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.
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:
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:
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