WhooHoo – Lens of the Day

It’s a great honor on Squidoo to have your web page chosen as Lens of the Day (LOTD). I’m greatly excited, but not because of my lens being chosen. The lens being honored is by a writing friend of mine, Gottaloveit. The topic is not anything trendy or cute, it’s about Incontinence in the Elderly. It impressed the selectors enough to feature it for two days straight on Squidoo. With a million and a half lenses on the site, just imagine having yours singled out and featured.

It’s exciting having the Lens of the Day. Squidoo doesn’t notify the lensmaster, so the first realization comes from checking your stats and seeing an unusual amount of comments and visitors. Looking at the comments, the lensmaster realizes what has happened and usually does a little happy dance. Congratulations flow in from writing friends on Facebook and from other lensmasters posting to the profile page.

Traffic to other lenses picks up as readers are curious about who this lensmaster is that made LOTD. Backlinks appear as blogs and SquidooHQ post about the Lens of the Day. If the traffic elevates the lensrank enough to reach and stay in tier one for the whole month, then two months later, the lensmaster gets a bigger payout (around $25 to $30 for that lens).

Besides the prestige of getting Lens of the Day, it establishes the lensmaster as a solid producer on Squidoo. Squid Angels take note of the other topics covered by the lensmaster. LOTD might lead to being invited to apply for Giant Squid or to join the Rocket Moms.

Best of all, it inspires a lensmaster to keep working and producing high quality lenses on Squidoo. Everyone likes a little appreciation and acknowledgement of their work. LOTD provides all that.

Several other writing friends have recently had Lens of the Day. Take a look at Frischy’s account of her project turning an Ugly Old Shed into a Trendy Chicken Coop. There’s enough detail to start work on your own shed conversion. You’ll also enjoy ChrissLJ’s Diary of a Puppy Fashionista. Former eHow writers will recognize her dog, Esme, who has a better wardrobe than I do.

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The Ups and Downs of Squidoo Mentoring

I’ve encouraged a number of eHow pals to migrate over to Squidoo with their content or to become more active on Squidoo if they were already there. At times they get discouraged and I feel responsible for luring them to a site that might not work out for them. I have to remind them that the first 3 to 6 months on Squidoo can be long ones while waiting to see results, but their hard work will pay off over time.

Actually they’ve made amazing progress in the few months since eHow pulled the rug out from under the writers. Here are some of the remarkable achievements of my eHow writing buddies:

• Frischy won Lens of the Day with From Ugly Shed to Trendy Chicken Coop. It is currently ranked at 5,000 but I think with some backlinks and occasional updating she could make some sales and achieve tier one earnings too. She has 25 lenses already.
• Wordstock created over 100 lenses on Squidoo and is a Rocket Mom. Congrats to her on these achievements. Her lens, A Little Extra Courage, won a purple star for excellence. She has several niches going, but sometimes comes up with something quirky like How to Escape from Godzilla.
• ChrissJ had a good start on Squidoo on her own, but I bugged her into making lenses about storytime themes. With that niche and her former eHow articles on dog care, she has rapidly reached 86 lenses. Her Diary of a Puppy Fashionista recently made Lens of the Day.
• NancyCarol dragged her feet about making Squidoo lenses, but suddenly got the Squidoo spirit and made a lens about My Best Friend, My Pug. Now she has three purple stars and quite a few angel blessings on her 53 lenses. Her Story of the Women’s Army Corp is one of the purple stars.
• Gottaloveit at first gravitated to List My Five and I finally cajoled her into giving Squidoo a try. She quickly built two impressive niches with a variety of lenses on Dessert Shooters and caregiving lenses like Helping a Hospitalized Senior Citizen.

To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll make a separate one to feature more of the eHow writers who are making their mark on Squidoo. Here’s a directory of eHow Writers on Squidoo.