The Poddyland News

I haven’t posted anything for a few days because I was away in New York City with my girlfriend.

We had the time of our lives there, practically perfect weather with blue skies and temperatures around 80F, apart from Saturday from late afternoon for about 4 hours when the remnants of Tropical Storm Hanna blew through, with torrential rain and causing flooding.  But that soon stopped, and by Sunday morning the skies were clear blue again.

I think that we will turn the trip into a joint effort lens, with plenty of advice on visiting New York, as well as photos, and our unique viewpoints on various places and attractions.  I’m not sure if anyone has done a joint lens before, so it might be another first.

We stayed in Manhattan just 1 block from Times Square.  You could see part of the ABC “Good Morning America” banner from the room.  We did bus tours of Downtown and Uptown, did a boat trip around the Statue Of Liberty, went up the Empire State Building, walked around Central Park several times, even had a Rickshaw ride through the park and back to the hotel.  

Walked around so many streets, saw so many amazing sights, including Ground Zero, which was very emotional.  It’s the first place where I have seen a museum and church put out boxes of tissues for the visitors.  Neither of us could talk inside the WTC Tribute Museum for fear of choking up.

We did a night bus tour of the city on Friday, winding back at the Theater District as the shows were ending.  There was a crowd waiting outside where Grease had just ended, Taylor Hicks (American Idol winner) was starring, and we got photos, plus I got to shake his hand.

We had to ride the open top tour bus back for an hour on Saturday in the torrential rain, either that or wait an hour for another one with space downstairs or take a taxi, but you know sometimes you have to take the crazy option.   Well the heavens opened, but luckily it wasn’t too windy.  As the ride went on we got wetter and wetter, the drips and puddles on our freebie ponchos found more places to leak into, and every time the bus stopped and started a 3 inch deep river sloshed backwards and forwards over our feet.   We just sat miserably along with 4 other people at the front of the bus, and then there were 4 more and the tour guide further back.  Every time the guide said “look left at this” or “look right to see that” we just burst out laughing, since if we attempted to lift our heads up the water would soak us, or blow off our hoods, and then to try and pull them back up the poncho would fly up over our heads and need to be pulled down again.   We were just laughing hysterically the whole time.

Well we have plenty more material which we are going to save for the lens, as well as over 600 photos and 3 hours of video to go through…  So keep your eyes open for when we get the lens under way…

Meanwhile back to Squidoo……..

I got paid yesterday - woohoo :)   The largest payout yet, the best amount per tier ever I think.  So that was nice.  Google has picked up on several of my lenses, in particular My Pet Peeves.  Today the lens rank updates saw all but 3 of my top 40 lenses drop in ranking for some reason, so I need to get busy and work on some updates.  It was hard to do in New York with a horribly slow wired connection in the hotel room, but now I’m back and determined that September is going to be a good month.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 8
Top 10,000: 6
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My top 5 lenses are mostly unchanged since 4th September, however despite Google having picked up on My Pet Peeves and giving it the best traffic ever, it’s ranking has dropped to 6th place. I expect it to pick up in a few days however, but as long as the lenses stay in the Top 2,000 I’m happy.

Poddys Lensography
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke - April 2008
Bournemouth
The Daily Joke Lensography

I mentioned in my blog yesterday that I am looking to create a lens about what people do while they are waiting for the lensrank to update, since it’s taking longer and longer, and yesterday it was mid-afternoon (in the Eastern USA) when the updates finally occurred.

I initially thought that it would be great if people could send in a candid photo of themselves (or just a funny photo) plus a short caption describing what they did while waiting for the lensrank to update.

A am now going to add a second section to the lens - Song Lyrics!  Rock The Ice said in the forum yesterday that he hoped the rankings didn’t update, because last time it updated late on a Wednesday his rankings plumetted.   That got me humming the song I Don’t Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats and changing the lyrics to I Don’t Like Wednesdays.   Rock is going to work on some new lyrics to fit his mood.  So please - think about what you do while waiting for the lens rankings to update, come up with a song to go with it, and post the lyrics to ohtheagony@poddys.com

The pictures and song lyrics will be added to the lens for everyone to vote on, and I will add links for each of the lensmasters that contribute back to their profile on Squidoo, so everyone wins - me hopefully for creating a popular fun lens and all the contributors for the additional publicity.

So come on - get creative - take some funny photos - think up some good lyrics - and let’s get this lens rolling…

Debnet (Debbie) lives in the south of England & works in education.   She had planned to take a year off  to spend in Florida, but the plan has now changed, so she can only stay for two and a half months until the end of October.

She enjoys writing about the funny things that kids say and do and about her experiences of working in schools.  However, she keeps having brain wave ideas for different lenses and hasn’t got round to those yet.

Debbie is hoping eventually to have a mix of lenses, some more serious tied to education issues and others more light hearted.

She enjoys watching F1 Grand Prix racing, most kinds of music, watching tv, especially Big Brother, researching her family tree, spending time at the beach, food and so much more.

I hope you will find time to visit her lenses.   These are her top performing lenses, one of which made Lens Of The Day several weeks ago.

Fish And Chips
Selective Mutism
Sacred Spirit
Cornish Pasties
Social Stories
The Worst Gifts I Ever Received
Only Fools And Horses
Wonderbra

I didn’t get a chance to update my lenses yesterday, had a nice evening with my honey, a nice meal ready when I came home, then went out shopping, then laid in bed and watched the Olympics while munching on popcorn.  It doesn’t get much better than that

While waiting for the lenses to update, I completed a couple of surveys though.   I do them with 3 different companies, but I have found that Opinion Outpost is the best since it pays real money.  eRewards seems like it pays good, but 2 out of every 3 surveys I try to complete tell me that I am not qualified, and when I try to cash the rewards, there is nothing other than Borders to really buy.  They mostly only offer vouchers for 10% off products, which is not real money.

Opinion Outpost though has worked out good.  They will send you a check, and it’s real money.   And you get paid for referring people as well.   If you have some spare time, please take a look…

As many of you know this has not been a good week, with my girlfriend’s visa to come stay with me in the USA for a year having been rejected, and as a result she now faces being turned back at Miami when she comes over on Friday night. So both of us have been highly stressed and the lenses have suffered. We hoped to be living together as from Friday night, having been seeing each other for over a year, but now even if she does get into the country, she is only here for 8 weeks, and then her chances of getting in again depend on applying for a visa again. It’s a big mess, and it now might be another year before we can start our lives together, the only time we can be together in the meantime being when one of us can travel between England and Florida. Well you can be sure I will keep you updated… My fingers are crossed, as she has given up her apartment, taken a year sabbatical from her job, and now will have to sort things out when she goes back in October. What is certain is that our hopes to spend a year in the sunshine are dashed, since she can’t ask for another year off now, the company she works for jumped through a lot of hoops to arrange it this time. WIsh us luck on Friday night when she arrives in Miami…

Well apart from that, I have been trying to do some work on my lenses, despite my mind being on other things…

Over the weekend I added a new lens, Daily Jokes For August which features instead of the usual jokes, funny baby pictures. I selected only the funniest baby pictures for this lens, and although some of you might have already looked at it, tonight I changed a couple of pictures, and also added a voting module. So please come take a look, or come back and vote. I guarantee you will find at least one of the pictures funny.

Tonight I also updated my Bournemouth lens, adding links for AFC Bournemouth, the local football team.

LENS STATUS
Top     100       0
Top  2,000       9
Top 10,000    15

Well I woke up this morning all gung-ho, waiting eagerly for the lensrank to update, and then my whole day came crashing down, as every single lens dropped by hundreds if not thousands.  My top lens dropped from 79 overall to 354 - yet traffic is the same as it has been all week.  Even lenses that have been getting more traffic in the last few days plummetted.

I haven’t felt up to looking at the ranking changes yet, but I bet that every one of my top 25 lenses went down by hundreds of places at least.

So today, an important day, one day when I was going to work on several lenses, also to work on a new lens, just went out of the window.

Instead of doing this, I flipped between feeling tired because I was depressed, and posting in the Lounge, my initial thread turning into 3 or more, the initial one having close to 100 responses the last time I looked, and the only - yes ONLY consolation I have is that I am not alone.  So many of my good friends and hard working lensmasters are also in the same boat - their lenses plummeted as well.

It seems that we now have to have a lot of clickouts to get a good lensrank.  Well frankly my lenses are written as I was told they should be, to focus on the subject matter of the lens.  That means apart from other related web sites, there isn’t always a lot to click on.  So if I can’t get my visitors to click on qall the links on a lens, does that now mean it’s not going to rank anywhere?

To be perfectly honest, I have put so much of my time and life into creating lenses the past 6 months, spending pretty much 2 1/2 weeks doing nothing else but work, create lenses and sleep in order to become a Giant Squid, and for what?  If I can’t now get any lenses into the Top 2,000 (I had 8 yesterday, now I have 3 - barely!) then my chances of earning any money are severely limited, so is it really worth it?

Then along with a few others I start looking at top lenses, and find spam up there.  One lensmaster with 2 lenses in the top 2,000 that are nothing  but spam, and the comments from other lensmasters are obviously written by the same person.  All the lenses by these other lensmasters point to the same list of links as well.

If these spammers are going to now get a share of the hard earned money that US hard working lensmasters worked hard for, I’m very disappointed.

I really like it here, I have made a lot of friends,  I enjoy making my lenses, but it’s an awful lot of hard work, and with my girlfriend coming over from England in a few weeks, I’m looking for a way for us to make money so that I can support her for the next year.  If it’s just going to take a lot of time and then the meager base earnings get taken away anyhow, I wonder whether it’s even worth trying.
If I have to create crappy spammy lenses myself in order to make money, can I live with myself in doing that?  I am a perfectionist and pride myself on quality (I don’t always achieve my goals though), so to undermine my own style won’t do for me…

So nothing  got done today, I just feel tired and frustrated - and it’s almost monthend.   Should I even care now…  I will be lucky to make $20 at this rate - not going to stretch the shopping bill too far…

A couple of my lenses seemed to hold up, but my total traffic took a real dive this weekend.
Not just Squidoo, my other sites as well…

I know it’s the holidays, and the weather was probably nice in various places, so people spent less time online, but I’m wondering if it was just a trend for me, or did anyone else see a drop in visitors as well?

It was wonderful to have My Claim To Fame at #1 in Entertainment and #12 overall, but I wonder what today’s lens ranking updates will bring…

Just wondering if you have any thoughts on how to do this…

One problem right now is that some people have generated multiple accounts - dozens or more in at least one case apparently, and cross rated their own lenses, giving them a false high ranking.

How can this be prevented?

Should it be harder for someone to sign up at Squidoo?  Should you require a REAL email address (ie: from your domain or ISP, rather than say Hotmail)?  Or some other type of checking.

If we make it harder to register, is that then going to deter the genuine newbie, who doesn’t have their own domain etc?  In that case, it’s not a good idea I think.

Should HQ respond retrospectively, as they have done this time, closing down the spammers once identified.  Make it easy for them to come and do their stuff, and it will be easy to find.  But, until found, their lenses affect the rankings of others.  What if this was to happen at monthend?

Any other thoughts on this, and what HQ might be able to put into place?

I was taking a look at the Angels forum on the Lensmasters Lounge, and it seems that the Angels haven’t commented on any of the new requests for blessings in a while.   I have a few theories on that…  Just wondered what you all thought…

Maybe a blessing should remain a secret, and not open to the world.  Otherwise one person could say “you blessed their lens, how about mine”.

There are so many requests these days, lots of which are from lensmasters with their first lenses too.  I like to think that my lenses are good, but they didn’t instantly get that way.  Maybe the angels are getting miffed with the lack of quality in the lenses being put forward.

We just went through a monthend, actally quarter end, and Giant Squid induction.  Maybe at the end of the month the angels, like the rest of us, are busy with their own stuff, tarting up lenses, working on traffic and rankings, to have time for mere mortals and blessings.  In which case I would expect to see the traffic in the forum pick up at any time.

Any thoughts?

I finally became a Giant Squid - all my hard work paid off, and I’m so pleased to have reached the next level.

Congratulations to everyone who was awarded this status today.

I now have so many new great lenses to visit, so I might take a break from creating any new ones for a day or two, and catch up on maintenance of my existing ones, and very importantly work on building my traffic back up.  While focusing on creating new lenses it sure has dropped.

At least the next level - the 100 Club might be a bit easier.  Only 40 lenses to go and 3 months to do it in.

Enjoy the holiday wekend everyone.
Tony