Little Earners

As I didn't achieve Giant Squid status in March I'm now working on getting there at the end of June instead. This means more work with promotion and editing to get the worst lenses I have up to scratch. I've also got myself a Squid Mentor

I'm thinking seriously of writing down a promotion plan. A step by step guide that I can follow to ensure that I don't miss out anything. For example, when I publish a new lens I already have a number of directories that I submit it to right off the bat. However once I've completed that, I seem to not bother doing much else for some time after. You can imagine what that does for the lens ranking and traffic.

So, I need to create a list of all the best sites to submit to and the best things I could be doing to help promote my lenses.

This way, I can be sure that I have done everything in my power to drive traffic to my newest and oldest lenses.

I've also got a new blog at Squidosphere. It's called Giant Squid Invasion and it will document everything that I do and will be doing to achieve Giant Squid status. What will happen to the blog after I've managed to achieve that I don't yet know, but I'm sure I won't be deleting it

You can check it out here: Giant Squid Invasion

Please be aware that there is nothing there at this time. I shall be publishing my first post later on today.

Whilst doing some work on my lenses yesterday, I discovered that someone had added a load of links to photography lenses on one of my link plexos. As this particular link plexo was requesting links to prove my case (it was a debate lens) I was quite annoyed that these links had been placed there.

I have to admit to feeling annoyed when people don't read the instructions or criteria for adding links or applying for submissions to groups etc. and this really was in excess. All these links had come from one squidoo lensmaster and turned out to be a good many of his own lenses. What made this worse to me was this lensmaster was also a Giant Squid.

Not one of those links left contributed anything to the debate of the lens so I removed them all. I've now altered the submissions on that lens and all links have to be approved my me.

I have the same problem in my Squidoo groups and topsite that hardly anyone reads the instructions or admission criteria and I'm left wondering if it's ever worth providing these services at all!

You would think that not being able to post in this blog for so long would give me a chance to think about how I would set about increasing the traffic to my poorest lenses.

Well, no, it hasn't. I'm still at a loss as to what to do about them. I wouldn't mind so much if they had a trickle but at least 5 or 6 of them out of 52 have zero traffic.

It's frustrating. It's no longer disheartening because I'm sure there is a way to help them but I just haven't figured it out yet. I've been on the internet (working on my websites, promoting them etc.) now for almost 9 years. I know that I can work this out.

Thanks to Fluffanutta, I came across another site to use for promotion. Here is my site: My Life Online (I may change this title at some point.)

At this point I don't know how useful it is for promotion etc. but I'm willing to let it sit there You can add your networks to the configuration and it will publish your updates and posts from these without any interaction from you.

Why not give it a go?

...for this blog being absent for so long I really thought I'd lost the blog completely.

Anyway, it's back now so I can continue to promote my lesser known Squidoo Lenses with no other interruptions.

I have noticed, however, that I've lost a few subscribers Soooo annoying!

I'm working through methodically updating all my lenses that have not been updated for well over a month. It's surprising at how quickly they become out of date. I know I'm going to struggle with some of the lenses as I seem to be running out of material to add. I'm going to have to, again, think outside of the box.

I'm really pleased at how some of my top lenses are attracting good traffic. Even those I didn't think would, seem to have a new lease of life. If only I could come up with ideas like that all the time and think of ideas that could turn the worst lenses around.

As the traffic is so poor to the bottom lenses, the search terms are also non existent so I don't even have those to help me with ideas. It's a kind of catch 22.

Please feel free to check out my worst lenses and if you have any ideas, please do comment on this blog

Here's my Squidoo Profile: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/inkserotica