What do GE and Lensbuilding Have in common?
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GE or General Electric is one of the largest conglomerates in the world from building nuclear power plants to lightbulbs and owning NBC their companies stretch across the world.
What can actions a giant like GE takes teach a tiny lensmaster like you? Well… probably a lot but here’s what I thought of today.
If you aren’t going to be #1 or #2 in your (micro)niche on squidoo, try a different (micro)niche.
The reasoning is simple, at most the large search engines will usually only show 2 listings from a single domain. If your lens can’t even compete with the other lenses on Squidoo, you might be dead in the water before ever leaving the gate. (whoa, just mixed like 3 metaphors there..)
I think that this is probably one of the single biggest reason that many lenses don’t get indexed by anyone. You simply are typing something that has already been done.
For example there are 342 lenses that use ‘The Secret DVD’ (that enlightenment thing I guess? Didn’t one of the biggest promotors of that just get sued or something?) as a Tag. Seriously? Why?
I’m not saying that if there are some great lenses on Nintendo Wii (and there are a bunch!) that you shouldn’t make a wii-related lens. What I’m saying is if there are 50 lenses on Blue Waterproof Wiimotes (or whatever) then pick another kind of Wiimote!
If you strive to be the best lens on Underwater Ping Pong Paddles then you probably will also be one of the best pages anywhere on Underwater Ping Pong Paddles.
Get the idea?
Don’t forget that the Lens of the Week Competition is Tommorrow ! Add your entry to the Lens of the Week Lens by Tomorrow morning for consideration!
Is Squidoo Selling Out Lensmasters?
Edit: I was extra grumpy when I woke up this morning and made the two cardinal mistakes in blogging - don’t type angry and do your research. I failed miserably at both. Apparently these ads are served by Google and are still CPC, negating my entire argument. Additionally, getting angry doesn’t really solve a lot of issues like this. So, I’m going to crawl back into my pirate boat for the evening.
I was looking at one of my lenses this morning and saw the following:
Lens 1:
Lens 2:
These are pre-populated ads for eBay and Shopzilla items in the sidebar of the Squidoo Lenses.
Why I’m a Pissed off Pirate:
There has been no indication from Squid HQ that they have set these ads up to be attributable directly to the lensmaster who owns the page.
The items and the content in the ads are in direct competition with a TON (over 300) lenses of mine that use the ebay module.
How can I click fraud an ebay item, Seth?
I’m not pissed off that Squidoo wants to monetize their lenses more effectively, far from it. In fact, I would love to split the revenue from those eBay and Shopzilla ads with Squidoo. I already do just that on many, many lenses. I would NOT like to split revenue on those ads with everyone on the site.
Why not? Because it is EASY to set those ads up to be directly attributable to the lens owner and not to the general ‘pool’.
Anything else is simply lazy. And laziness is the first sign of the end of the road.
The way that the system is currently set up takes a huge swipe at the most effective lensmasters on Squidoo (especially ones that make exceptional product review lenses, etc.) by taking revenue that can be attributed directly to them and distributing it to the entire site.
That’s not capitalism, that’s socialistic crap of the highest order.
The pathetic part is, Squidoo won’t make significantly more money because they will just be cannibalizing their own ebay sales most of the time. The only people it hurts are those that do a good job reviewing/promoting/talking about products that are sold on ebay, shopzilla ,etc (so, Everything).
Hurt the best lensmasters to reward the monkey-heads that can put 3 modules on a page, leave the defaults, and hit publish.
Way to go.
Squidtop Gets A Giant Facelift
Squidtop, the blogging platform built on Wordpress specifically for Squidoo users and their friends, received a major facelift this past weekend.
The entire interface was upgraded on the backend to use the wordpress 2.x style engine over the previous 1.x engine.
The front end has changed drastically with some major overhauls and feature updates that should make users really happy.
You can now ‘Squidtop Surf‘ and be taken to a random Squidtop blog straight from the homepage.
A larger selection of themes are available for users and you can use more customization than with the previous design to really make your blog your own.
Several of the plugins that allow Squidtop to be super useful for getting Squidoo News and posts found by people and search engines alike were re-written to run a bit faster and cleaner.
A new anti-spam suite was also installed that should help the permanent wave of spam that flows everywhere.
If you haven’t checked Squidtop out yet or if you’ve been thinking about starting a blog but were looking for a dead simple way to do it, check it out.
What other improvements do you think Squidtop could make?
Announcing the Lenses of the Week
Okay all, I received four submissions from people that wanted to advertise their lenses for free for a week. I was a little surprised that the interest was that low for a free competition, but hey, we are just getting started.
Contest Changes : After some thought, I’m not going to offer the spots in the profile for rent after all. The only way to get on the profile will be to submit your lens to Lens of the Week and win.
Since there were only 4 contestents this week, and I happen to have 4 open slots so everyone’s a winner this week!
Here’s a brief ‘technical’ review of each. I’m not going to comment on subject matter in these reviews because that is totally subjective. If you don’t like baseball cards you probably will never like baseball cards. However, if I can point out a few things that might make the lens read better or rank better then we’ve all learned something useful.
Lens 1 - Tour of St. George Utah - Submitted by Damon
Good:
Damon uses the new(ish) SquidZipper format which has been recently revamped and is looking quite slick. If you haven’t tried it out yet, do.
Tons of awesome pictures, good use of various picture sizes through out. This keeps the eyes ‘busy’ and you never feel ‘bored’ right off the bat. Alt text is also used in the HTML of all the images outside of polaroid modules, which is good.
There are very useful links spread through the content of the lens pointing to other lenses, official sites, etc. These natural ‘jumping off points can add some good value.
Ideas for improvement:
I kind of guessed that St. George was in Utah but outside of the Lens Title itself, you don’t see ‘Utah’ used in the copy anywhere until quite a ways down the lens. In a geographic lens, I’ve found including the state name reasonably often helps google ‘associate’ a zip or city with a particular state.
The Titles of some of the modules aren’t quite as descriptive as I personally like in some cases. For example, instead of ‘Hotels’ it could be ‘The Best Hotels in St. George, Utah’.
I think this lens could really use a google map module well that shows the town, gorge, and national park as destinations on it. I (being a farm boy from kansas who now lives in the south) have never been to utah and am not too familiar with the geography. I think a maps module could help a ton to show all these cool places that are being showcased.
Lens 2 - 60 Day Squidoo Challenge - Submitted by I.C. Jackson
Good:
This lens has a very cool concept behind it and it is presented very well as a whole. A lens a Day for 60 days and a support network behind it - excellent.
The ‘updates’ area is really nice as a ‘journal’ of your 60 day experience so far. It’s probably due for an update but I think it really helps to keep the reader engaged.
Liberal links to other lenses and sites that provide information and re-inforce your ideas is very good.
Ideas for Improvement:
I would move the ‘goal’ module (most important thing module) up closer to the top of the lens. It is well written and makes an impact. It should be near the top.
More descriptive module titles and a little bit better organization would really help me find my way around the lens. For example, having the Goal, then recent updates (cool use of CSS on those by the way), then the rules/regs, then the personal journal and guest books etc would make it easier to find what you wanted. In a lens with this many modules, a full table of contents module right at the top could help also.
How about a link plexo with all the participants (or people that have completed the challenge) that links to their bios?
Lens 3 - Resources for Enlightenment - by Alban
Good:
Good use of different modules to break the lens up a bit.
The individual modules are very well formatted with good use of bold text and smaller paragraphs.
There is a lot of information presented and a bunch of links to other resources including videos etc.
Ideas for improvement:
While packed full of information, there is so much information presented in one place that a casual visitor could be a little overwhelmed. Whenever the table of contents is an entire screen long, it becomes a little tough to find what you need.
It might be worth considering turning all of the information on specific people (eckard, Toll, Oprah, etc.) into their own lenses that are linked to from this lens (i.e. Oprah on enlightenment).
A few of the modules towards the end of the lens lose focus a bit. Why is there a module of e-book readers at the end of the lens?
Lens 4 - Legally Blind Golfer by Joan
Good:
Exceptionally cool and unique story. There are a ton of legally blind people out there and a lot of people don’t realize it.
Good Resources for both golfers and legally blind people. Links are also used pretty well in the content of the lens.
Modules are broken up into unique ideas and presented well.
ideas for improvement:
Remove the ‘google cache date’ and the Jelly Belly banner at the bottom of the lens. They aren’t really on-topic. The other ‘family’ lenses are a good touch but I’d move them down a bit. The twitter module isn’t just about golf and a little off topic so I’d probably think about dropping that as well.
Your tags are off to a pretty good start but could use some more general tags to get you more exposure. I’d probably throw in ones like ‘inspiration’ ‘hero’ ’sports’ ‘athlete’ etc.
Does he use any special equipment or clubs? He used to be a club professional, what kind of golfing equipmment does he use and why? You could add a bunch of subtle sales items in the lens that would improve the content even more.
Conclusion
Overall, I was incredibly impressed by the quality of this first weeks entrants. There really were no major shortfalls in any of the lenses and at times I had to stretch a bit to come up with ideas for improvement.
Make sure and leave a comment on this post with your lens if you want to be in the running for next week’s Lens of the Week!
Captain Squid’s Squidoo Lenses of the Week
For those of you that haven’t noticed it yet, Squidoo released their new ‘lensmaster profile’ pages yesterday and they look pretty sweet!.
If you check out mine, you’ll notice that you can add some websites about you on the left (including up to 3 of your personal sites), your favorited lenses are shown that you have marked as ’shared’, your fans, and your lens list in alphabetical order. The lens list can also be sorted by lensrank, which is a nice touch.
The lensmaster profiles on Squidoo also display the ‘Real’ name for you that you have on your account. Hrmm… not sure how a few people are going to feel about that, especially the more private types. Although you can easily go into your profile information and change your name.
I’m almost positive your tax info is stored separately so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting a 1099 for Maniac McGee at the end of the year or anything.
One interesting feature is the ‘Featured Lens’ area below the lensmaster bio. It works like a Featured Lens module and allows you to feature any of your lenses you would like (or anyone elses). The idea being that if the lens is at the top with a thumbnail then it is more likely to be clicked on.
I think this is pretty cool, but I have plenty of my lenses listed on my lensmaster page already. Combined with the fact that I am woefully behind on starring and giving angel love to well deserved lenses, I’ve decided to do something creative with my Squidoo Lensmaster Profile page.
What I’m Going to Do with My Profile
The Five Featured lens spots on my profile page are currently for rent as part of a lens review by yours truly. For $25 bucks a month right now (going up when there is a waitlist, of course 
) You can have your lens featured front and center on my profile page.
There are a few caveats to this deal:
I reserve the right to say no and give you your money back if the lens rubs me the wrong way. I don’t forsee this happening often but it’s got to be said.
If you like, I will also write a review of the lens on Captain Squid. I think this is a great way to see how different lenses are put together. In these reviews, I’ll provide thoughtful, constructive criticism with ideas for monetization and promotion. If for some reason you don’t want me to write your lens up, you have to tell me.(duh)
I’ve got some other little caveats, rules, and such over at ‘Your Lens Here‘. Check it out.
But for Today (or just while) Only:
If you leave a comment with 2 sentences or so about why your lens should be seen by 10,000 people a month or so (The link to my lensmaster profile ‘gets around’ as we say…) then I’ll throw it in the running for being a free featured lens for this next week (Aug 20 - 27 ).
3 lenses of my choosing will be chosen each week for as long as I want to run this little game. ( or as long as there are spaces available) No, you can’t whine if you don’t get picked one week, polish it up and re-submit it or submit something else.
On Tuesday I’ll post a reminder for the week and on Wednesday I’ll announce the winners and give a short review/critique of each.
Each lens is only going to be able to win once.
The one thing I’ll ask is that if you do win you wouldn’t mind letting me know what kind of traffic you get for the time your lens is up ( a little ‘testamonial’ if you will). Doesn’t have to be glowing, just has to be the truth.
Okay, I’m tired of writing rules, if I missed something, ask me in the comments. Otherwise, throw your lens in the ring for a little free promotion!