A note to my visitors

I have not posted here in a while. Life has been crazy lately. My grandmother passed away in late April. She had had cancer and had been going downhill for sometime. When she refused to eat or drink, my mother and I rushed to be by her side. I was holding her hand when she passed and it was one of the hardest things I have ever been through. I was very close to my grandmother and I miss her terribly.

Since then, I have been in a whirlwind trying to keep up with everything. My grandmothers house had already been sold, and I helped my mother settle grandma's estate by cleaning out the house and having several estate sales with the help of one of my cousins, her boyfriend, and my husband. In all of this, my own house had been neglected, and I have had almost no time for Squidoo and keeping up with my lenses.

Things are starting to calm down now. The house is back under control, and I have emotionally healed enough to get back to making lenses and dealing with my home based business. I am excited to be building lenses again, and have built 20 new ones since I last posted here. I hope to reach the Giant Squid 100 club by the new deadline in September.

Well, that about catches everyone up to speed. I hope to be posting here a lot more often now. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to send them my way. I love hearing from fellow Squidoo members!

Have a great day!
~ Crystal

Squidoo Tip: Original content is King!

When I first started creating lenses, I looked at it like an article posting site and built lenses with my articles that I had previously has published on other sites. I quickly realized that this was not the way to create lenses. While these lenses do receive some traffic, it is a small amount every week. Once I started creating lenses with original content and recommendations, my traffic skyrocketed and sales increased as well.

The best way to get traffic to your lens is to fill it with original content. Copying already published content will not get it done. The internet is based on a constant need for fresh content and that is what the search engines look for. The more original your content, the better you will rank and the more traffic you will receive.

This applies to promoting affiliate products as well. A personal, honest, and well thought out review will earn you a lot more traffic than a copy and paste sales letter. Surfers would rather read an personal review based on your experiences than a hyped up sales pitch that is provided by the company.

So, the Squidoo tip for the day is create lenses with original content. You should see a tremendous difference in traffic for original lenses than on those that are copy and paste.

Happy Squidooing :)

New Milestone: 50 Published Lenses

Finally! I have reached 50 lenses. It's been a long time coming and it's feels great to have reached a goal. I intended to have 50 lenses much sooner, but life and time has not allowed it.

What's my 50th lens, you ask? Well, it's a lens to introduce the blog you are reading now! Diary of a Squidoo Lensmaster It doesn't have much now, but I will be adding to it as time goes on.

Now, my new goal is 100 lenses. I feel like I should be able to obtain it, but it will take a while. Right now, I am happy that I have finally reached 50 and can't wait to find out if I'd made it to a giant squid!

My Thoughts on the New Max Layout

Since the new max layout for our lenses came out last week, there are things I am happy with and other things that I'm not. Overall the look is beautiful. The blue and white makes a soothing reading experience and I love it. The new Contents at a Glance module is also fantastic. I love the new blue box (though I hated it when it was orange) and I will be using it on all my lenses.

Also, I love how the blue and white flow in the sidebar. It truly is beautiful.

The new Discovery Feature leaves much to be desired, though. The Discovery Tool is designed to recommend other lenses based on your main keyword or tag. It is not the recommendations that I am worried about. I don't mind sharing traffic with other lenses. It is a great way to network related pages and with a community like Squidoo, sharing traffic is what it is all about.

My complaint is that it is placed directly under our introduction module which can lead to visitors clicking off of our lenses before even reading our content. This is not good. If we worked hard and earned a visitor to out lens, we shouldn't have to sale our lens in the Intro. The Discovery Feature would work well at the bottom of the lens. I recommend other lenses below my content and would not have a problem with the discovery tool doing the work for me. Personally though, I much preferred the You Might Also Like feature on the old max layout that selected two lenses based on primary tags. With the lens image and brief snippet of text, it was a nice way to recommend other lenses.

Also, I miss the top 10 in category that displayed on each lens in maxed format. It was a great way to see the fabulous lenses that had made it the top and was also an excellent motivator to get my lenses to that level.

In regards to the lensmaster bio now being placed directly above the lens content, I'm not liking this either. I think visitors are there to see what information I have to offer, but they don't necessarily care who wrote it. Having the pic and information directly above the article is not a good placement in my mind. And the bio image is the same size as the lens image, so it throws off the flow of the lens. Also, the bio takes up to much room above the fold and on a small screen, you can not see any of the content without scrolling down. I think the lensmaster should move back to the sidebar, or next to the title as it was before.

Another thing, I have noticed a big drop in traffic on my top preforming lens since the new layout was introduced. I don't think the discovery tool is working very well to increase traffic, which is what it was designed to do. With so many links to choose from in the Related Pages section, I think they are being passed over.

Overall, I love the new layout and I think with a few tweaks it could be a work of art. Squidoo HQ is great about listening to feedback from lensmasters and I think they will take all of our concerns into consideration. If you would like a say in the matter, be sure to visit Janet21's lens Oh no! What the heck happened to my lens? and vote in the polls. Janet asks questions on all the new features in the max layout and lets you cast your vote.

My Aim To Become A Giant Squid

Since i joined Squidoo more than a year ago, I have slowly built up a nice collection of lenses. Last year, Squidoo announced a contest for the lensmasters. Anyone having 50 quality lenses or more would be awarded the status of Giant Squid. At that time, I only had about half the required lenses and did not have the time to earn the title. But now Squidoo has decided to run the contest again, and not just once, but monthly. That means that every month lensmasters have the chance to earn the coveted title.

Why is it so coveted? Well, being a Giant Squid also comes with a few perks. These include a shiny badge for all your lenses, a boost in lensrank, and preview of new features before they become available to all of Squidooland. Also, you get a template that you can use for creating lenses. Megan, one of the Big Squids, has recently said in a SquidU post that there are some new features in the works for the Giant Squids.

So, when the announcement came out that there was a new contest for Giant Squids and that the deadline was March 28th, I got busy real fast and managed to get 49 lenses and 7 groups in by the deadline. (I would have had 50, but my grandmother fell, and I had to rush to take care of her, but Squid HQ says groups count, so I should be OK.) Now, we - myself and many other lensmasters as well, are eagerly awaiting an email from the Squid Team that tells us we are now a Giant Squid.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I don't know if the qualifications for Giant Squid status are 50 published lenses that are not WIP (work in progress) or if there are stricter guidelines. I am proud of most of my lenses, but there are a few that I know could use some work. I am worried that my lenses are not up to snuff for such a distinguished title of Giant Squid. But I am still hoping and praying that my lenses qualify me.

If you are interested in becoming a Giant Squid, be sure to visit Megan's lens on Giant Squids and How You Can Become One. It will tell you what you need to know. If you haven't already built your 50 lenses, then get cracking! The new deadline is May 1, 2008.

What Is Squidoo?

If you are not a member of Squidoo, you may wonder just what this blog is all about. Squidoo is a free membership community that allows you to write articles and post them on mini websites called lenses. You can create lenses on any topic and share your interests and recommendations from all over the web. It is a great place for promoting your website, sharing your expertise, or just for sharing something you find interesting.

Squidoo is great because you can also earn a monthly income by promoting products and services on your lenses. You can earn revenues from ads placed on your articles, from amazon, ebay, and many other modules, and also by recommending products through affiliate companies.

Squidoo is a great community for networking as well. They offer a forum where members can get together and share ideas. There are also hundreds of Squidoo groups where you can link your lenses to others and create a great network on your topic or niche.

If you are not a Squidoo lensmaster yet, I encourage you to sign up for your free membership and get started creating lenses today. The more lenses you build, the more money you can earn.