Kate Phiz

I’ve bought another 3 lenses from Jessica (and one special one – more on that later).  There are a couple of pumpkin lenses.  I’ve tweaked one and will try to do the other.  Nothing to set the world alight and bought party because I knew Jessica needed to sell.  The should just quietly sit in my portfolio and pay for themselves eventually.   They were cheap so no big deal.

I was really pleased though to pick up her 1920s style lens. It’s an absolutely wonderful lens even though it is sat in Tier 2.  I have plans for this.  I’ve already cross-linked with my Lord Carnarvon lens and I’m working on a lens with 1920s photos of the Valley of the Kings.  That’ll fit really well with the 1920s style lens.  I’ll probably flesh it out and make it into a mini series.  I’m sure there is at least one Tier 1 possibility in there – in fact I haven’t ruled out pushing the 1920s style lens into Tier 1.

Wow it’s been busy.

I worked right through the night yesterday to finish two lenses to support the Twilight lens so my Twilight series now looks like this:

Twilight Birthday Cakes etc

Twlight Temporary Tattoos etc

New Moon Christmas Cards etc

I’d prefer another couple – and have New Moon lens in WIP – but 3 is a lot better.  Google is being pathetic about reindexing to take advantage of my improvements to the Twilight birthday lens.  Hopefully in the next few days it’ll kick in.  Who knows how well the temporary tattoos lens will do. Generally temporary are popular but nobody searches for them in the context of Twilight, I may have to play around with the keywords a bit but mostly I’m hoping for traffic referred within Squidoo.  I’m hoping it could be a gap keyword watchers may have missed.

I’ve brought the Widor Toccata lens up to full production standard at last.  It’ll probably evolve somewhat but it is basically there.

The major problem though is that it has been ranking abysmally in Google.  I’d got the module headings wrong so I’ve changed that.  If Google doesn’t have a mood about that change, then that should help the rank.  To give both the Allegro and the Toccata a boost, I’ve created a Hub which features both of them.  I find Hubpages polcies somewhat stifling and it’s hard to write hubs to promote lenses, but that one has enough original content (a poll on which is the better piece) that it qualifies.

I prefer lenses in series so I needed some support lenses for the two I bought.  So I now have a loosly-related icing mini-series comprising:

How to Make Royal Icing

Black Cake Icing

Beautiful Gingerbread House

Twilight Birthday Cakes (for now)

National Gingerbread House Competition

The new lenses are not intended as Tier 1 lenses, but just as support for the two main lenses.  I’d hope Black Cake Icing might have ranked in Tier 2 but Google doesn’t like it for some reason, so I suspect it won’t.  It doesn’t matter  – their purpose is just to ensure the two main lenses stay in Tier 1.

When I bought the Twilight Birthday Cakes it was only just clinging to Tier 1.  It’s now up to #413.  I don’t think there are any Angel blessings in that, so it should be secure for the next couple of months.  Gingerbread Houses semed safer and with Angel blessings has made it to #81, my first lens in the top 100.  It won’t stay there.  It isn’t ranking that well in Google at present, the blessings will wear off, the traffic is light for Tier 1 and it’s seasonal.  In order to recoup the cost, I need to to cling there throughout January.  It may need some more promotion but no need to panic yet.

Now they are both secured until Christmas (I hope), the bigger project of making a Twilight series needs to get underway.  That’s more work.

I was looking round for lenses to support my new Twlight Birthday Cakes lens and discovered that there wasn’t an obvious lens on Squidoo about black cake icing.  I was in two minds whether to go for just black icing, but for readers I think black cake icing is more obvious, it’s also less competitive.  Hopefully I’ll rank on both!

So that’s my first ever food lens I have written from scratch and my first Squidboo lens.

Last night I also managed a major overhaul of the Clarence Clemons lens.  It’s low down in Tier 3 but merchandising well so I’m hoping a refresh and more material may perk the traffic up a bit!

I have just bought two Tier 1 lenses:

Gingerbread Houses

Twilight Birthday Cake

Whether I can earn back what I paid for them is now the big question!  I don’t have any food lenses so far so these are a strange addition to the portfolio, apart from the fact that I think there are advantages in having tentacles across Squidoo so that many lensmasters find me.  My first priority to make them mine of course, and add them to my lensography etc.

I’m knee deep this week in Widor and Tutankhamun but when I have cleared that backlog, I want to add some more gingerbread lenses.  I can see a mini series of gingerbread lenses.  That lens was the attraction for me.  I’m at a bit of a loss what to do with the Twilight Birthday Cake lens.  I’ll try to nurse it and see what I can do for it, but it’s a bit of an oddity for me.

I want to see how these lenses do over the next month as I have never bought lenses before, but if they hold up, I may consider buying some more food lenses so I get critical mass.

Update

I stayed up late and overhauled the Gingerbread House lens.  I also created a new lens on the National Gingerbread Competition by way of a backlink.  Not a great lens – just good enough.  I’ll try to add some more feeders.  It has to stay in Tier 1 if I am to recoup my investment!  I’m a bit more worried about the other lens.  We’ll see

Widor Allegro is sat at #3 on Google (my SquidTop post is sat at #2 but we’ll get that fixed soon).  Monthly search volume is a bit thin at 250pm so traffic is light, but I’m happy that it is a solid Tier 3 lens and I have hopes it will merchandise as the other Widor lenses have done – particularly if I can push it to #1.

So having tested the format works, I have published the lens on the Widor Toccata.  The core material is in place.  I need to work on the links and merchandising, but I’d rather publish and let Google get used to it.  The master of the mini-series on Charles Marie Widor himself was also published so that I can start embedding links.  That’s very rough at present, but writing series is hard if you don’t publish some of the key lenses early enough.

There’s an even rougher quiz on St Sulpice.  I’ll tidy it up a bit but it is never intended as a Tier lens so it’s not going to be great.  I’ll probably transfer it over to a second Squidoo account in the next day or so.  It’s intended as links and a bit of fun – actually the questions are OK and when it’s finished the content will be decent.  But I’m not going to bother making it look pretty.

Getting Toccata to the head of Google will be much more of a challenge than Allegro but I have plenty of ways to promote it lined up.   I intend to own Widor on Squidoo for a start, but once I have some more material written, I’ll drop a Widor hub onto hubpages but the lens about Widor himself needs to be finished first as it and the Toccata lenses are the front doors.  What level of granularity I choose for the other Widor material depends on how well these do.  I’ll probably add one more Widor lens, do some promotion, then leave for now.

I’ve got a lens on Bach’s Toccatta and Fugue sat in WIP that has all the content in it.  It just needs the layout, merchandising and links.  So another mini series on Toccatas by different composers will come along too.  I’ve someEver Project lenses planned as well.

In another milestone I have four lenses sat in Tier 1 at present KV62, Ruth Lorenzo, Sax Solos and Tutankhamun.  Yay!  My Tier 2 is looking somewhat bare though so I need to work on promoting some of the lenses that are at the top of Tier 3.  I obviously intend that Toccata will be a Tier 1 lens, or at least a Tier 2 lens.

I just need to do it but for now I am off to my personal blog to write a post about … Men

Kate

My Greatest Sax Solo lens has just been awarded a Purple Star.  Yippee!  To celebrate, I created a special Purple Star lensography.  It’s my favourite lensography – I think it looks really good!

It is done, and I’m very happy with it.  It’ll grow out with some extra links as I create linked lenses but essentially it’s a full production version.  Now onto the Widor Toccata which is a much higher volume – and more competitive subject.  I’m hoping the lenses so far will support it and hopefully lift it in Google.

The Widor 6th lens is on the front page of Google already, so I started a child lens (which will be fairly lengthy) just on the Allegro.  I hit publish by mistake so it isn’t finished yet but at 4am it’s beyond me for tonight as there are at least another 2 hours work, perhaps 3.  I started a Widor Toccata as well and a Cavaille-Coll lens.  Even more work.

I’ll post again when I have the Allegro lens finished.  I’d ignore it for now.  At least most of the many body is in so that Google can start indexing it.