Either way,  the contest has given me some great new ideas for templates etc for future lensbuilding, as most of the contest lenses from me were built in a single afternoon using a relatively simple template.

Multiply by a few hundred and we’ll be in business .

It is an excellent example of how a few ticks of traffic to your lens don’t necessarily mean you will instantly climb to the top of the lensrank ladder. If your visitors arent engaging with your lens, your rank can quickly return on it’s previous path of decay.

This topic is worth further discussion and I’ll dig through some of my stats to see if I can provide some other examples that help make mac33’s point and expand it into some other potential factors of the lensrank algorithm.

Great Post mac!

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

The easiest way I can figure to build a lens like this with multiple lens authors and only a single lensmaster logging into the account is by using plexos.

Each other creates a plexo with the information they are responsible for on an existing lens or on a new ‘throwaway’ type lens.

From there the lensmaster that actually owns the account for the group lens can add each plexo to the lens.

By doing this, the ‘author’ of each individual plexo has control over their content and can change it whenever they need to but only one person has access to the Squidoo account.

Thoughts? This is a bit of a work in progress but I like the possibilities…

I’ve stayed away from this for the most part, mainly because it’s something of a hassle to remember which lenses are in which accounts and I like seeing as much of a comprehensive overview of my Squidoo activities as possible.

However, there are times when I want to be logged into two accounts at once and I’ve figured out a nice little trick for it.

When you are logged into Squidoo, the system and your browser are talking to each other through a ‘cookie’. This is why if you open a second tab in Firefox you will still be logged into Squidoo under the same account. Likewise, if you log off in one tab you will bee logged off in all tabs.

The solution to this is to open a second browser of a different type such as Google’s new Chrome browser or Flock or Opera (I can’t ever get anything to work in IE so I’m leaving it out).

My personal choice is Google chrome because it’s really lightweight and your computer won’t bog down running it alongside firefox.

By using two browsers, you can be logged in to one account in each browser.

Chrome also has an ‘incognito’ mode that may allow you to be logged into even more accounts at once but I haven’t needed to be on more than two at once so I haven’t tested it out.

Does anyone else have any ideas for managing multiple squidoo accounts at the same time?

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!

While frustrating, it’s certainly not the first time I’ve had a few days like that and it wont be the last. It did get me to thinking on the varying ‘barriers’ to Squidoo Lensmasters and what causes them.

So, in increasing order and thanks to the ‘The Dip‘ , here are the Dips that I’ve seen happen in Squidoo.

Dip 1 : 0-2 lenses – Getting Started (Just Build One!)

Considering how easy it is to do nothing, it can be considered almost a herculean effort to start a new lens. Sure it’s not hard and maybe even a little fun. Sure, your first lens may stink (mine did). When I look at the 10 or so people that have been referred to Squidoo from me, I think 2 people have made a lens, and each has only one at that.

If you view Squidoo as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your other sites, you are not going to move past this Dip.

Note: Do you use other social sites as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your lenses? The same principle applies…

Dip 2 : 30-75 lenses (The Aversion to Scale / Quality Check)

Once you figure out how to make a few lenses you really start getting rolling, pushing out lenses. It seems like you have enough ideas for an infinite amount of lenses. Giant Squid? No Problem! I’ll be there by the end of the week. Of course, now is where quality comes into play. If you are unable to provide even a basic level of quality content on your lenses, you will have a nice dashboard full of a lot of lenses with zero traffic.

Conversely, this is the number of lenses that some of the highest quality lensmasters on Squidoo have. They produce insanely good content, beautifully formatted lenses, epic squidbooks and more. For them, this may be their sweet spot. These lensmasters may only make 2 lenses a month, but if both of those lenses are going to consistently rank on the top of the pile, that may be worth it.

Oh yea, and a lot of that second group (and most of the Lensmasters beyond this Dip) put in an insane amount of work to help other lensmasters. Why? Because they enjoy helping people.. *gasp*.

The big reason this is a dip is two-fold:

1. If your lenses are junk, you have to learn to make them better before you can really move to the next level.
2. Learning how to scale Squidoo is hard. Very hard. Changing your mindset from building a lens a week to one a day is too much for some people. Going from one a day to 4 a day? Ouch. It Stings and it’s a Dip to overcome.

Dip 3 : 200 – ??? Squidoo Lenses (The Technical Dip)

Is this a Dip? I’m not sure. I think there is one right around here though and I think there are a lot of lensmasters pushing against it right now. When I started Squidoo a Year Ago the very tippy top lensmasters in terms of lenses that I knew had between 300-600 lenses (JeffyV and Glen and Relache and some of you other old timers, please correct me if I’m off). Now, it doesn’t seem like there are ANY lensmasters with several thousand lenses (well, maybe there’s a spam account running around somewhere, but I doubt it).

It’s certainly not for lack of trying by lensmasters to build more lenses, and Squidoo HQ definitely wants their best lensmasters to make more lenses (duh) so what’s the problem? Why is it increasingly difficult to scale squidoo lenses at higher volumes?

Going from lens 1 – 10 was challenging. Going from lens 10-100 took marginally more time but was less technically challenging as you pretty much know the ropes. Going from lens 100-1,000 has been all but insurmountable for virtually all the Lensmasters so far…

I’ve heard some rumors that a new dashboard may be in the works, that would help. I think part of the problem is the infrastructure squidoo has started with (Although HQ has really been pushing to stay way ahead of 99.9% of their users which I soundly applaud). You have to take a whole new look at usability when you have folks that need to look at 1,000 lenses and know which ones are making money, getting traffic, ranking well, have new traffic sources, or broken links and videos when compared to someone who has 5.

The time spent actually building lenses instead of loading dashboards and workshops, copy / pasting, and other tedious time sinks will have to increase in some way.(It takes approximately 30-90 seconds to load a dashboard with 400 lenses over a cable internet connection, and longer to go to a lens workshop)

Why can’t HQ instantly let people copy modules to other lenses, edit multiple lenses at once, or give them more powerful analytical tools? Because creating tools that power users (i.e. trusted users) find useful but potentially malicious users can’t find ways to exploit is a tough cookie.

I’m not sure how to climb out of this Dip, but when I figure it out it’s going to be awesome..

By the way, if you haven’t read Seth’s book: The Dip you are probably a bit confused about what a ‘Dip’ is. Buy it. Read it.

I can also sort by lensrank….

Why this is cool

Can’t remember what the lens name was or was it tagged really poorly? Search for the lensmaster.

Want to see how many lenses someone has in the top 1000?

Want to do a ‘Glory Check’ and see how many lenses you are in? Now instead of ‘Googling’ yourself you can ‘Squidoo’ your user name!

What other cool things can you think of to use this for?

Courtesy of WayBackMachine

If you click through, you can browse around the squidoo of early ‘06 a bit. Sometimes it’s good to look back on where things were in order to see how far you have come. More lenses have been built in the last 2 weeks than Squidoo had built in all of their first year. (granted, they were in Beta for pretty much all of it) . Looking back at the site, virtually all of the changes are for the better.

One constant about squidoo is change, which is a good thing. Do you have some lenses that just wallow on the bottom of your dashboard and don’t get any traffic? I know I have my fair share. As much as it pains you, crack those back open (even if it’s just one a day) and take a look. I bet you will be surprised at how much better you have gotten at making lenses since you made those old, dusty lenses. A few quick tweaks and you could easily be back on your way.

Another thing that changed? Looking at the Squidoo Top 100 lenses from Jan 2007, there were definitely some familiar names on the list. There were also a lot of people that kind of vanished into Squid History without a peep. The Lensmasters that are still here are doing pretty well for themselves and getting better every day..

Are you still going to be on Squidoo in Jan 2008? or will you be Squid History?

Here’s my top five in no particular order:

• Sell My Lens – This site is a fee free auction marketplace to buy and sell Squidoo Lenses and URLs. With the recent Giant Squid activity usage has been a little low, but I expect it to pick up as Squidoo grows.
• Lensroll – N376 (Glen) has created an excellent Digg-type website to help promote Squidoo Lenses. Submit only your best lenses here and you’ll see a bit of a traffic boost from other users looking for great lenses.
• Squidoo Utils - This is a very cool advanced Dashboard created by Fluffanutta. You can track all of your lenses Page Rank, mass bookmark, Add your lenses to your favorites quickly, and get RSS feeds for your lenses or of your lenses.
• Squidoo Cool - This is a Blog run by Lewis Smile, another prolific lensmaster. He offers some good tips on different Squidoo aspects. His focus is on Social Bookmarking and Lens Promotion, two important areas. Lewis also builds custom lenses at Build My Lens.
• Dashboard Extender - This is a firefox plugin for Squidoo that allows your dashboard to show total visitors, average visitors per lens, earnings history, ratings history, and more. A very useful plugin for tracking your Squidoo Empire. Written by Magicality.

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for more great tips.

- The Captain