The Poddyland News

South Florida has warmed up nicely, thankfully, and it’s back to being a very pleasant time of year again.  It’s nice and cool at night, not cold, and during the day the temperatures are rising to the mid 70’s with plenty of sunshine and a light breeze.  No need to put the air conditioning on, open the windows to let the fresh air in, it’s practically perfect.

The weekend was fairly uneventful, with my seeing my daughters on Sunday morning for breakfast and to take them to the park, but most of the rest of the weekend I sat in and tried to work on updating lenses on Squidoo and catching up with correspondence.  

I didn’t create any new lenses this week, however I finally got around to completing my final Song Lyrics lens, YMCA by The Village People.   I created this in July 2008 but never had time to complete it, and although it had a number of blank modules, the song has done well with the search engines and I get enough traffic so that without any promotion it’s actually the best performing of my Song Lyrics lenses.  Well now I have finished it, and think I did a pretty good job, but what is the probability that Google now drops it’s position so the traffic disappears?    As well as completing the lens, I added it to more groups, lensrolled it, Stumbled it, Tagfooted it too, so you would think things would improve…   Got any lenses related to the 70’s or Party Songs?  I would be happy to add them as Featured Lenses here.   One thing I was disappointed in, is that I had wanted to add a Featured Lens Module to highlight other lenses about Greenwich Village in New York or artists that had come from there.  Could I really find anything?  Nope!  A few lenses that mentioned it, and a few really awful lenses that I didn’t feel happy with linking to.  Maybe something good will come along in the future.

Debbie and I have also been busy working on our blog (see below), and the traffic is increasing nicely, with lots of our friends from Squidoo and Tagfoot visiting.  We haven’t added many postings to the blog in the last week, but I have lots of ideas for posts and pages – just need the time to focus on them.   

One thing I have been thinking about is Google Adsense.  Sometimes a click is worth only 1 cent or fewer than 10 cents, but at other times it can be worth a dollar or even more.   I need to do some research on the keywords that pay best on Adsense, and to try to steer some postings towards those topics, hoping to target visitors who will click on the more profitable ads.   This way we might be able to go from one to five dollars a day to fifty to one hundred dollars a day.   Here’s hoping I can find the secret sometime soon and put some new ideas to work.

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR NEW BLOG

Debbie (better know to some of you as Debnet) have a new blog, and we both invite you to join in the conversations there and to see what we are up to.   We plan to cover just about anything, from what each of us is doing while we are stuck 4,500 miles apart, to news, updates and information on trendy new items or web sites / software that we like.  So please if you have time drop in to see us at Off The Record.  Be sure to leave us a comment to let us know you were there. 

My SQUIDOO LENSES

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 74

NEW LENSES

The Best Breakfast Food
The Daily Joke January 2009

MY TOP 5 LENSES

1. The Best Breakfast Food
2. My Pet Peeves
3. Bournemouth
4. Zecharia Sitchin
5. The Daily Joke – February 2008

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

• Song Lyrics – The Jam Town Called Malice
• Song Lyrics – Squeeze – Up The Junction
• Song Lyrics – Madness – My Girl

MY SQUIDOO ANNIVERSARY

Today (15th January) is the first
anniversary of my joining Squidoo. 

It seems amazing that it’s been a whole year since I created my first lens, Religious Jokes, and many more lenses have followed since then, my first still performing well, but right now none of my lenses are in the Top 2,000, although traffic is still good.  

July 2008 saw my recognition as a Giant Squid, and my catalog of 50 lenses at the time was complemented by a number of Song Lyric lenses, which is deemed to be a cookie-cutter format lens and not enough original content, but I like to think that the format I created for my Song Lyric lenses is a little different to those that some lensmasters put together.  They might not always perform too well, since there is a lot of competition for this topic, but I think they look good nevertheless.

One year on from joining Squidoo, what are my plans?

Well, I would like to join the Giant Squid 100 Club by having 100 quality lenses, but having only 70 so far and 25 of them Song Lyric lenses, this is not a priority of mine.  I don’t have the time to devote all my energy to creating lenses right now, so the best I can manage is 1 or 2 lenses a month.

My main plans with Squidoo this year are to firstly keep up with my goal of creating a Daily Jokes lens for each month, the first of these being February 2008, so another anniversary is coming up once I get the January 2009 lens completed.  My second goal is to try to create some lenses that earn money, rather than just getting traffic to my lenses.  My third and final goal is to complete the lenses on my home area in England.  The only one that is complete so far is Bournemouth, and although this won the much coveted Lens Of The Day award and is still one of my top lenses, the effort and research it took to create such a lens is hard to repeat.   I do have a number of other shell lenses for my home area, and really look forward to seeing these all complete and with plenty of visitors.  It is after all a beautiful and unique part of England and indeed the world.  Actually I do have a fourth goal, and that is to complete the biography part of my lensography.  I have covered the period from my birth up to 1988, but from there it will need to get really detailed, and I may have to split it into two lenses – or more…  I really would like to do this though, and also add many photographs from along the way.  I still think it makes a fascinating read if you would like to learn more about me.

THE NEW BLOG IS COMING ALONG

The new blog that Debnet and I are working on together is coming along really well right now.

We are managing to create posts on a number of various areas, and although the blog is only 2 weeks old, we are getting about 100 visitors a day, which is a good start I think.   I am hoping to get more like 1,000 visitors a day soon, but obviously it takes time for the readership to grow, and for the content to mature.   I do have plans for new pages on the blog, to cover seasonal product promotions, and also a list of other blogs, including Squidoo related blogs and blogs by Squidoo lensmasters.

Anyhow, if you haven’t seen our blog yet, or if you haven’t paid a visit lately, please find time to drop by, and if you like it, please feel free to leaveus a comment.   You can also subscribe to our posts. 

My SQUIDOO LENSES

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 0
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES

Zecharia Sitchin
Bournemouth
My Pet Peeves
The Lion Of Judah
The Daily Joke December 2008

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

Song Lyrics – Madness – Baggy Trousers 
Song Lyrics – Madness – Our House
Super Heroes Gone Wrong

FROM ONE COLD TO ANOTHER

I managed to escape catching a cold before I went to England for Christmas, dodged catching one while I was there, but lo and behold as soon as I get back to Florida, here we go – aah-choo!

You can read all about my pain and suffering on the latest post from Off The Record.  Please drop by and let me know you were here - comments always make me feel better

COME VISIT OUR NEW BLOG

I spent a lot of time over the Christmas break putting together a new blog for Debbie and I, and intend to use The Poddyland News here mostly for updates on our Squidoo lenses, however we will be covering a whole boatload of other topics on the new blog, and I hope you will come visit us.

OFF THE RECORD WITH DEBBIE AND TONY

My Squidoo Lenses

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008
Bournemouth
My Pet Peeves
My Claim To Fame
Religious Jokes

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

Song Lyrics – Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing
Song Lyrics – Rod Stewart – Maggie May
Song Lyrics – Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer

Does anyone else here have an interest in learning more about Wordpress and in getting their questions answered?

I am trying to set up two sites using Wordpress, the first that my girlfriend purchased already setup (My Brilliant Gifts) and the second one I am trying to build from scratch.

There are many things I don’t properly understand about Wordpress, and their forums are not easy to navigate.  Many of the inquiries seem to go unresponded to, and when they are the respondant is often arrogant and rude.   That type of treatment would kill off Squidoo wouldn’t it!

If you would like to swap ideas and problems, let me know.  I don’t know if we can easily do it here, or via a different forum.    Right now I set up a category of Wordpress for this thread.  I don’t know if categories are common to all users or unique to each one (there’s a question for a start).