Squidoo News

Archive for September, 2009

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Yes, unfortunately it’s true that the example pages made for Brands in Public are being taken down. And yes it’s true that the lensmasters who participated are being rewarded with a bonus for their time.  But I’m not here to grieve the loss of a few hours of my time.  I’m here to celebrate what I learned while making those wonderful example pages.

In a nutshell:  People LOVE to participate. And yes Seth has been telling us this for years, “make something that people want to come back to” but it took Brands in Public to show me the best way to do that.

Here’s what I Learned

In addition to writing my original content I need to:

1.  Add lots of places for the public to have their say.  Add polls for them to answer.  Add guest books with thought provoking questions where people can share their stories.  Give the public a podium to shout from by adding a duel module or two where they can debate each other.

2.  One or two Amazon.com spotlight modules is all you need if you choose really GREAT products to promote.

3.  Find a couple of fantastic blogs on your subject and follow them with an rss feed module so people can see what others are saying about the topic.

4.  Let the public SEE the Twitter responses being Tweeted in real time with a few Twitter Follow modules.

5.  Add lots of great links on my subject to help people find even more information.

And YES, I already do some of these things on most of my lenses but what I learned in my short time making BIP pages is that I need to add ALL of these wonderful features to ALL of my lenses!

I’m off now to start making my lenses even better!  Won’t you join me?

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I was reading a blog post today by our own “not-a-giant-but would-be-if-she-had-enough-lenses” Sonia_Simone that will be very helpful for lensmasters who are uncomfortable marketing and find selling things on their lenses hard.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Because I was so grossed out by the marketing advice I was finding, I realized I was going to have to totally reframe this thing for myself or I’d never actually do it.

(I’m extremely bad at doing anything I don’t want to do. That’s both a good and a bad thing, but anyway, it’s how I’m wired.)

So I read every book and blog I could find. Then I went back and re-read the ones I thought were any good.

I bought courses with money I didn’t have. I went to hear talks from experts, and then I read some more.

And I tried stuff.”

You can read the rest of this Remarkable Communication post, find out what Sonia Simone learned and sign up for the rest of the (no cost) lessons at the following:

What Makes Marketing Hard?

Highly Recommended!

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The following is a listing of all the Purpleishiciousness that was spread during the week ending September 25, 2009.

The lenses appear in no particular order.  Please visit them all to congratulate their creators.

• Do your Haunting in a Halloween Apron
• Fall Fungi – A Witches Brew
• Crazy Quilts with a Difference
• Raccoons in the Corn
• A Trip to Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
• This Halloween: You’re invited to the Party
• Kevin Skinner NEXT: America’s got Talent Live
• How to Deal with a Cyber Bully
• The Best Fall Foliage Spots in the United States
• How to Start a Publishing Company
• The Time Travelers Wife: A Book Review
• The Five Dollar Vacation
• Recipes and Cooking with Lavender
• Ronald McDonald House: Collect Pop Tabs for a Cause
• Halloween T’s and Treat Bags
• Tutankhamun’s Tomb KV62 and Treasures
• Simon Baker: Actor
• Conservative Pagans: We Exist
• Tattooing and Body Piercing Dangers
• Soda Pop Experiments

Learn all about Purple Stars and how YOU can get one at: The Purple Star Program

http://www.squidoo.com/purplestar

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Giant Squid Lensmaster CleanerLife shares who he credits most for helping him on his journey to Giant Squidness.

“It Is very hard to single out ONE Lensmaster.

I could probably list a couple of hundred Squidoo members who have helped, with the awesome tips they post on their Lenses and blogs, comments/ ratings on myown Lenses and blogs, and most recently, the support of the WiWon team, but Loyalis stands out as the person who really started me on the road to becoming a Giant Squid.

The best thing that I could have done was to hang out in the Squidoo Chat Room, talk to Joe (Loyalis, aka Captain Squid), read his post “Captain Squid Squidoo Interview with Gadget Guy and the Guru” then listened to the interview.

It gave me the first glimpse of the power of Squidoo, and it seemed that the next step for me was to become a Giant. I’ve been working towards that ever since, even if it took longer than I originally thought. The sense of accomplishment is just so much sweeter having waited so long, and I can honestly say that my Lenses are more worthy of having the Giant badge on them now than they were the first time I applied, and continual encouragement, and tips from Loyalis have played a big part in that.”

Don’t Miss these GREAT lenses by CleanerLife!

Quick & Easy Iced Coffee Recipe
Best of Primal Foods on Twitter
Lawn And Garden Plants Transplanting: A Personal Adventure In Plant Relocation

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The Journal of the Traveling Squid project consists of a Journal and a Giant Squid T-shirt. As each Squidoo lensmaster receives the forwarded package containing the journal and shirt, they make their contribution to the journal with a journal entry. And, they sign the shirt with their lensmaster name, location and date.

JaguarJulie’s famous Traveling Squid Journal and T-shirt have been on the road for 6 months now and have visited lensmasters far and wide.

In recognition of the journey thus far, lensmaster and unofficial Squidoo poet laureate Gordon Hamilton has written a wonderful poem, here’s a little piece of it:

Jaguar Julie’s traveling Squid, across the ocean went,
To start his world tour in style, to Scotland he was sent;
Auld Reekie’s winds blow cold and fierce, Squid shivered like a lamb,
So Gordon took him to the pub and warmed him with a dram.

The next stop for the traveling Squid was foggy London town,
Where AJ was the lady, who would show him around;
She showed him all the city sights, he saw the London Eye,
Then all too soon she packed him up and waved to him good-bye.

So far and wide the Squid did roam, the green and fertile land,
The people they were many, who deemed to lend a hand;
The Squid he took in Nottingham and Sherwood Forest, too,
He took in many places, each one fresh and new.

You’ll find the rest of the poem and learn more about the awesome  Traveling Squid project and learn how you can be a part of it at the lens: The Journal of the Traveling Squid

Don’t miss this!

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Today we launched a new project, Brands in Public.

Seth’s blog has a complete overview of what Brands in Public is all about.

From a Squidoo community perspective, it’s a satellite gig powered by Squidoo, sold by the smart people at BzzAgent, and created for your everyday consumer on the web who is looking for one easy spot to follow the latest conversations about her favorite brand.

It’s something different from our usual ‘front door to Squidoo’ projects like SquidWho and SquidBoo and SquidLit. If you were to think of Squidoo as a U2 album, our front door projects are each cool tracks on the same album. Whereas Brands in Public is more like what happens when Bono goes off and sings with Bob Geldof for a special event.

For lensmasters, a few things you might like to know about it are:

• It’s run on the Squidoo platform.
• We built it because we think it’s filling an important spot on the web and creating a simple social opportunity for brands.
• I invited a few dozen early Giant Squids to help build out the first Brands in Public (BIPs) and if those sell, we’re paying them a bounty.
• No, it’s not wide open for anyone to come and build a BIP, for free, like Squidoo is.
• Yes, they cost $400/month and BzzAgent is selling them to brand managers across the globe.
• Yes, you should tell your favorite brands about it.
• We’re offering free BIPs to chosen charities. If your non-profit organization is interested, please fill out this form.
• Lensmasters can (and should!) keep making regular lenses all about their favorite brands and products and services and debates; you don’t need a BIP page to do that. Not by a long shot.
• It’s very cool that when you Google “Molson” now, their BIP shows on the first page. (They’re one of our beta brands).
• Yes, Squidoo and our community is our main focus, always was and always is.

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Last week we processed lensmaster payouts and included for the first time a partial month’s worth of additional payout from the InfoLinks text link ads, for those lenses that were opted in for it.

Unfortunately, in creating the new InfoLinks ad pool to share with opted-in lensmasters, we ran in to some complex bugs. As a result we wound up overpaying some lensmasters, whilst underpaying others who were owed a cut of the InfoLinks pie.

If you were one of the underpaid, we will make good on it in your favor in next month’s payout. (Which we’ll be processing earlier than usual, so you don’t have to wait).

If you were one of the overpaid, we aren’t asking you to send it back! We will just adjust your next month’s earnings.

We’re sorry again for the confusion this caused last week, and look forward to getting back on track with the trend of bigger and bigger payouts — especially as we race in to the holiday season, historically high for lensmaster royalties!

Thanks guys.

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