How To Un-Junk Your Squidoo Lens

People who go to your site have certain expectations. It is up to you to reshape those expectations or reinforce them. Use the Introduction Module of your Squidoo lens to target your market and to set your reader's expectations. Tell them what they will find on your page.

Then follow through – give them what you told them you would. If your lens is on how to bathe a cat, don't include facts about the latest kitchen gadget or wrench.

A Squidoo lens which sells something – and most do – does not necessarily have to appear as a junk site. In fact, I go to certain lenses, especially shopping lenses, because I'm looking for a product and I want to have a variety to choose from. This usually equates to lots of Amazon or CarePress modules.

However, I also want and expect some content - product reviews, care tips, what style goes with what, materials comparisons, etc. There are lots of ways to add value to these lenses and keep them from being junky – facts that make it a valuable resource for deciding which product, if any, to buy.

How to your sites stack up?

For an example of a lens selling products but offering more, click Bear Paw Boots

eBay and me

I took eBay off all my lenses. No, I didn't have a bad experience with them directly, but after adding them, I noticed a huge drop in Google traffic to those very lenses. One of my top lenses at the time, Fantasy: Castles, Dragons, and Wizards, was completely dropped by Google. It had a PR of 3 at the time, and I was frantically trying to figure out what I did wrong. My lighthouse and wolf lenses fell drastically, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I scoured the 'net' for a solution, and came up with very little. I did a 'site ban' check on my fantasy lens, and it wasn't banned by Google, they just dropped it. Perhaps it was penalized for some reason? All I did was add eBay modules, and not a lot of them, because I didn't want to junk up my lens. Finally, I did a keyword density check on it...and got 'cat' and 'seller' as the top keywords, also the phrase 'cat seller' as the top phrase of words. Huh? I didn't have either word in my text, so it must have been linked to eBay code. I suppose the Google crawlers thought I was trying to fool the public into thinking my lens was about one thing, when it was actually about 'cat sellers'. I honestly don't know. It's all I could come up with.

Well, all I could think to do was delete all the eBay modules on all my lenses and see what happened, and it worked. My lens got picked up by Google again, but started all over with a PR of 0, and my wolf and lighthouse lenses have shot up to the 3rd and 4th spot on my dashboard. I hate not offering eBay products, because they have some great collectibles at good prices, but for now, it's the best thing for me. I never made a sell from them anyways.

New Baby!

On 24 May, the newest member of our family arrived. He is healthy, happy, cute and VERY time consuming. With midnight diaper changes, cuddling, song singing and book reading, I am having difficultly finding time for Squidoo or blogging. I expect this to last for several months. So, while you may not see much of me on this blog for a while, I am confident that my fellow Giant Squid contributors will pick up the slack and continue to add valuable content to this blog. So, please forgive me if I am absent for some time. I will return when my little guy and I are able to sleep longer hours.

Some time ago, I created a lens about some of the baby products that we are buying for him and us. We have made some remarkable discoveries. Some of the products we thought would help alot (eg swaddlers) have turned into remarkable failures, while others (anti-stretchmark cream and post-partum girdle) have really been helpful.

I hope to update this lens as soon as possible, as I think it will be very helpful for other expectant parents.

Gene/Eurosquid

A Purple Star Surprise

I find it interesting that we never really know how someone feels about or evaluates a lens we do. To some extent we know by the lens ranking, but that can be somewhat contrived with the proper advertising. I have always found it interesting that my top ranked lenses were usually lenses I would not have anticipated to be as highly ranked as they were.

So, imagine my surprise when out of the blue, I get an email saying I had received a purple star for one of my sites. I have been so busy with family and other endeavors lately that I have not had the time to be as concerned with Squidoo and my lenses as I previously did. (A temporary status, I hope.)

When I first did my lens on my home town of Rome, Georgia -- it was a labor of love. I had no marketing content and was not concerned with whether anyone cared or not. I did it because I enjoyed doing it. Yes, I hoped it would be of interest to some, especially those from my home town. Yet I never would have considered it to be of interest to as many people as seem to have visited the lens since I first published it.

So first, thanks for those who considered it worthy of the purple star. It is an honor.

Second, to those who wonder how they can get a purple star for a lens they make, I have some advice. Don't seek after it. Enjoy what you do; do every lens as a labor of love; and let your peers evaluate it when it comes to their attention. If it is really a quality lens (from their viewpoint, of course), you will get the appropriate reward when your time comes.

Although, I am proud of the lens and thankful for the purple star, I would not change anything in it purposely to seek an award. I'm having fun and the purple star is simply a mark of how much fun I had creating this lens.


I hope that other giants will have the pleasurable feeling of receiving a purple star award for their favorite lens. With or without the awards though, keep enjoying the journey. My journey has just begun.

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.

Blocking Spammers from your Squidoo Lens

I always set my Squidoo Guestbooks and Links Plexos to "contact me" first because some Lensmasters don't always read what should be posted there and what is not appropriate. This allows me to delete link entries without having to look at every lens every day to catch the junk.

However, recently I've had 2 types of annoying spam:
(1) I was spammed in my Links Voting (Plexo). It was not a Lensmaster that I could tell, but in 1 day they hit 7 of my bear lenses with 4 links each to Fat burning sites.

(2) I was also getting spammed by a lensmaster doing the same thing on a couple of my cat lenses for something about intantcash. I know this was a Lensmaster because when I did properties on the link they posted, they screwed up and linked to http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/...

It was all happening at the same time so I'm pretty sure it was the same doofus!

What did I do?
1. I deleted all except the 4 entries on my Save Our Bears (SOB) Group -- which had 5 votes on each -- and reported it to Squidoo. This was so Squidoo could get the IP address or Lensmaster info.
2. I reported the spam to Squidoo through the Report Spam link.
3. They were able to block the user by IP address used on the link and warn the offending Lensmaster.
4. They removed the link from my sites as they addressed the issue.

So now you know what to do if it happens to you. Report it and help stop it from happening to others. The Squidoo folks are amazing and they eliminate spammers fast.

Bear hugs, Frankie aka Bearmeister

If you want to become popular on squidoo... a purple star :)

There is something about becoming a squidangel... I guess it brings out the groupy in other lensmasters. And one of the lenses those new visitors to my lenses seem to want to know is: how do you become as popular (as you are) on squidoo... I wrote about that a while back on my How To Become Popular on Squidoo lens. Now if you'd have told me in high school that I'd be writing about popularity, I'd probably have thought you mad. I wasn't very popular at all, in fact I turned down my one chance at popularity when one of the popular girls wanted to talk clothes. I was like - you think these clothes are cool? I don't get it!

Luckily squidoo popularity works differently from high school. Fashion doesn't play a part, as nobody can see what I wear. Then again, my clothes these days look alright even working from home - I guess I've developed my own sense of style, and that works for me. In highschool I was still searching and feeling my way.

Back to my lens - it started as a rant. I realized how important ratings were to getting a high lensrank, and really didn't like that. I thought - and to an extent feel - that quality should determine lensrank. But making the lens made me realize that it's the social aspect of squidoo that sets it apart from other online networks. The fact that social lensmasters get rewarded helps the atmosphere at squidoo. And that's a good thing.

Anyhow, the purple star program has been going on for about a month now, and my lens about popularity isn't just in the top 2000 (where it got thanks to all those people whose lens I'd blessed rating it), it's in the top 300 - so thanks giant squid organizers for the honor :)