The Poddyland News

I am sitting her at 9am waiting for the rankings to update. My lens The Daily Joke September 2008 had 27 visitors 3 days ago, 147 the next day, and 93 yesterday. The lensrank yesterday was 1,137 so I’m anxiously waiting to see if it can get close to the Top 100 today. It was my 3rd place lens yesterday, I’m sure it will be my top ranked lens today, after just 4 days. Maybe, just maybe, it’s Lens Of The Day quality…

** SHOCK HORROR OMG **
It’s 10am and the lens rank updated, but not good news at all! Although the September Jokes went from 1,137 to 575 in rank, most of my other lense plummetted by up to 10,000 places. Despite an increase in traffic, my Daily Joke Lensography went down almost 1,200 places. They must have changed the formula for lens rank, and I’m not liking it at all. Yesterday I had 9 Top Tier and 5 Second Tier, today only 4 Top Tier and 8 Second Tier, and most of my top lenses have had increased traffic the last 2 days.

Yesterday was a tough one at work for me, and also hard on Debbie, since it rained on and off most of the day, and she was stuck in the condo. No going to the pool, no chatting to the old folks who have been residents for years and years, just stuck indoors on her lonesome. She can chat to family and friends back in England of course, has the internet and television for entertainment, but sometimes it’s not enough - you just need to get outside and be around other people.

So last night we went out to eat at one of our favorite places, Sweet Tomatoes. For those of you who don’t have one of these locally, it’s a buffet restaurant with a huge (and I mean humongous) salad bar, with just about every type of vegetable you can imagine. They also have 8 types of soup, all home made, home baked breads and focaccia, pasta, baked potatoes and sweet potatoes, rice, and the best muffins ever, not to mention chocolate lava cake… Also fresh fruit, frozen yoghurt etc… With a buy 1 with 2 drinks and get 1 free coupon, the whole meal the the two of us cost just $15.09. The quality of the food is excellent, and since we both love soup and salads, it’s a great place for us to eat.

We then drove to another local outdoor mall and wandered around the Dollar Store for a while. Not so much to actually shop, but to see what’s there. Although a lot of the merchandise in Dollar Stores is low quality, sometimes you find a gem of an item, and last night it was Christmas Gift Bags. Really nice bags, large ones too, for just $1 each. So Debbie was happy, managed to get a few of these, and we got a bit of a walk in to work our meal off (because the chocolate lava cake is magical - it calls to you… and so do the muffins…).

Back then to the condo, where we spent a couple of hours catching up on email and tweaking lenses. I added some more photos to our joint New York City Break lens, which although it has been published for close to a week has only had 4 vsitors so far, and 2 of them have been US! It’s still not completed, might take another week for me to add all of my sections, and to add other links etc, but we both think it’s starting to look pretty good and we hope it makes a good read. Well there it is - out of wraps now, the link is there if you would like to take a sneak peek!

Today looks like a wet one as well, so more lens work no doubt, but tonight is also the start of one of my favorite shows, Survivor, so we may have to spend an hour tonight glued to the television for a change. My two favorite shows, Survivor and The Amazing Race will be on as from this week, and I usually try not to miss an episode, but with Debbie only here for 4 more weeks, television will be playing second fiddle this season. Fortunately she likes the shows too, and they don’t show them in England any more.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

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

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…

What a busy week!   Not just work, but going out with my girlfriend, booking a long weekend in New York, and of course spending time at the beach over the weekend.

Friday evening I got my hair cut, and for the first time in 15 years I didn’t color it, so now I have sides that are silvery with still some streaks of brown, but by the time the next cut comes around I might look like a short haired Santa.  Oh well… At least I still have my hair…

Unlike last weekend, which saw Tropical Storm Fay approaching, this weekend was gorgeous.  Saturday there was a whispy high cloud cover that kept the brightness of the sun down a bit and also the temperature, and the occasional darker cloud that blew past and cooled things off for a few minutes, so almost perfect at the beach.   

Sunday the weather was practically perfect too, with almost no clouds, a very calm sea, and the beach was really busy.    Both of us love to people watch, and there is always someone doing something to attract your attention. 

Sunday we got down to the beach when the tide was at it’s lowest, so it was interesting to watch people come and lay out chairs, towels, coolers etc on the flat area close to the ocean, when we knew within a couple of hours the waves would be gradually coming closer, and it only takes a boat to go past for a bigger wave to surge in and send people into panic mode.  We must have spend over an hour watching various groups of people struggle to salvage flip-flops as they kept attempting to go on boat trips, it was a good time.

Saturday night we went out to a Brazilian restaurant, where they being the meat to the table on skewers and it just keeps coming.  The restaurant was great, but my girlfriend doesn’t handle red meat too well.  She does as long as it’s not red - but the sight of blood soon had her feeling queasy.  Shame, as it was a good meal otherwise, and the appetizer/salad bar was also very good.

Well I did manage to find time to make some minor tweaks to my lenses, and the benefits have paid off a bit, with several of them now back into the top tier.  But I am still short of 10 hours a week that I need to spend on them to really turn things around. 

It gets frustrating at times, and I am sure I am not the only one to think this, but I see some Lenses Of The Day and think to myself “I have lenses as good as that”, and in some cases the lenses haven’t had a lot of content either.  Maybe my time will come, but for now I think I will have to be content with having a few in the top 2,000…  Money is more important right now than fame…

I am still struggling to earn a lot, other than through Adsense.  My earnings for the month are now close to my all time high, but in real terms this is only averaging $1.50 a day - not enough to get me very far!  But it’s progress at least.  I hope September and october see a continued improvement in the earnings.

Well here is my sad lens status… 
Hopefully I can improve on this next week.

LENS STATUS
Top 100         0
Top 2,000      8
Top 10,000    6
Lenses         60

Very sad ranking updates for today - another lens drops out of the Top 2,000.

A week ago I had 11 lenses in the Top 2,000 and 5 in the Top 10,000.  Now I have only 4 in the Top 2,000 and 9 in the Top 10,000.  That’s a potential loss of close to $50 in the payout - ouch!   It shows how important it is to keep promoting and updating your lenses, and I have had little chance to do either in the last week.   I desperately need to do something, yet this weekend is already going to require more time than I have for essential things.

It’s going to be a busy weekend for sure.   I have to get my hair cut, go grocery shopping, see my daughters, plan a trip to New York that was to have been next Spring but now has to be done early September, get a new cell phone (mine is 8 years old and the case has to be held on with a rubber band to stop the phone falling out - embarrassing but the phone works ok though - just can’t get a case - it’s time to upgrade), research and shop for a new camcorder (can’t go to New York without one).   So a very full weekend, and in addition I need to spend time enjoying the 8 weeks I have left with my girlfriend here :)    I have a funny feeling my lenses are going to suffer further unfortunately.  The August payout in 2 months will be horrible I am sure. 

Well as usual no money from CJ or Amazon, and I still have to earn 1c on affiliate links on my lenses, but it does look as if Adsense might break records with amost $30 this month so far.  I hope as the year continues I can continue the upward trend on Adsense.

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

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…

Since I lost Sunday in a tizz with my lens rankings having plummetted so much, I decided last night to try and catch up with some updates to my lenses before the monthend.  I hope it’s enough and not too late to try and pull back some of my losses.  I’m still hurting from the ranking drops, as between yesterday and Saturday only 1 of my top 26 lenses went up in ranking, the other 25 went down, 12 of them by more than 2,000 places.  I’m hoping that today sees more levelling out, as all 26 did go up somewhat yesterday.

So last night as I said, I set myself a couple of goals, and I think I achieved most of them.

Firstly, I added a Plexo list to one of my Song Lyrics lenses, with links to all of them.  I then grabbed this and added it to the rest of the lyrics lenses.  This alone took quite a time for each lens to load and to publish.

Secondly, I went and added some new jokes to my Religious Jokes lens, and dug through my collection of funny pictures, adding some of the best to the lens.  Easier said than done, since although some of the pictures are really funny, they aren’t exactly “G” rated, so I had to dig out the clean ones only from over 3,000 pictures.

Next I did the same for my Baby Boomer Jokes lens, adding several new jokes and also some pictures.  Again I have more dirty pictures than clean ones, must split them up one of these days to make it easier to search through.

And then I went back through my July Jokes, June Jokes and even my February Jokes lenses as well as the Daily Joke Lensography (I still have to update the other months) and added more pictures.

Getting really tired by this time, but I went on to revamp parts of the introduction to my Bournemouth lens, since Google didn’t seem to like it these days.  Hopefully I did something right this time and the traffic will come flooding back.

Lastly, before crashing into bed at 12:30am, I added some pictures to my Biography and Lensography.  I think one of them will raise a chuckle or two.

For some reason I am tired this morning, but also optimistic that the tweaks and updates will pay off.

I have an idea for a new lens that will have plenty of opportunity for people to click out, but I still have to find that special topic where I can attract hundreds or thousands of people to a lens in a single day.  I think that’s the only way to have a chance to earn some decent money and to get really good rankings.

Well good luck to all of us today when the lens rankings are updated, and good fortune in your earnings this month.

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…