I recently gave myself the challenge to write a Squidoo lens a day, for as long as I could keep it up.
My main hurdle in this challenge was to silence my internal perfectionist, the one that says the lens must be perfect before I click publish. That’s wrong for so many reasons, not least of which is that both Google and Squidoo like lenses that change frequently. By publishing a lens that still needs work, I can continue to update it over time and create better Google rankings for that page than if I waited to publish it and then never changed it again.
Here’s the list of lenses I managed to create during this challenge. The Responsible Living series is a rework of some web pages I’d written on those topics years ago.
I started the challenge on a Saturday:
Saturday: Responsible Living
Sunday: Discovering Your Values Finished on time
Monday: Living Deliberately Finished on time
Tuesday: What Is Yuwie? Finished on time
Wednesday: Popera Finished early
Thursday: Right and Wrong Finished on time (not happy with this one, but it’s published anyway)
Friday: Call of Cthulhu RPG Finished on time, barely
Saturday: Death on the Gambia Review Finished early
Sunday: Temporal Chess Finished late
Monday: Storytelling Games Finished on time
The Yuwie lens started receiving a decent amount of search engine traffic in just about 7 days. So it would appear that Google is starting to like Squidoo lenses again, at least lenses with a sufficient amount of content.
By the end of the challenge, I was starting to dread making the next lens. So ten lenses is about the limit for my creativity to flow non-stop. I plan on doing this again eventually, to increase my stable of Squidoo lenses.
8 Comments
At August 29, 2007, Juggling Frogs wrote:
Wow! This is truly impressive...
At August 29, 2007, Jay wrote:
[quote comment="2109"]Wow! This is truly impressive...[/quote]
Thanks! I'd been feeling been feeling bad because I didn't make it through more lenses. ;-)
At August 29, 2007, Kimberly Dawn Wells wrote:
Cool idea! Keep up the great work. Just think of the reputation you're building. Soon you'll be known as a Squidoo master!
At August 29, 2007, Jay wrote:
Hi Kimberly!
[quote post="339"]Soon you’ll be known as a Squidoo master![/quote]
I doubt I'd be able to wrest the title from you and the other really prolific lensmasters! At this rate it'll take me forever to get to my first hundred lenses. ;-)
At August 30, 2007, Gaje Master wrote:
A lens a day, this isn't a bad idea. I like the challenges that you give yourself. I find them amuzing and they often inspire others to do the same. It has been a while since I truly read your blog and I need to stay on top of things but it seems that life is crazy around this time of the year.
At August 30, 2007, Jay wrote:
[quote post="339"]I like the challenges that you give yourself. I find them amuzing and they often inspire others to do the same.[/quote]
I highly recommend challenges for anyone! They're a great way to learn what you're capable of, which is usually more than you think.
At April 5, 2008, Prosperity Writer wrote:
how exactly did you promote those lenses before you start getting traffic from SEs?
At April 5, 2008, Jay wrote:
I add lenses to whatever groups in Squidoo make sense for the lens, and that's about it. I rely on the backlinks from the groups and the keyword targeting to attract search engine traffic.
That's one reason most of my lenses don't get a huge amount of traffic, though. With a little more promotion, they'd do better (forum marketing, directory backlinks, etc).
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