What to do on Squidoo Willow?

It’s been quite a weekend. One of the great things about Squidoo is, you can always count on community to step up when you need it and help you in achieving your goal. That is, if the goal is worth helping. But, they really stepped out this time! After creating Message of Love – Hearts 4 Haiti lens, in 36 hours this lens went from WIP (that’s like under 1 million in lansrank) to #128 and #3 in Volunteering! Wow!

We are grateful for all the blessings, visits, comments, lensrolling! But also for all of your efforts to spread the word even further! Many people tweeted about this lens, blogged about Hearts 4 Haiti, put it on their FB walls, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. You people are the best! And you make me proud to be a part community with such a big heart! Love!

Well, that is a question many young Squids are asking themselves. So, they have been told that blogging is a great way to get quality backlinks for your lenses. And it’s best to keep your blog narrow niche. Great advices! But wait?! What does it really means?

If you just started making lenses on Squidoo, it’s likely that you created 5 lenses in 4 niches! And it’s normal! Nothing to worry about! It took me over 20 lenses to find out what the heck is niche?! But what now? Make 4 blogs? Each for one niche? (Remember the tip you received: narrow niche blogs have better chance to succeed!?)

My advice: Don’t start working on blog for now. Wait. Make more lenses. When you come to 20 lenses, you’re more likely to see with which of your lenses Google and Yahoo fall in love with and send them traffic! Than, take a look at those lenses and decide to develop a niche from them. Link them together through featured lenses modules, link lists or lensroll. And start a blog. One. Or more. Time and Google will tell what you need to know. It’s up to you will you listen to them.

Cool title, right?

Well, we all, from time to time, stumble on someone named Dick, don’t we? (Just to be sure we’re on same track, Dick here is not a personal name but character function.)

I’ve had a house call on my top lens, How to reuse paper rolls, from someone who should be named Dick. Someone who stated, very lightly, that all of the tips provided in this lens are banal and that, as far as the author is concerned, maybe I could be excused for my bad English since I’m from Croatia. And yes, somehow I get the feeling, since I’m from Croatia, this Dick character thinks I’ve never heard of the recycle bins or paper recycling! Well, well, well… What can I say… Looks like he thinks Croatia is one of the counties from the Third World!? Cool, don’t you think?!

Now, don’t get this blog post wrong – I’m not mad and I’m not hurt either. It takes more than one Dick to hurt me. Specially since all of the comments on any of my lenses are manually approved so something like this will never get to see the light of the day.

Only thing I would say to this Dick (if I could contact him back) is: My dear Dick, I might improve my English with time but you, my dear, will always remain: ignorant Dick!

And thank you for visit!

It’s been a blast! During August WiWon team members created and added to team plexos 486 newly created lenses! Yay! You people are the best! And we’re holding 1st place! WooHoo!

During past month our tutors were really busy creating lesson lenses for our potential Giants and we ended August with 9 lessons inside a School of Wonders. So far we covered:
- using html for different Squidoo themes and templates
- writing a lens – basics and advance
- interaction with visitors through lens
- using different picture modules
I want to thank all of our tutors so far: MikeMoore, Alex aka drifter0658, Erica aka Sojourn, Carol aka Stazjia, Carrie aka inkserotica and Rachel aka MeltedRachel for all the time they spent making these lenses and for passing their knowledge to others for free!

It’s almost a 2 month since my last post here! Time is moving in rocket speed for me! Haven’t even notices this! Reason is pretty simple: Don’t have enough time! If I had polar days and no night, I would still have shortage of time! Well…

There are many things that happened in last 2 months…. New Giant Squid Challenge is on and WiWon team is back together. This time few of last session team mates agreed to take a coaching positions and make my job a little easier! Thank you for your loyality to me and WiWon team : Crystal, Veronica, Mike, Carol, Alex and Yvonne! Special thank you to my right hand, my 1st officer Katherine! We are having blast this 1st month of Challenge (at least those of us who are actively participating!)! We share our problems, our ideas, our ups and downs, our tips and tricks in our little community on Ning! That chatroom is really something special!

WiWon team has 48 potential Giants and 19 going for 100 Club. Until today, in 19 days, they created 316 lenses! WoW! We are going hard!

And how much fun this Challenge really is, you can see if you take a look at our School of Wonders – we have here 5 great lesson lenses (topics were: writing, html and interaction so far) along with, for now, 25 lenses created by team members – lenses inspired with what they learned so far in our School!

And, that’s not all! We award excellence! Our most active members – those who created largest number in a week (great lenses only), can win Wonder Squid Award! Two weekly winners have been announced already: ChapelHillFiddler aka Jane Peppler and Shannon aka Shajo! Congratulations ladies! You fully deserved this!

What else… My one year on Squidoo went by in a flash – July 17th 2009 came by quietly… Makes me wonder: Is it really one year that I have joined Squidoo? And I celebrated my anniversary appropriately: Went on vacation – 8 days without Squidoo! LOL Well, I owed it to my husband and our little girl! It was great – Adriatic sea, leisure and playing around most of the time. But as any other vacation, and this one ended too fast!

Well… Let’s see what next Squidoo year brings…

Giant Squid Challenge is almost over – 5 days left to both end of Challenge and June 30 deadline. Have to say, it was a crazy ride these last couple months but it was also blast and very educational! Being team leader for WiWon team has been very rewarding experience – both in getting to know better few really outstanding people but also as a way to even further push limits of lenscrafting. It made me think about some things I’ve done automatically but since I had to pass knowledge further, I had t stop and think why I do some thing the way they are done and how exactly I’ve learned what I know.

So, I love to throw surprises but this one was pretty great surprise meant for me: Thank you a_willow! It’s a privilege and an honor to work with so many talented lensmasters! And I’m happy to consider many of them my friends!

And PS. If you’re running for Giant or 100 Club (and made 50 or 100 outstanding lenses), you must send application mail to: giants@squidoo.com

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Many things happened in between – I’ve became SquidAngel, a Greeter and WiWon team leader… It has been crazy drive but also very rewarding!

I decided to take some time from my other duties on and off Squidoo to post here because I’ve crossed another important milestone on Squidoo: I’ve published my 100th lens!

As it’s 100th, I’ve thought to dedicate it to someone else, someone who inspires me so this is why this lens was created: Wonder Squids.

And now, off to make some more work done!

Like Fresh Squid group! When I first started it, I really didn’t know what I’m getting into! It was my second group (and first was created only couple days before this one) and it was created in a moment of inspiration as it sounded like a good idea! Well, it was.

Until today Fresh Squid group featured 295 new, fresh Squids. Most of them made really good lenses, some of them are here to stay. Because of those who decided to stay with us, continue building quality lenses, contribute and give back to our little community, all of work I put into this group is worthwhile. And they deserve special treat. I’m still working on that part (few new lenses will be published in future), but here is what I made so far to spotlight those that are outstanding by Squidoo members quality measures:
**Fresh Squid Contest Winners lens is about all the winners of Fresh Squid Contests. Here are all the lenses from all the contests since group was created. They were voted by all of you and they deserve to be spotlighted!
** Fresh Squids Swim to Become Giants! is a lens about Fresh Squids that became Giants (obviously ). There are only 3 of them so far but I’m sure that I’ll add to this lens a lot in a future since there are so many talented lensmasters who are a group members.
** Fresh Squids, LoTD Quality! was created as answer to question: Can a newbie lens became Lens of the Day? I don’t always agree with Megan’s selection of LoTD but with these picks, she really made a good selection!

So far, Fresh Squids have 4 graduation lenses for each month they joined Fresh Squid group: September 2008, October 2008, November 2008 and December 2008. I’m about to publish January 2009 graduation class lens as soon as I get some spare time.

Just before the end of this post, I would like to ask you once more to visit Fresh Squid Contest lens and vote for one of more lenses that you like. You know your visit, rating, comment and vote will mean a world of difference to them in their attempt to find their little spot in this wonderful Squidoo community!

If you take a look at a date on my previous post… Oh man!
So, question is: where to start?
So many things happened in mean time! And to tell you the truth, this very question has been keeping me from writing a new post! Now, I’ll start from what I made since last time I posted here and see where it will take me! And that’s easier to say than done! Man, I made 30 lenses since my last post!?!

OK. First set of new lenses is set around reusing stuff and using it for different craft projects for kids, parents and teachers:
Creative Resources for St.Patrick’s Day
Creative Valentine’s Day Resources
Creative Easter Resources
Simple Crafts: Make a Christmas Boot!

I also made a TWTTRSTRM lens where you can share your own tips about how to reuse different household items: What Do You Reuse?

Have to say, when we are talking about this niche, I was pretty surprised how many people choose to promote some of my lenses further through their blogs! And I have to thank them! So here they are: Stop the Ride! – Living a simple and frugal life in a world that isn’t., BananaCraft (Spanish?), recicloteca (another Spanish blog?), Squidoo Lens Review. Thanks guys!

Well, my last post here urged me to get my butt behind keyboard and make lens! So, I published my first lens since becoming Giant Squid: Christmas Music Box! And thanks to all of you who already came by and visited!

I was busy with Fresh Squids and making lens so I haven’t updated this blog… But it’s never to late to say THANKS, is it? So, THANK YOU KATINKA aka SPIRITUALITY for asking for interview and for publishing on your blog: thank you lensmaster – squidoo reviews!

I decided to make myself kind of schedule of my activities on Squidoo, so I’ll update Fresh Squid News blog 3 times per week, approve members to Fresh Squid group 3 times per week also, ‘fish’ Fresh Squids daily around SquidU, fan clubs, comment entries when reading other people lenses… This blog will be updated as I see fit, better said when I have something to write about… BTW, I’ll stop putting here daily stats and only put one at the end of the month so I know where I stand…. And I’ll try my best to make at least one lens per week!

Talking about what I should do…. I have to pronounce winners of first Fresh Squid Contest in 2 days and make another list… Have you voted for your favorite yet??? No??? What are you waiting for???