New Groups and Purple Stars

Have any of you Squidooers noticed all the new groups that are forming out there? Rocket Moms, Senior Squidooers, "giant" groups? And what do you think of these purple stars?

Personally I have joined several of these groups and I have been awarded a purple star on one of my lenses. (My Vegetable Garden--just in case you want to check it out!)

What do I think of my groups (RocketMoms, WiWon Team, and others)? I love them. I have been getting lots of really helpful critiques from the members. I also get new, fresh ideas for lenses and ways to manage the ones I have. Needless to say, I am also getting noticed. Why is this good? Visitors, ratings, etc....

The purple star helped in the lens rank of my article for about a week. But, it has stayed near the top of own lenses in rank for a longer time.

I think that the influx of groups and the purple star is Squidoo's way of helping all of us "non-spamming" lensmasters. Squidoo is promoting ways to make better lenses. It is encouraging me to be a better lensmaster! It is a good thing. Yes, it is OK to want to make money on the internet. Yes, it is good to have tons of new lenses on Squidoo. The more lenses visited, the more money Squidoo makes and divvies up to all of us lensmasters on payday. The groups, all the awards and giantness, does help me get more cash from Squidoo.

I do not make a living from my membership on Squidoo, but I am feeling pretty good about what I do make -- FYI: my last paycheck was for less than $20. I consider it my "found" money. I am having fun on Squidoo and learning, too.

I can also say that I have made acquaintances with people from around the world. I love it!

I believe in Squidoo so I want to participate. I am not trying to become "the most popular" lensmaster. Actually, I do not think I have the talent that JaguarJulie, fluffanutta or ChefKeem and loads of others have. I probably don't have the energy, either. These lensmasters work at what they do. They also do it very well!

But, what I do have is a desire to get better every day.

I also like to get an occasional pat on the back.

7 Things I Ask Myself Before Creating A Lens

Below are the 7 questions I asked myself before/while creating my lens, BEARS: The 8 Wonders of the World.

1. What am I hoping to accomplish?
Raise awareness of the world's 8 bear species and raise money for Wildlife SOS.

2. Am I focusing on a singular sub-topic or giving an overview?
A brief overview / introduction of the 8 species.

3. How can I organize it to make it easy to navigate?
With only 8 bear species, it seemed logical to put the bears in alphabetical order.

4. How can I make it interesting?
Most people don't know the 8 species so I included their aliases (Brown Bear / Grizzly), photos and conservation status. I also added a Flickr slideshow and videos.

5. What do I want to link to?
I had already created more in-depth lenses on each of the 8 bear species so I linked to each of them. I also linked to organizations saving bears.

6. What can I sell?
I added bear Wildlife SOS's CafePress and Amazon books and bear gifts.

7. How much royalty do I want to give to what charity?
100% of the royalties goes to Wildlife SOS so I make sure I added a Donation Module.

Adding a guest book, some featured lenses, and a link to the Save Our Bears (SOB) Group made this a 5 star lens (in my opinion) right from the get-go. I have, of course, continued to update and add new items often.

Groups changes - a lot of debate

Squidoo HQ came with a bit of a bombshell on April 8th: they're going to be closing down low quality groups. This caused a lot of groupmasters to close their groups down immediately. There are a lot less groups out there any more of the 'anyone can join' variety. Some smaller groups disappeared as well - some included that I didn't think were all that bad. So far it's self-censorship.

But some people are panicking a bit. One lensmaster started a rally to make sure that the right lenses would be allowed to stay around - having misread the blogpost. He thought that there are only going to be 100 groups left AT ALL... Which is not what Kimberly said. She said that the best 100 groups were going to get extra features. Which is a very different thing.

Right now we know only two things: 1) no new groups can be created right now and 2) the worst groups are going to be closed for us if the groupmasters don't improve them or close them. Beyond that - this post by squidophile summarizes the consequences pretty clearly.

The bid for quality over quantity is going to mean that all big groups are going to have to offer more to lensmasters to stay in the air. This could mean featuring the most prolific lensmasters, making sure your group page is changed reasonably often (as in once a month I should think) etc.

Aside from groups now having to make sure they have a decent group page, it's unclear whether we can keep using the groups platform as a convenient way to create a lensography and interlink our lenses. It is clear that the technology wasn't created for this purpose, but for giant squids and others with more than 50 or even 100 lenses - they do have to be connected somehow. That's just good SEO.

In the meantime some people are responding by really improving their game. Like Paula Atwell, who has decided to start promoting her group in hopes of getting actual search engine traffic. That's really going to benefit the lenses featured on her group page and her own lenses as well. I doubt it's going to help her group rank though - Even the most focussed group is not going to be niche enough to get much traffic.

So, for those of you in that last camp, trying to make your groups better so they can stay up, do read up on what Barkely (giant, squidangel and Citizen) has to say about getting your group from good to great.