My Squid Life

I need goals to keep me moving and motivated.  I looked back at some goals I set quickly during a discussion in the Squidoo Forum. They weren’t overly aggressive but I wasn’t really sure at the time I was going to devote too much time to Squidoo.  A retrospective look shows:

My 2008 Goal                                              What I Accomplished
- End the year with 75                                    – Ended the year with 124 completed lenses!
completed lenses. 

- End the year with at least 500                     - Averaged around 20,000-22,000 visits per month.
visits per day (15,000/month)                           (more lenses = more visits I suppose)

- Create at least 10 out of niche                    – I created approximately 25 out of niche lenses.
lenses.

- Later in the year I targeted making                 - Ok, I finally got aggressive with a goal but…I only reached
$2 in Amazon/e-bay royalites per                     just over $1.41 per lens in Dec.  
lens per month by Dec.

For 2009, I’m going to assume more active participation on Squidoo and try to push myself more. I’ve been battling my husband’s unexpected early retirement this year and goodness, I had no idea how disruptive this lovely man could be: I need focus. I would love to say I will recruit him as a Lensmaster but have had no luck with that to date. So, for now here is my 2009 map.

- Have 300 completed lenses by end of year.
- Average 55,000 Squidoo visits/month during the last quarter of the year (this should follow if the trend continues and I hit my # of lenses goal)
- Create a Zazzle Gallery (or something similar) to make/sell my own products (using Squidoo lenses). (JFF)
- Get total Squidoo revenue to $600/month -or- begin selling Amazon products through my own affiliate ID versus purely through Squidoo by July.
- Find a direction for my “My Squid Life” blog. It’s too much of an afterthought right now.

I have general goals regarding promotion methods, learning/using more HTML, etc but I’ll save you the details on that. For now, I just need something to light a fire under me for the next few months.

What are your Squidoo plans for 2009?

Like everyone, my December has been busy.  My 81 year old mother has experienced another compression fracture and is in a great deal of pain so I’ve been tied up with some doctor visits and such in the past two weeks. Unfortunately when there is pain, there is reduced activity, poor apetite etc., all which has to be addressed. Then of course, my mother-in-law went into the hospital.

My online efforts have been limited so I’ve focused primarily on a few lenses that I thought holiday shoppers would be interested in and focused on gift buying ideas in my blogs away from SquidTop. I have a couple of “how to” topics to do next month but they had to wait for now.

My affiliate sales are up about 30% and my Squidoo Amazon sales are up to about $140. I’ve kept about 17-20 lenses in the top tier up to this point in the month.  Based on customer interest on my site, I made lenses about finding a 32 inch LCD HDTV, 1080p LCD HDTV, and a general one on Electronics Gift Ideas for those on a budget.  I also threw in one for fun about voting for the Cutest Puppies because I needed a mental break (as opposed to a mental breakdown).

After a bit of lens visiting this afternoon, I hope to sit down and see how I’ve done as far as my 2008 goals and start setting my sights on 2009.

As I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t participated in social bookmarking/networking too much. Stumble Upon, Facebook, MySpace and the like haven’t really attracted me. I hate to be so short sighted but I’m just skeptical that I would see much increase in “business” although I might get a little traffic.

I am curious however about some of the more targeted social sites and may spend some time later this week exploring them. For instance, I have a handful of lenses devoted to products designed more for the elderly and would be interested in connected with that target population. I recently came across information about two social sites which are focused on boomers and beyond:  Thirdage.com and Eons.com

I’m hoping it will be fruitful as far as being able to provide some useful info and bookmarks as well as interacting to find out what the interests and needs are among that population. If it seems to be useful I may seek out other more targeted social sites. It would be nice to do more promoting that didn’t involve just writing articles upon articles.

Traffic to my Squidoo lenses continues to climb.  I’m finally over 22,000 visits for the 30 day period. My Amazon sales are up as well; I estimate by about 35% and other affiliate sales by a similar amount. Not sure if I can attribute this to a holiday bump up in business or if it’s just progress that I can hope continues into the new year. I would like to think that revising my tags and uping my keyword density to 3-5% was worth my time and was responsible from some of the improved traffic.

I finally journeyed into unfamiliar territory and created my first SquidWho lens.  I chose to focus on a band that is lesser known rather than try to compete for more popular names. Who is the Gabe Dixon Band? is the result of my effort. I have another that I’m in the midst of building but it’s not ready for prime time yet. Unfortunately finding suitable free photos has been problematic on these.

I suppose pay day should be coming up soon, keeping my fingers crossed on that!

I am accusing some of my fellow lensmasters of some pretty underhanded things. (All in good fun of course!) For any of the foodies I’ve missed, feel free to add your best lens to my How Squidoo Made Me Fat! lens.

It’s snowed for the first time yesterday, so I have that feeling of being stranded in the house and it’s helped me to focus on my work actually.  I’ve spent the morning knocking out some articles to promote some of my lenses.  Those backlinks are great.  I’m still using Qassia because article length is never an issue and I can do some quick ones in no time at all. I completed two and then did something more major for ezinearticles.com.

Now of course I need to attend to my blogs. Once that’s done I have a new idea for a lens, it won’t be a money maker but hopefully it will be in keeping with the spirit of the season (giving). Hope to announce it later in the week.