Definitely worth a read. I had forgotten I’d written so much for that interview, probably should have kept my mouth shut about a few things in there but oh well .

It’s definitely worth a read. I thought it was interesting that there was a definite split between some who viewed the question as mechanical, i.e. what steps do you take in the workshop vs. theoretical or what thought processes your brain goes through before deciding to build a lens.

My answers leaned more towards the mechanical because by the time I get to actually creating a lens I usually try to have a plan in place for not only what that lens will be about but what the next ten lenses will be about as well.

It does show that it is possible to be successful with your lensbuilding through the use of a variety of strategies.

In fact, what causes one lensmaster to be successful is almost never what causes other lensmasters to be successful (except for the basic steps everyone should be doing).

Combining multiple tools in one place is something the Captain is a big fan of, and I must admit, Fluff has done an admirable job doing just that.

Now, when you click ‘edit‘ on any one of your lenses from the ‘Advanced Lensmaster Dashboard‘ you are taken to a screen that has your lens framed in and a menu of great options on the left hand side:

Full Lens Info: This will return pre-formatted HTML code for your lens as well as BBC code for use in forum signatures. Your lens name, category, update time, URL, and description are all posted, allowing you to see how your lens is displayed at a glance.

Lens Maintenance: You can now edit, Publish, and view your lens from one place without losing the Squid Utils navigation.

Lens Statistics: Check up on your traffic, royalties, and other stats for each lens from here.

Lens Promotion: This is super useful, allowing you to do many things to promote your lens very quickly. This includes the Add This bookmarking tool, Lensroll.com submission, Isle of Squid Squidoo Link Directory Submission, as well as a Ping feature to notify all the major crawlers that you’ve got new content.

Search Engines: With a few quick clicks, you can double check to see that your lens is indexed in the major search engines. Extremely useful!

If you haven’t stopped by Squid Utils to check out the new management tools, you probably should. There is maximum piratey goodness for minimum price (currently free).

-The Captain

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