The Poddyland News

Wow!  I just spotted that my fan club on Squidoo is now 501.

It’s amazing that so many people have added themselves and decided to become fans.

Makes me feel good

I am hoping things continue to go well as I strive to reach the Giant Squid 100 Club.

I was all set to write my next post on The Poddyland News Wednesday morning when I got called into the boss’s office, and here I am unemployed again.

The company had been trying to cut costs, since sales have slowed down, and the biggest customer, Walmart, had been squeezing profit margins.

So here I am, one of 60 people who lost their jobs in Boca Raton on Wednesday, not a lot of hope to get another one in the field I have worked in for the last 20 years, since nobody is hiring.  In fact it doesn’t look like there is a single job advertised for what I do in the swole state of Florida.

Well I wrote a post about this on my blog and hope that you will pay a visit if you haven’t already to read more.

I think my only hope for now lies in trying to boost my earnings online, so any visits to my blog, shares, Thumbs Up, Diggs etc would be much appreciated.  Hopefully if I can get some increased traffic and exposure to more visitors, I might get some more Adsense Clicks or Affiliate Sales, and that could help to bring in some more revenue in the coming months.

I know that most of you reading this post are my friends on here, although I hope that word about Squidtop manages to spread to a wider audience.  I truly appreciate all the help you have given and can give.   People from Squidoo have proven to be very generous with advice and help, and I feel like we have some groups of people who are becoming really good friends.

I spent almost 2 hours on the phone with a lensmaster in California on Friday for example, who gave me lots of ideas about ways to potentially earn some good money, and having chatted with people on the forums over the last year, you already feel that you are like old friends, even before you chat on the phone or meet.

Well wish me luck in my endeavours.  I will be working on my lenses, but firstly I have to get my paperwork in order, tax return done while I have the time, medical work done while I still have insurance, and a couple of new internet projects off the ground.

Hope you all had a good weekend.

Mine wasn’t bad, it wasn’t wonderful, but not bad overall. Both Saturday and Sunday it was mostly overcast, with rain showers Saturday morning, and a Monsoon Sunday evening. Still, we managed to spend Sunday afternoon at the beach, and it was nice to not get fried for a change. The sun did peek through on occasions, but the cloud cover was probably 80% most of the time. Still, when the temperature is in the mid-80’s you don’t worry too much…

Both Debbie and I were busy working on our joint New York lens. It’s coming along, zooming up the rankings, but traffic is still very light. We hope that with New York being a popular topic and with putting everything we have into this that we can get it up to the top, keep it at the top and maybe even get a Lens Of The Day to share between us.

I do admit to getting jealous at times, not having had any of my lenses get Lens Of The Day yet, and some picks recently haven’t (IMHO) been lenses that took a lot of effort to create. I would rather see the award go to lenses where the lensmaster has obviously put a lot of effort into making the lens something special, and there are a lot of exceptional lenses out there, rather than seeing one of the ordinary lenses get this coverted award.

So since the shake-up in the lens rank formula last week my lenses continue to slide down the ratings, despite editing and in some cases an increase in traffic. I am getting despondant at the thought of having a much lower earning for this month, with my affiliate income being trivial, with the exception of Adsense, where I expect a record $50. I wish I could figure out where my earnings were coming from on Adsense, since in the last 2 weeks I keep getting clicks that are worth almost $1 each. I’m only getting 4 or 5 of them a day, but if I could figure out which ones, I would promote the heck out of the pages the adverts were displayed on. CJ isn’t bringing much in, Amazon nothing, but Adsense is starting to work. I need a lot more than $50 a month for it to make a difference to my lifestyle though…

One other affiliate program that you might like to try is Opinion Outpost. It’s a survey company that does actually pay you in REAL MONEY! As always you earn more by referring people, but the surveys are genuine, and the earnings are coming in, slowly but surely. There is a banner at the bottom of this message if you would like to take a look at them.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 6
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Bournemouth
My Lensography
Poddys Lensography

It looks like only one of my posts from yesterday made it to the front page of Squidtop, Favorite Lensmasters – Debnet.  

I am not sure what happened to the previous one, maybe only your latest post gets added to the front page, but it did contain a few tips for using Squidtop, features of Wordpress that some of you might not be familiar with.   In case you missed it, and I suspect everyone did, Here Is The Link

It took forever for the lens rankings to update today, and during a discussion in the Lensmaster Lounge I had an idea to create a lens about what we do while we are waiting for the lens rankings to update.  It’s not only the change in rank that takes place, it’s the giving of the Green Light to new lenses, so it’s important to us all.   Do we tap our feet, pace up and down, tear our hair out, or what? 

If you would like to contribute to my lens, I need from you a brief description of what you do while waiting for the lens rankings to update, plus a candid photo to go along with it.  The details of how to submit your entry for the lens are in This Thread.

Meantime, the rankings did update finally early this afternoon, and here is my current status.

LENS STATUS
Top 100        0
Top 2,000     9
Top 10,000   4
Lenses         60

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