etiquette, squidoo, top 100

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.