Safety on Guy Fawkes' night

How well do you know the special British celebration named "Guy Fawkes"?

The first time I went to England in the month of November - normally I used to go during summertime - I discovered the Guy Fawkes celebrations.

It was very intriguing as in my country, although we didn't start to celebrate the Halloween yet, we celebrated the Day of the Deads and All Saints Day. So, between religious events and the things I was in England, there was some kind of difference as big as the Channel that separates our countries.

Lensmaster Becksta built a page that provides you with tips for enjoying a safe Guy Fawkes night. However, instead of just putting together a few tips, she made it a very intersting read!

So, I highly recommend to check out Safety on Guy Fawkes' Night.

Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66

All About the Piccolo

Today, I blessed a lens that relates to the use and the story of the piccolo, a type of flute.

I've always loved music courses at school because they allowed us to play with instruments and, one of the mandatory instruments of the time were flutes. You know, those standard wooden flutes, soft as the wind...

Therefore, when I came across the All about the Piccolo lens made by lensmaster Flutestar123, I was brought back to those memorable days when we used to imitate our music teacher, who was a former opera singer and who taught us how to play the flute.

If you like flute and, more particularly piccolo or want to learn how to play piccolo, I suggest to take an eye to All about the Piccolo.

Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66

Lens Indigestion - Strange Traffic Drop

Browsing Squidoo's Summer Fun category looking for bless worthy lenses today, I've got my (un)fair share of indigestion.

What have Squidoo's standards become? I spotted a so-called giant having built a lens that looked more like a trash-can than like a lens built by a newbie... though this lensmaster is a giant - and an old timer who has also power to decide on what's good and bad on Squidoo. I mean, this lensmaster is like me: an angel... who'd bless outstanding lenses. However, what's this lensmaster's notion of what's outstanding when one sees what's their own lenses?!?

I've also spotted a bunch of spam (almost all checked lenses were spam), plagiarized lenses (hoho... I thought we had some kind of duplicate content filter that would be triggered during the publishing phase whenever one would use duplicate/stolen/plagiarized content on our pages? Seems that it doesn't work at all. Or not entered into action yet :(

Have I been assigned the worst category on Squidoo? I don't think so, I hear so many angels who complain about the huge range of junk, spam, TOS violations, and the like they happen to see on their angeling duties.

Everything, from the one who copies/pastes their own store content, what they want to promote through Squidoo, but don't even take the time to rewrite their texts or add pictures/graphics/images, in order to make it attractive and, therefore, worth entering the payout category (as those lenses are related to hot keywords and might very well enter tier 1) and, therefore, prevent quality lensmasters from getting decent earnings to the one that violates the TOS building Squiddon't lenses, to those who simply don't care at all and just build keyword stuffed lenses hoping to rank high in the SERPs; I think I've been given the great advantage to start the day with an horrible indigestion!

On the other hand, I also noticed that since I posted my sincere and honest thoughts about the giant programme last week and that I disagree with it, traffic to my lenses dramatically dropped. I already spoke about it, but not on a public post.

As a matter of fact, how could someone explain how a lens that has 75,000 monthly searches; which sites on Google page result 1, 3rd position - no other lens before mine and before page 2 - doesn't get at least 1% of the monthly searches in traffic? 

I mean 1% is a really low share of the traffic if my lens is on Google's page 1: I've already had my sites on Google's page 1 and they got at least 10% of the traffic, though keywords didn't bring in 75,000 visitors!

Unless people reject Squidoo pages as a whole when they search on Google, there's definitely something wrong with those results! And I made a decision on analyzing my 5 best ranking lenses and study their evolution in order to learn why this can happen. More particularly when a similar lens sits for weeks on a higher lenrank although it gets less visits than mine and isn't listed on Google's page 1.

Ah well... let me share a few lenses that were bless worthy those days:

A Quilt Story: Voices from the Great Depression

Barnyard Animal Cakes, Cupcakes, and Cookies

Rationing Fashion: Women's Clothing of WWII

Sakamoto Ryoma

Tropical-Style Luau Party! Hukilau! 

Corsica

My Pet Peeves Those Things That Annoy Me

Origami Roses Instruction

As usual, I'm going to ask you to pay those pages a visit: you won't regret the time you'll spend reading them and admiring their beautiful layout.

Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66

Everything Is Going to Be All Right

My moral's raising; I feel really better since I made my decision on not renewing my giant status. And this allowed me to do a few things yesterday afternoon after that crucial step!

I finally joined Amazon.co.uk - it had to be done, but I never took the time to fill the application. And, while browsing this store, I found a myriad of absolutely adorable strawberry themed things. These are going to soon be featured on my main site. Ah, the pleasure to look at all those cute accessories and write about them...

Yesterday afternoon was also the opportunity to start my Squidoo account clean up.

I deleted the remaining work in progress lenses I built - I'm planning to move them on to one of my sites or a blog I'm planning to create.

I deleted a few too low ranked lenses, those lenses that never get any significant traffic. One will be rewritten and posted on one of my sites, the others will just sit in a file on my computer. I have any plans to rebuild them.

For one or two weeks, I'm going to study three former "ever.com" lenses that have been converted into Squidoo.com lenses and make a decision on deleting them if they don't pull any more traffic; or keep them if their traffic raises by mid-July. If there's a significant change (and there's already one minor change), I'll keep them in my account. To say the truth, I hope that there's no significant change and that I can move them on to my main site. They will work very well on there!

Because I mainly build seasonal lenses, starting in August, I'm going to closely check my Halloween lenses, and get rid of the low traffic drivers and transfer them to my main site too. Then, in October, I'll do the same with my Christmas lenses; in January with the Valentine's Day lenses, etc. This way, by next year, I'll have a very clean Squidoo account, bringing me a stable small monthly income. 

As said earlier, having a shorter account will allow me to save time in updating my lenses, and probably even split my current account into several ones. Let's say that I'd have one Halloween account, a Christmas account and one general celebrations account in addition to my existing Squidoo account that would host my history, about me, general lensography and angel lenses.

I think that my lenses will have better results in niche accounts than in just one that's absolutely not related to a single niche I've built.

I'm also taking some distance with the forum where a new hot debate is going on and threats have been made... Oh my. How happy I am to put this so-called "community" on the place it should be!

A community where everyone's supposed to help everyone and where those who know how to do things and pretend to share their knowledge always keep 50% of their knowledge for themselves so that they make sure to always keep the top spot. Ah well.

Leaving Squidoo aside of my online life doesn't mean that I won't do my angel duties with conscience! And here are a few lenses for you to check out. You may consider them as not outstanding but in my opinion, they were worth a blessing, whether because they actually are great or just because they're outstanding and that they should inspire you when building lenses - warning: I said "inspire", not "copy". Thanks for them!

Boredom Buster Activities for Kids

Mark Ballas and Chelsea Kane

Meet our Cute Kids: they are furry, have racing stripes, four legs and chubby cheeks!

Beautiful Pictures of Leaves -- Leaf Posters and Prints

How To Stop Being Lazy - Overcoming Procrastination

Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66

Why I Won't Reapply for Giant

I've been thinking to that giant renewal since Friday. I haven't slept for a few nights, I'm knocked down to say the truth. I devoted a lot of my time to the Squidoo community and seeing the way I'm treated, makes me sad. 

It's a first time for me as I'm not accustomed to sharing my state of mind and very few things actually touch me deeply. I mean things as trivial as those, of course.

Not so long ago, I made a post in SquidU stating why I loved Squidoo - yep, loved... in the past. To be honest, today, I don't believe a single word I wrote at that time. And would really like to remove that post because it was what they wanted us to think and believe. Not the truth.

Oh, well, after all, Squidoo is just Squidoo. Nothing more, nothing less. Not being a giant any more won't change anything in my life. 

I can live without Squidoo and I can live without that giant status. After all, the only thing that's important, is the way I consider myself. Not the way unknown people consider me.

If they're stupid enough to believe that, because I don't have a "giant" badge, I'm not interesting... good on them. They aren't worth my interest.

So, last night, still awaken at 3:30 AM, I made my decision on not reapplying.

Here are a few motives that helped me making my decision:

1. I've already worked hard for making giant and 100 clubber and don't see the point in reapplying for something I earned the hard way and that they're literally stealing from me: giving is giving, taking back is stealing! I know, this is a childish expression but it speaks the truth.

2. I just can't fill this application form: questions don't match my culture, my personality and my mentality and I do NOT allow Squidoo to force me to change my mind and adopt another culture. After all, Squidoo's filled with worldwide members and should respect everyone's culture and modesty.

3. If I reapply for giant, I feel like I'd be ready to agree with whatever Squidoo comes up with even if it's detrimental to the entire community. So, let's say that, tomorrow they require from us to pay a $50 monthly fee to keep our accounts active, are we going to all be OK? Me... I won't, for sure!

4. HQ tends to more and more consider lensmasters as their employees... Sadly, those lensmasters don't get fixed monthy wages to justify the treatment.

5. Several threads have been opened yesterday, in which "new giants" claim that they have been granted the status once again. So, let me sum up: a very small team of 2 community organizers carefully checked thousands of lenses for quality, duplicate content, copyright violation, spam, etc. in only 5 days (if they took the weekend off, it would mean only 3 days!!!!)? 

I'm really surprised to learn that it didn't take more than a few days to separate bad apples from the good ones! Wow! It's better, quicker and more effefctive than Samantha would have done in Bewitched!

I'm sorry but 5 days weren't enough for all those lenses to be deeply and carefully checked. Even so, I know giants who have their accounts filled with legit AND illegal lenses... 

This new giant programme looks more like some kind of alibi for some unknown future.

I've made a list with my personal thoughts regarding this mess. In this very long list, I could only place arguments against my application.

However, yesterday, there was a post on HQ's blog that made me see things differently:

• Not being a giant any more would allow me to split my account into a myriad of different ones: one account per niche I have built. 

• Losing my giant privileges by the end of the year will also reset the famous - and infamous - 9 outbond links limit on my account. This means that, by the end of the year, I'd rather stop updating my lenses. As, if with this limit I happen to update my lenses, they'll get locked! Which translates into... having more time to dedicate to something else...

I already deleted all my work in progress lenses as well as a few low performing lenses. I will continue deleting low ranked and no traffic lenses. This will clean up my account and leave me with a more accurate view on my work. It will also ease the process to split this account into several ones.

I thought HQ wanted us to be active in the community. This giant programme change will have me stop being active on Squidoo because I'll lose my privileges. Opposite effect, then...

I'll just check new lenses looking for bless worthy ones because, and unless they revoke my status, I'm still an angel on Squidoo.

To sum up my Squidoo membership, I'd say that, I devoted a lot of my time helping people in the forum with critiques, helping people in Fresh Wonders with critiques, suggestions, tips, etc.


Fresh Wonders is becoming a place for some to drop links and go away, doing what they wanna do, leaving us with links to check, vain suggestions, waste of time. Critique Me section of the forum is also more a place to drop links and certainly not speaking our mind as it seems that honest opinion isn't welcome.


I also volunteered for angeling during the first quarter of 2010; how much time did I spend on lenses, checking them for duplicate content, checking proper graphic credits, proper module edition, etc. I remember, checking the daily digests - which I quickly called "daily indigestion" - took me three hours per day! None of these hours were never paid! I didn't want to be paid for this, but consideration would have been welcome right now... seeing the conditions of the new giant programme.


And Squidoo has become more of a place to promote ourself than an actual helpful community.


No, instead, their thankfulness translates into taking back my status.

As said earlier and posted on HQ's blog: I've never thought that, one day, Squidoo would chase me away. 

There is definitely an ocean between us.

Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66