My Squid Life

Yes, the end is near; the end of the year that is. I set a  number of goals for this year and I’m right on top of some of them and should hit my mark without a problem.  Others unfortunately are still a couple of months away.  I’ll hit my goal regarding the number of lenses I wanted to create as well as my number of visits per week that I targeted, but my Squidoo revenue is off.  I believe  that will be due to the fact that the revenue actually shows up two months after it’s earned for the most part.  I didn’t really consider that when I set my goals. Of course, I’ll know for sure in February how far off I was.

Of course, the “end” is also highly discussed in many circles regarding the economy and small business. Thus far however I’ve been surprised at what hasn’t happened. I haven’t seen a dip in my Amazon/e-Bay sales or my affiliate sales since the economy started really going south.  I did read an encouraging lens by Margaret Schaut about Recessionary Squidooing, A Must for Small Business which offers some positive thoughts about working through the harder economic times. If you haven’t read it, perhaps you should. Only time will tell how things will really go in the coming months, but being prepared may help.

I was away for several days, a trip to the mountains with family provided some needed relaxation. I’m checking things out this morning.  I was surprised to see that the Flat Screen TV with DVD Player lens that I built last Friday had about 40 visits from the search engines already, 14 clickouts, and one affilate sale. I can’t brag about the content on this lens but I guess it was focused enough that it’s had some appeal.

Another surprise came when I stumbled upon the fact that my Cell Phones for the Hearing Impaired lens was a nominee for one of the 2008 Giant Squid Awards. It’s among my favorite lenses as I work continuously at keeping it updated with the latest stuff for the deaf and hearing impaired. I like to think that it’s a bit of a “one-stop” info page on the topic. 

The other somewhat surprising event was that my Homemade Vegetable Soup lens moved into my personal top spot.  With well over 600 visits per week it finally made it’s first sales recently.  Aside from the fact that someone was so kind as to order some pants after clicking through on some of my products, I also sold some cookbooks.  I never imagined that this lens would make a sale as it’s not been, and probably never will be, really promoted.  It’s not in my niche and just doesn’t fit in my schedule!

Back to the routine. I hope to make a lens tomorrow and then take off for the Thanksgiving holiday.

After working toward boosting my keyword density, I put a little time into some other tasks this past week. I wanted to incoporate some new HTML to improve the look of some of my lenses. I want to try to use one or two “tricks” each week to broaden my skills in this area.  This past week I focused on adding a splash of color while dressing things up a bit.  I published My Gorgeous Green Cell Phone and A Red Cell Phone for Everyone lenses. I incorporated some of the HTML to wrap text around a highlighted capital letter while adding a bit of color. I’ve avoided some of the colored backgrounds as I prefer a more polished look and want to avoid anything that might make reading more difficult.

As I’ve talked about previously I’m also trying to focus more narrowly on my sales type lenses. The above efforts are part of that but I also did a Texas Instruments Calculator and Sony Ericsson Phone Charger. I hope next week to be able to create some more informative and recreational type lenses, but with holidays creeping up soon I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

I spent my work time over the weekend targeting the keywords on my lenses in an attempt to improve their placement in searches and thus increase traffic. There were a handful that I actually changed the keywords I was targeting as the competition was too intense. For the majority however, I attempted to simply increase my keyword density. 

I’ve never liked reading the same word or phrase over and over on a page so I tend to go a little light on keyword density but felt it was worth the time at this point to make a conscious effort to kick it up a percent or two. I’ve read advice about the appropriate density but the range appears to be wide among “experts”.  I’m happy with 3-5%.

Now I need to go do some testing to see if I’ve made any real improvement…

The last day or two I’ve tried to get back into the swing of things following the election and some autumn outdoor time off.  I’ve created a few new lenses and caught up a little on some blogs. I swung by the forum to offer some feedback for some new lensmasters seeking help as well.  While I was there, I ran across a discussion in the “Chatter Box” about Squidoo payments; should they change and so forth.

Although I would love to see the tiers expand a bit as the total number of lenses increases and competition is fierce, I try to focus elsewhere.  I know that for those who make the most money on Squidoo, it’s via affiliate sales not a share of the AdSense payment from Squidoo. The fact that the pages are free to construct makes them fantastic as well. The interaction with more experienced internet marketers and entrepreneurs is also unbelievably valuable. I’d like the monthly payout to continue to grow but it’s still not my focus.

The number of lenses I have in the top two tiers has not grown nearly as much as my total number of lenses in the past two or three months. However, my Amazon sales and affiliate sales have grown. Thus my reason for wanting to focus on the other forms of payment.

Payday is coming soon, I don’t anticipate any significant improvement over last month.  Hope we all get a nice November surprise!