My 1st Squid Birthday

On the 30th of January I celebrated my one year birthday on Squidoo.com I came to Squidoo from the Cafepress forums. Originally I was after some free backlinks for my cafepress stores. I created my first Squidoo lens about my Hotrod and Muscle Car cafepress store. My next month I created another 23 lenses, and had found out about the Giants program. I figured having 50 lenses was better than having 23, so I kept busy making other lenses! I haven't looked back since! On my one year birthday, I had 351 lenses sitting in my account! I have covered topics that I am interested in, like recipes, since I have spent most of my life as a cook, Martial Arts, Muscle Cars, Coin Collecting, and other various topics along the way!
So what did I do on my one year birthday? I bought a domain name and set up a website! I want to introduce to you... SquidBuilders.com

Community of Squidoo

One of my favorite things that I love about Squidoo is the wonderful community. Squidoo has created a very synergistic community of people who are constantly working to improve their own work, and improve Squidoo. This is hard to find on the internet. It is so much easier to find negative sites and groups.

By creating a strong community, it can only make Squidoo as a site, and a phenomenon better. And that, in turn, will make all of our quality lenses grow and increase in traffic. Which, of course, earns us and our charities more money.

By participating in just one small way, each person really contributes to a greater whole. That is really what the power of networking is all about.

What Are the ESSENTIAL things we must have when our baby is born?

We are expecting a baby! We are starting to get ready for the birth of our first baby in about four months time. Soon, we are going to start buying things. We would like your help in creating our shopping list. Can you help us to identify the top 10 items we absolutely, positively MUST have when our baby is born?

I am not talking about the nice-to-haves. I am talking about the must haves. What must we absolutely have when we bring our baby home from the hospital on the very first day?

Don't leave your comments here on the blog. I have created a lens where I have started to chronical the baby products we are buying now, for example pre-natal vitamins and baby books. At the top of the lens you will find a list voting module. Please add your suggestions there. Most importantly, PLEASE VOTE! That way the most important items will go to the top of the list.

Write about your passion

It seems that there are a lot of lenses on Squidoo focusing on SEO and selling this and that, I even have some of those selling types, but the lenses I enjoy making are those that focus on what I love. If you look through my lensography, you won't have to wonder about what I find intriguing, Castles and Astronomy! Do I make anything from them, not much. At least not enough to brag about, but those are the ones that get the most attention from me, and they are slowly becoming more and more popular. Now, if you Squidoo for money only, and do not care to "waste time" on something that you are really passionate about (other than money), then I can understand all the money makers, and I wish I had the discipline to create a few more myself so I could make some extra dough, but I don't feel the passion for my lenses that are built around products. I guess I'm talking to those of you who feel like me, and I think it's okay. I'm not going to lie, I'm doing Squidoo for some extra cash, and would like a lot of extra cash. I understand the importance of keywords and such, but if I don't like the way the Big Blue Title looks, then I wont use it, and keywords be darned! Will I ever make much from my favorite lenses, probably not, but they are still my beautiful, interesting babies, and I love them.

Make your Squidoo Lens more SEO friendly

Hello readers! My name is Thomas, I am a Giant Squid and a Top 100 Giant Squid! I also help mentor folks who are new to Squidoo, so I figure it is fitting to apply my first blog post here to helping you make better Squidoo Lenses!
All to often I see people who don't make full use out of their module titles and the subtitles. I like to call these title spaces "Valuable Keyword Real Estate" Let me explain!
If you view your source code for your Squidoo lens you will notice that the module titles utilize an "H2" tag and the subtitles utilize an "H3" tag. What are H2 and H3 tags? Let me explain!
These tags tell the browser to make the text in the title and subtitle to appear larger than the text in the module itself. But more importantly, it tells google and other search engines that the text in these areas are more important. Google will give more weight to the words you use, so it is best to repeat your main keyphrase often in your module titles. Don't ignore your subtitles either. Think of good keywords to put in your subtitles.
Here is an example from my own collection of Squidoo Lenses that I would like for you to look at!
Blueberry Pie Recipe
Please notice that I have filled in every module title and sub title and have repeated my key phrase "Blueberry Pie Recipe" in almost every title and sub title. Doing this will surely give me good ranking for that keyphrase within the various search engines!
So take a few moments(or days in my case) to go back through your lenses and apply this tip to your lenses and watch traffic increase!
That is all for lesson number 1!
Thanks for reading!
Thomas

How to Blog - Block One.

The kid on the block formerly known as "new" is, well - "newer" than ever.

The Blog - don't go into cyberspace without it!

Ideal scenario #1: you find a focused niche (your expertise) to write about on a fairly regular basis, 3-5 times a week. You utilize various techniques (more about this later) to promote your blog and build your subscriber list. Within 12-18 months, you have a solid readership of, let's say 1,ooo followers, and your posts attract a few hundred visitors per day. And, you're growing...

Corporations take notice and approach you for valuable ad space on your pages. You're in business - maybe "big bidness". Maybe - you make a living with blogging! How cool is that!

Ideal scenario #2: Double the numbers above.

These are realistic scenarios. More people than ever make good money from blogging. More corporations than ever wake up to the power of social media, viral videos, blogging, etc.

This blog post quotes the Technorati 2008 State of the Blogosphere report:

"Bloggers create 900,000 blog posts a day worldwide, and some of them are actually making money. Blogs with 100,000 or more unique visitors a month earn an average of $75,000 annually—though that figure is skewed by the small percentage of blogs that make more than $200,000 a year..."

Guess what? Yesterday I read a post from an Austrian blogger about the fact that "social media interaction", as we know it in America, is still a brand new concept in his part of the "old country". Wow! What if we honed our skills and then offered our services to European clients? I wonder what our resident Netherlands connection, Katinka (spirituality), has to say about this...

O.k., let's leave our dream land of online riches and focus on "the path". I've discovered tremendous resources for better blogging on, well, other people's blogs. The pros are generous.

Here's my first batch of must-read sites. I feature some choice posts on our topic, but there is much more to be found in their blogs' archives.

7 Common Mistakes When Starting a Blog

The Winnie the Pooh Guide to Blogging

What Makes A Blog Post Anyhow?

21 Ways to Write Posts that Are Guaranteed to Grow Your Blog

How I Made $220.64 from One Short Blog Post

The tip of the proverbial iceberg - but many hours of free and invaluable education for you.

3, 2, 1, - Go!

(...to be continued)

Cafe Press and Squidoo

I am by no means an expert at Cafe Press but I jumped in last year and I have learned a few things along the way. So much of what we learn about developing lenses on Squidoo also applies to Cafe Press.

Narrow the focus. I have designs in lots of categories but I found one niche that is a consistent good seller for me.

Isn’t that what we learn on Squidoo, to find your niche? Now that I have found my niche on Cafe Press I am expanding it and covering it every way I can think of. I have lots of new ideas for this. I just need more hours in the day!

Another Squidoo principle is to keep it fresh. Add new things and make edits and updates. The same applies to Cafe Press. Add new designs and if there are products that you've not yet included then add them.

When writing descriptions of your items on Cafe Press you need to use good keywords. Does that sound familiar? You need good tags on your images too.

What I like best is how you can integrate your Cafe Press store with Squidoo. I have several lenses where I can advertise and sell my Cafe Press items.

To recap:

Narrow the focus
Find your niche
Cover the niche
Keep it fresh
Use good keywords and tags

Good success principles for Cafe Press and Squidoo!

A nod to my mentor who has been a tremendous help in both of these endeavors.

How to Explain Squidoo

"So, what are you working on today?"

"Squidoo."

"SquidWHAT?"

"Squidoo. It's creative...um...sort of like building a website, except it's just one page."

"Oh, so you're designing websites? Cool! I hear web designers make good money."

And so it goes.

Explaining Squidoo sometimes makes me weak-kneed and speechless. It's like trying to drink Jello through a straw--possible, but not without a lot of time and effort.

Kind of reminds me of an experience I had in Germany when I tried to ask for directions to the zoo. We were living there at the time, and had just arrived in-country two weeks prior, when we decided to take our kids on a big outing. The zoo's name was the Wilhelma Zoo and Botanical Gardens, but of course I didn't realize that before our first visit. After our fourth loop around the city, I spotted a bus driver standing by his empty tour bus. Probably waiting for everyone to return from a lunch stop, I figured. All I knew is that I couldn't communicate and this poor man tried his best to understand what I meant by "zoo".

I resorted to setting aside my pride and acting like a stupid tourist. I pantomined an elephant walk. I know, I know. It wasn't the brightest thing I'd ever done, but all I could see were my kids' disappointed faces pressed against the car window. So finally, the guy points to a sign bearing the silhouette of an elephant. Seems we were parked directly across the street from the zoo, on the opposite site of the main entrance, but all we'd seen was a big wall that circled the grounds.

Until Squidoo visitors stay and try their hand at Squidoo, all they may see on their first trip there is a big wall, too. That's where good, practical lenses of Squidoo Tips come in handy. If we receive the infamous Blank Stare at the mention of Squidoo, just direct 'em to one of the excellent technical lenses there.

Or, we can share examples of our own best lenses and let them speak for themselves.

How to resolve a quarrel online

I got into a twitter argument with a fellow giant squid yesterday (no, I'm not going to name names, if you insist on knowing, I suggest you search twitter). I ended up saying sorry through e-mail AND twitter (publicly). I don't know whether I handled it well, but at least I tried (right?).

I tried following my own advice as I gave it here in my How To Resolve a Quarrel through e-mail lens. My first advice however is to solve this kind of thing offline. Scratch that on squidoo: I don't even have any body's home phone number, and calling outside the country is perhaps not really necessary? One hopes.

So the next piece of advice: just apologize, don't make it too long. I managed to limit myself to 5 sentences. I did not let it sit however. I just wrote and send. Time will tell whether I was right to. The thing was, this time, I wasn't angry. Just sad at the misunderstanding and bad feeling that had been created.

Hope you all liked my first post for the Valley of the giants?

5 Unique Valentine's Day Ideas From Giant Squids

Valentine's Day is sneaking up fast. As I write this Cupid's special day is just 26 days away. To help you prepare, I selected five Valentine's Day Lenses written by Squidoo Giants, each offering unique ideas for Valentine's Day.

If you would like tips about creating a particularly romantic day for your Valentine, I created a lens about how to make this Valentine's Day special. Freshly updated with ideas for celebrating Valentine's Day on a budget, this lens may be particularly useful this year.

Many may not be aware that you can upload your own images to Valentine's Day cards and have your own text printed on the cards. Bdkz's lens offering custom made Valentine's Day Cards via Zazzle can help you to create a special card for your special Valentine.

Looking for something to write on the card? Badmsm has created a lens to tell us how to say "I love you" in many different languages.

Want to know how to send the card? KimGiancaterino informs us that you can add a romantic postmark to your Valentine's Day Cards by having your cards sent from towns with romantic sounding names (such as Loveland, Colorado and Loving, New Mexico). To do so, simply put your Valentine's Day card in a stamped envelope and place that in a second envelope and stamp that one too. Send it to the towns mentioned by Kim using the following address:

Postmaster
(Town Name) Valentine Re-mailing
City, State ZIP Code

If you are looking for Valentine's Day ideas for the kids, Pastiche has created a lens offering Valentine Coloring Pages that you can download and print out. Use these pages to make your own Valentine's Day Coloring Books and Posters.

If those are not enough ideas for you, look no futher than GypsyPirate's Heartfelt Group, a Group devoted entirely of Valentine's Day Lenses.

How To Add Bling To Your Lens

Are your lenses boring?

Many Squidoo webmasters go to great lengths to create lenses chock full of information, but many forget about "Entertainment Factor".

A visitor to your lens seeks information, but they don't want to read a book. They want to be entertained. The differenece between a book and the internet is that other than photos and words, it is difficult to add entertainment to a book.

But the internet offers many ways to help you entertain your visitor in ways that books can not. For example, you can not add a video to a book. But you can add a video to your lens. You can not add music to a book. But you can add music to your lens.

Bling can also be used to increase the "entertainment factor" of your lens. To be sure, if used too much or if used wrongly, bling can make your lens look bad. But if used in the right way, a bit of bling can make your lens more interesting and improve the entertainment factor. If your lens combines good information AND entertainment, it can keep your visitor on your page, even if the subject matter is difficult.

There are many sites on the internet that can help you to add a bit of bling to your lens such as Bigoo which has provided the image I used in this post. I have created a lens which reviews some of these sites and gives suggestions on How To Add Bling to your site, blog or Squidoo Lens.

Squidoo: Get Paid For Your Passion!

I've been with Squidoo for nearly 2 years, was among the first Giant Squid in 2007 and have just been granted membership in the Giant Squid 100 Club. If I could, I would make lenses all day long. Yes, it's THAT much fun. So what's the attraction? Plenty, when you think about it.

1. I have a platform that allows me to talk about ALL of my interests, passions and curiousities. I am not limited in how far I wish to explore, I can make my lenses as detailed as I want. I can share about charities I love, topics I care about, or just be spontaneous. My #1 lens, How To Say "I Love You" In Different Languages, was built in about 30 minutes, amid much laughter from my kids. It receives hundreds of visits each week, from people all over the world.

2. I actually make a bit of cash from writing, sharing and researching. If you're not using all the Squidoo affiliate modules to full advantage, I suggest you take some time to learn from lensmasters like Loyalis,LewisSmile, N376 and others in SquidU. They all have teaching sites, and love to help budding lensmasters achieve all they can, and best of all, they have ACTUAL experince making the kind of profits they discuss.

3. If you have topics you are REALLY passionate about, and want to spread the word, there is no greater place than Squidoo! You can meet and mix with people from all over the world, from diverse business and social backgrounds, age groups and perspectives. What greater resource is there? Take the time to get to know your fellow lensmasters. My Squidoo family has become an invaluable part of my online life and work.

Finally, I want to thank ChefKeem for inviting me to join you in The Valley of the Giants. It was an offer I could not refuse!

Giant Squid Hugs To All!

Bette Miles-Holleman

aka BadMsM

Getting to Giant 100 is a Wonderful Milestone

I am so excited to have reached the milestone of Giant Squid 100 Club. The picture you see here is the T-shirt I got when I reached Giant Squid.

Becoming a Giant Squid is a process and a journey. It is a terrific accomplishment and a lot of hard work. I do want to encourage everyone to go for it. It is definitely worth your time and effort.

What have I learned along the way?

Well, frankly quite a lot, and I am still learning. I came aboard Squidoo as a total novice. I did not know much about SEO, nor did I know much about promoting on the internet. I knew nothing about keywords, and absolutely nothing about Squidoo. So don't think that you need to know a lot to get started. I would recommend just getting started.

For a new person, here are some suggestions:

• Use the information on Squidoo to help you. There are great how-to lenses and terrific mentors everywhere.
• Don't be afraid to try something new!
• Do you see a lens or technique you like? Try it on your own lens.
• Take baby steps. Each lens will make you a better lensmaster.
• Remember you can always go back and edit.
• Don't get too hung up on LensRank. It changes daily.
• Choose topics you love and let us know why.
• Don't take critiques personally. Learn from them.
• Have fun with it.
• Keep your lens focuses on a very specific topic and you will find that you have the best kind of lens.

When I started, 100 lenses seemed very, very far away. But when you keep putting in the time writing one every few days or one every week or two weeks, they add up pretty fast. Before you know it, you will be a Giant Squid too.

The Sequel to "Life As A Foster Child"

If like me, you were riveted by Debra's (dc64) haunting Squidoo Lens Of The Day "Life As A Foster Child" you may have also been left wondering: "What happened to the Troubled Foster Child?" Was her adulthood as difficult as her childhood? Did she have a happy ending?

The answers to these and other questions can be found in Debra's Squidoo Lensography Dc64 is Debra, and she's a little unusual (My lensography too). Her lensography is sort of like a sequel to "Life As A Foster Child", because you get a peak into Debra's facinating adulthood.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but just tease you enough to read it. Debra tells us about living under a bridge for two weeks until she could trade up for an abandoned car. She tells us about her son's miracle birth, her life in Germany and how she bucked up the courage to meet her Ex. And we learn about how she dressed for work (twice) in rather unusual apparel.

Squidoo's best known Foster Child has indeed had a rich and facinating life and she is only in her 40s. Debra has turned into a gifted writer and story teller. If you were transfixed by "Life As A Foster Child", you will enjoy reading Debra's Lensography.

Planting a Giant Seed...

Just add water. Better - add stars! Squidoo lens love, that is. Ta-ta-ah!

Ladies and Guys, may I introduce to you - Giant Squid Lensmaster seedplanter!

Not only has Bonnie written her first guest post on this blog (a "hammer", by the way) - some of you have been so smitten by her words that you've missed the nail and assumed that I (your bud Keem) was the author. Nope, I don't write that well. She does! And she did. Here:

Cooking Disasters I Lived To Tell About

The Craziest Things I Never Said

Help! I've Lost My Hippocampus!

And my latest favorite:

If Only

Seedplanter in her own words:

I'm a writer, nature photographer,and product reviewer who has flipped over the creative potential of Squidoo.

Interests: family (can you spell grandchildren?), gardening, travel, music, photography, camping, good coffee, books, history, and beading.

My friend Bonnie - in my own words:

Several months ago, someone recommended that I check out seedplanter's lenses. I never turned back - I'm still checking out every word she writes. I so love her stuff! Funny as hell, smart, witty, thoughtful, inspiring, entertaining. And then some.

Now she's writing for us, here on this blog. More than one post, I hope! Welcome, Bonnie!

Thank you for the kind comments on Bonnie's first post. I'll pass them on.

Put Away the Hammer

Monetizing a lens means different things to different people. When I first joined Squidoo, I didn't want to come across as one of those overbearing types who hammer their readers with one sales item after another. Unless I was specifically creating a shopping lens as I've done with Diaper Bags Central, I didn't want visitors to feel like I was reaching for their wallet. I wanted to connect with them...make them laugh or cry, or encourage conversation.

So I foolishly avoided adding links or modules connected with sales.

Big mistake!

I've since learned from more seasoned lensmasters that it's not only OK to monetize--it's foolish if I don't. So I set out to learn about various ways to monetize, and in the process I ran across an excellent lens: How to Add Amazon Widgets to Your Lens, by Squidster. Now, I've read dozens of Squidoo-related lenses, and have a growing list of helpful notes I've saved in a Word document. But Squidster's advice opened my eyes to a new way of approaching lenscrafting. I learned that I can easily monetize IF I can find a natural way to weave product offers into my lenses. We've all seen lenses that have a gazillion different "buy this!" links. I didn't want that. Squidster's instructional lens introduced me to the Amazon widget (using Clearspring.com as a launchpad into Squidoo) and it has proved to be the perfect solution for me.

I created a Slideshow of novelty egg timers in my lens, Cooking Disasters I Lived to Tell About. Why? Because I had this quirky little habit of forgetting what I'd started in the kitchen--usually when I was sidetracked with a lens project. (Maybe I should sell fire insurance as well?) I also took Squidster's advice and added a "Make a Quilt!" widget to my A Quilt Story: Voices from the Great Depression lens, to offer beautiful fabric squares from quilters on Amazon.

Because I'm offering tie-in products that enhance the subject of my lenses, I don't feel like I'm hammering anyone to buy. I'm simply completing the lens "package" by giving them choices.

How do you feel about monetizing? What have you used successfully, or avoided for fear of overwhelming visitors?

Spread your news with Twitterfeed!

Get the word out on your latest blog posts - free, easy, automatically!

Sign up with twitterfeed and enter the RSS feeds of your blogs.

You may customize the frequency of updates and even enter a 20-character announcement at the beginning.

This saves time and it might get you new followers on twitter and subscribers to your blog(s).

And, yes - watch for "Valley of the Giants" updates!

Free Photoshop!!

Do you struggle to make your Squidoo Lenses look attractive and interesting?? Did you know that you can use Photoshop for FREE!?! As most people know, Photoshop is the DADDY of Photo Editing Softwear. Photoshop is the standard that all professionl phototographers and graphic artists use to make professional photos. But Professional Photoshop is not cheap. Photoshop softwear costs between $600-$800. Now Photoshop is free and online. Using Free Photoshop, I turned the photo above into the image on the right in about 5 minutes. Pretty cool isn't it?

In addition to Free ONLINE Photoshop, there are other free online photo editors. You can learn more about Free Photoshop and other free online Photo Editors in this lens I wrote about Free Photoshop. Now there are no more excuses for having dull and drab photos on your Squidoo Lenses.

Do you do Twitter? Follow this guy!

I could spend all day doing nothing but checking out this guy's tweets.

And it looks like this guy's doing nothing all day but tweeting about interesting and useful stuff.

He follows over 1,800 and has over 3,000 followers. Nevertheless, I once responded to one of his tweets and had a reply within 2 minutes.

Is this what a Twitter Pro looks like? Amazing tweets - rapid fire!

Follow nicheprof.

How To Use Free Sitebuilders to Give Yourself Quality Inbound Links

My newest Squidoo lens "How To Use Free Sitebuilders to Give Yourself Quality Inbound Links" is already getting alot of attention. I am pleased to see that although I just posted it 2 days ago, it has several comments, reviews and ratings. Pretty good for a brand new lens.

We are all searching for ways to get quality oneway links in order to improve our Google PR and Site Traffic. It is challenging. But with this simple and free idea, you can give yourself oneway links from these free site builders.

Since people seem to like it, I have been improving it. I have created a drawing to help readers more quickly understand the project (That is the photo you see in ths blog, to see a larger size drawing and to learn more details of the idea visit the lens How To Use Free Sitebuilders to Give Yourself Quality Inbound Links. I have also posted modules so reviewers can make suggestions for improvement. Who knows, maybe one day I will use the suggestions to repeat this project and see if I get better results.

Do you know of some good ways to give your Squidoo Lenses or your blog quality inbound links for free? If so, please leave some comments on this blog. If I learn something interesting, I will blog about it.

Frankster is the Third Blog Author!

I am delighted to welcome Frankster as the third blog author on Valley of The Giants. Frankster is not only a Giant Squid, she is a Squidoo Activist. Frankster is also known as the Bearmeister. Her Are You Polar Bear Aware? lens was the winner of the 2008 Giant Squid Award for Best Charity Lens. It is also highly ranked, currently rated #1 in the Animals section and #13 lens overall. Many of Frankster's lenses are about Bears and Cats because those are two of her passions. She is an online Ambassador for Wildlife S.O.S., National Wildlife Federation, Polar Bears International and Big Cat Rescue raising awareness and money to save bears, cats and our natural resources. Wow!

I am very pleased to have Frankster on board and looking forward to hearing from her soon.

Giant Blog with Giant Benefits for Giant Squids

Gigantic idea, ESQ - thanks so much for inviting me as a contributor! Your first posts already provide some good tips for us. Thanks for sharing your expertise!

So, I'm Chef Keem and I do Squidoo. A lot. Too much, says my wife. Sorry, honey - but I love Squidoo and I'm confident that in a couple of years you'll agree with me. (While we're traveling in Europe and our online biz is running on its own.)

For today's post, I want to make an announcement:

A new batch of Squid Angels has arrived. This time, they won't retire the previous team, but rather be added as support for the huge amount of service work for new lenses and lensmasters. Squidoo's been growing by leaps and bounds. Yeah! If you'd like to find out more about "Squid Angels" please visit my lens:

"Squid Angel Blessings by Chef Keem"

If you ever wonder about the "bless-worthiness" of your page, check out this "sticky" in the Angels forum.

Squid Angels are a friendly bunch - they love to "bless" quality lenses and give them a little lensrank boost. On the other hand, Angels have the power to "ding" a lens, and send it to the bottom of the pit. Believe me - without all the "clean-up" work behind the scenes, Squidoo would be filled with spammy junk, causing a negative impact on the earning power of quality lenses.

Go, hug an Angel today!

Innovative Links

In my effort to build up the PR of this blog, I am looking for innovative ways to create links. I have found three, and will look for more:

I have built up free webpages using 5 free site builders. The site builders include:

* Google's Site
* Yahoo's Geocities
* Webs
* Wetpaint
* Of course Squidoo.

Wetpaint is probably the best so far and Geocities is definatly the worst. In fact, I have to go back there and edit it and I am dreading it. Geocities is a mess.

I have linked them togther and have given links from all to this blog. To maximize the PR impact, I will only link to the MAIN site of the Link Experiment, on Squidoo. Please go there to read the details of this Link Experiment. The other free sites will all give one-way (inbound) direct links to this blog. Hopefully it will help to give this blog a PR boost.

So, I am curious to see what will happen. Perhaps in time they might both have PR. Who knows? If so, I will use them as an additional source of links to my Squidoo sites.

If anyone has other suggestions, it could be interesting. Perhaps I will make a squidoo lens with a list of ways to make innovative links to Squidoo sites? Might be useful to me or a fellow squid one day.

De-Indexing? Is There Such a Thing?

A strange thing has happened. A couple of days after creating this blog, I checked and was happy to see that it had already been picked up by google. The blog was indexed pretty quickly.

Today I checked again (don't know why I did actually) and it was no where to be seen in Google!

This is not the first time I have seen it. It happened to a Squidoo Lens of mine once. The lens was indexed by google. Then it disappeared. And then it was indexed again!

I wonder if anyone else has seen that?

Sent Out My First Author Invitation Today

Chef Keem, the highly respected Squid Angel has requested to be an author. Chef Keem's Lensography won the 2008 Giant Squid Award's Best Lensography. He was also nominated for Best Giant Squid and for the best baking lens for his lens about peach cobbler. Achim has created 101 lenses. Achim will be the second author on Valley of the Giants and of course a founding member. Welcome aboard Achim!

New Squidoo Lens about Valley of the Giants Blog

Today I created a new squidoo lens to outline the idea about the Valley of the Giants Blog. I feel a bit like I am venturing into uncharted territory. I have not done anything like this before.

I have drafted the lens as a starting point to explain to others what this new blogging idea is all about. But everything is still at the beginning and subject to change. I hope that others will participate and help me to make this new blog successful.

Ideas, suggestions and of course, partipants are welcome.

Stilettos: Dress To Kill

This blog is about 4 days old. It is barely indexed in Squidoo and I have a feeling that the ONLY one who will read it is me! If you do by accident stumble on on it, please surprise me and make yourself known. Do it quietly however, because you might startle me! :)

I have created a new Squidoo Lens about Stiletto Shoes. Originally, I thought it would feature only a few attractive stiletto designs, but the more I researched it, the more cool stuff I found.

* I was amazed at the quality of stiletto photos under creative commons license I found on Flickr. These stilleto photos are by themselves with a look. If you are a Squidoo Newbie, this is a great tip. Go to Flickr, and do an advanced search. Check the Creative Commons box and search for your subject. If there are photos available you can use them as long as you give credit to the photographer. (This is a good chance to mention tha tthe photo to the right is By Gabrielle Sinatra on a Creative Commons License)

* There are some amazing videos of contests women running in high heels or stilettos. This is apparently quite popular in many countries and I have included some of the videos on the site. Controversial with many, photos of stiletto running contests may surprise some and again are worth a visit to the lens.

* There are actually high heels for babies!! I dont know how I feel about that, but as it was surprising for me, I thought it would be interesting for visitors to the lens.

* I found some really interesting information about stilettos which I have included in the lens.

Overall, I think that the stiletto page came out ALOT better than I thought and think it has alot of potential. But maybe I am biased? I would love to get some suggestions from readers on how to make this a TOP squidoo lens. I have just added it to the 'Critique Me' section of Squidu, but I would also appreciate some comments left in the comment box.

So, if you have actually found this post and gotten this far, congratulations!! You are probably one of very few people. Please leave me a note either here on the blog or on the Stilettos site and let me know who you are!!

Toe Socks

I will start this blogging business out with a new lens that I recently created. About Toe Socks! What is a Toe Sock? Well. many people might remember these from the hippy 70's. Those striped socks with separate compartments for toes. Remember those?

Lets says that today's toe socks are cousins of those funky socks. Todays toe socks are worn by athletes such as runners, gymnasts, dancers, yoga practioners, etc. Virtually anyone who makes big demands of their feet should look into new toe socks. According to those in the know, toe socks allow your feet to perform to their full potential and reduce the risk of over heating, sweating and blisters.

There are several manufactures of Toe Socks for athletes including Injinji, Feelmax and ToeSox. Injinji is the leader by far with several product lines and alot of information on the subject.

Have a look at this lens about toe socks to learn more.

(Photo by Jeff Hester under creative commons license)

A New Beginning

I am not an expert on blogging, but I have an interesting idea for a Squidoo Blog. Lets see how this turns out. My idea is to create a Squidoo oriented site. Initially, I will probably just feature my own lenses. But I want to turn this into a blog about Squidoo authored by Squid Giants.

I plan to allow other Squid Giants to post here. This would develop into a community tool where any Squid Giant can post on whatever interests them. For example:

* Squidoo Tips
* Great Lenses They Have Found
* What They Like about Squidoo
* What They Would Like To See Improved
* Etc, Etc.

If you are a Squid Giant and would like to post here, contact me (EuroSquid) and lets discuss it.