A very quick child lens about zebrawood which I added in a secondary account as it is light on content. It’s a child lens for … a child lens on hair forks. That’s under development – I’m waiting for DNS propogation on my main project so I had a short gap for Squidoo work. The hair fork lens is itself a child lens of the forthcoming chignon lens, which is in turn a child lens for 1920s style which I am trying to nudge into Tier 1.
I am not very active on Squidoo at present for a wide-variety of reasons, but I have tinkered with my 1920s style lens over the past few days and it has crept up into Tier 1. I always suspected this was a Tier 1 potential lens but this is the first time it has crossed the threashold. It’s still very marginal and could drop out again at any moment, but I’ve added more material and have started on another round of supporting lenses for it, and probably a hub as well.
For now I have added a video and a new section on chignon hairstyles which should help it rank on a few more terms. I’ll build out a chignon lens next week. In fact, I’ll probably build a few chignon lenses as I can see potential there.
For now, at least, my days of creating material about Ancient Egypt on Squidoo are over. Squidoo doesn’t suit that content. I could write popular lenses like someting on Cleopatra, but the SEO is just not attractive – far too competitive. What little I do write on Squidoo is likely to be 1920s and/or style. I might go back slightly and add some styles which were popular around 1900. I will probably also continue to add lenses about 1920s film stars, although that will be slow as they take so long as the return on investment is very poor. They will only get done when I am in a mood for serious writing but don’t have any other project underway. I think Mary Pickford is the next target as a lens about her would fit well with what I already have got; however, at an estimated 30 hours work, it’s not on the immediate horizon.
I’ll also try adding some 1920s music into the mix.
In other news, I have sold my Twilight lenses. I have reservations about how long I will remain on Squidoo and it seemed better to cash in some higher value lenses. I might sell others yet as well.
I’ve exported most of my main content lenses. Boring but important. I’ll try to catch the others over the next few days. I’m very, very angry with the stance on RocketMoms. Coincidentally, my author friends off Squidoo report they used to have content on Squidoo but have moved it away from Sqidoo and are getting substantially more income with fewer ads on the content. The RocketMom’s incident is the straw that has broken this camel’s back. It’s time to join them.
It’s definitely time for me to start building my content elsewhere, and moving content away from Squidoo. How soon I can do that depends on my other priorities. I’ll keep enough to maintain Giant status – I’ll write new lenses if I have to – but until/unless things change, I no longer wish to have much reliance on Squidoo. I’ll probably also sell some lenses.
I wasn’t really very impressed with life at Squidoo during my last weeks as an Angel and was getting fairly p’d off with the whole experience. Something of a break from Squidoo is needed.
I’ll keep freshening lenses and contributing in Squidu, but January 2010, and maybe February 2010, is going to be a quiet period for me on Squidoo.
I’m also getting closer to migrating some of my Ancient Egypt content off Squidoo. Squidoo feels increasingly wrong for quality content like that. I’ll keep some of it on there – it’s good for links – but any more Ancient Egypt material I create on Squidoo is likely to be at the populist end of the spectrum. I think it’s sad – but Squidoo just isn’t clearing out the spam and the ads are taking over.
I’ll still write content for Squidoo. It’s a great place for low grade content. It’s also good for trying new topics (ie for quality anchor topics), and for topics for which I’ll never set up a separate site.
It’s telling though that my Twilight New Moon Christmas lens is my best performer in terms of Amazon sales, but is only rated 3.5*. I suspect the way to go is a mix of a few lenses targeted at Tier 1 and a slew of mediocre lenses just aiming at commercial targets. Maybe they’ll go in a separate account.
I’ve just be given a Purple Star for Beautiful Gingerbread Houses. I’m still struggling to support Twlighlight Birthday Cakes and Parties though. Hopefully once Christmas is past, it might perk up a bit.
Generally my food and recipe lenses are doing quite well, although I think most of them are winter recipes and will fall off as we move into spring. After Christmas I think I am going to have to spend some serious time writing some new lenses and promoting them.
I bought another lens from Jessica because it fits in well with the existing lenses – Wilton Christmas Cake Pans. It’s pnly Tier 3 but the fits is very good as it links lenses like my Twilight New Moon Christmas lens and my cake lenses like my Disney Princess Birthday Cake lens and my Twilight Birthday Cakes lens.
Jessica writes some great food lenses. Mind you, having bought a few from here has helped me as I am starting to create my own food lenses, like my cake icing series which now has a group – which is what I have linked. Other people have some great fondant lenses so it makes more sense to feature them than to write new fondat lenses myself. The icing lenses of course go will with the Christmas Cake pan lens.
I’ve been considering more cake pan lenses anyway so picking on up made sense. I’m starting to have critical mass in cakes, alhough many of them are linked to the Christmas season.
Since the Worst Toilet Ever has proved a steady Tier 3 lens, I thought I should have another humour lens. I’d been feeding nonsense into search engines and tried wibble. Obviously I added Backadder as well and Blackadder wibble. The figures looked good so it made an obvious lens. I don’t think they combine as a mini series but they spread my tentacles. I’ll consider a Blackadder series but it’s well down the priority list.
It’s dropped my Twilight Birthday Cake lens!
I dropped another lens on the human karyotype into the genetics series. It adds little new, just helps the mass of the series. The Klinefelter Syndrome lens is on the brink of Tier 2, which would be nice as it’s a charity lens. A push may get it there – particularly as it picked up a blessing today as well.
Mostly though, today, we some tidy up on existing lenses and a new venture Beautiful Pictures of Purple Orchids. I haven’t got a clue how it will do but at present I am finding it hard to get any new lenses into decent positions on Google so I wanted to try something completely different. I think it should also rank well once it starts getting found on Squidoo. My nature portfolio is light so be good to venture into a few new areas.
After the abysmal failure of the Douglas Fairbanks lens to get any worthwhile rank and sat at zero visitors, lenses on other 1920s movie stars are being reconsidered – I may just do a master lens and leave it at that. I’ve just started a Star Wars lens though as I think I may have found a long-tail that could rank. I’m also contemplating another history lens in French – they are hard work so I’ll ponder that one.
Hopefully purple orchids will prove popular so I can add other colors!
I started work on a Douglas Fairbanks lens earlier in the week. It grew. And grew. Something that was intended as a support lens became a major lens – in terms of content. It spawned a child lens about his wife Mary Pickford in terms of the song by Katie Melua – Mary Pickford )Used to Eat Roses). A very unlikely named song. I like Katie Melua and love the song.
I’ve added a Hub about their home, Pickfair. I made a typo in the URL so it won’t rank well but I can’t be bothered to redo it. It should be enough to provide a link for my Douglas Fairbanks lens. I’ll probably do a Pickfair lens as well.