I haven't been too much occupied with Squidoo these past days. Though I planned on deleting -/- 50 lenses and moving them to my own sites. This will be a huge work as I'll have to rewrite them as well. I could hire someone do the job but don't have the budget for this. So I'll do it myself.
Yesterday and today I deleted two more lenses that didn't pass the keyword filter. Although I rewrote and replaced more than 80% of the keywords that could have triggered the filter, it was impossible to republish those two lenses. Unless words like "the" and "a" or "I" and "you" were those that actually hurt the filters - and I don't think my text would have been understandable without such words. Therefore deletion was the only solution. I don't want to work hours and hours on pages that don't earn me a single red cent - both lenses didn't get traffic nor generated sales for six months.
I'm thus left with 12 Valentine's Day lenses and 8 recipe ones. Hm... The recipes will almost all be moved. The Valentine's ones will stay on Squidoo till after the holiday. Then I'll make decision on moving them as well or not. I already split a few Halloween lenses that were rewritten and posted on my Halloween site and scheduled for publishing.
Ok enough with Squidoo. My post title is "moving forward" therefore I move.
Among the sites I own, there is one that used to be managed by a team. The members were me and two other lensmasters. However, I'm flying solo with this site for two years now and I thought it was time to take another step forward with it.
So I started the year pretty well with revamping my main holiday site that was powered by Concrete 5. Although I love Concrete 5 I didn't like the template I was using and wanted to have a brighter header and colors in general. I reworked the header and the colors. The site is now clean and looks good - at least to the friends I asked advice from and I'm happy with the fact that I turned it into a blog instead of a site.
I also changed the pattern: from a site working by months I switched it into a site working by holidays. Major ones minus Halloween and Christmas as categories, each having their own sub-category. Then other holidays with subcategories and sub-sub-categories. I'll add even more categories when the site will have more articles on it.
The blog feature will allow me to schedule my articles - though Concrete 5 allows me to do that too - but also won't have to update former articles unless there's only one article about the holiday. This eases the process of updating the site. In addition, whenever something runs outdated, I can just write a brand new article about it.
The move was smooth, smoother than with my previous switched sites. It went so fast that I'm still surprised to be done with it. From tomorrow till Friday, I'll honor a job I accepted for someone I know and next week I'll start working on this new business adventure I planned a few months ago. I'll have to manage to work on my sites in conjunction of the other work but it's going to be a piece of cake if I stick to my program:
I think it's going to work fine for me from now on. Not that I expect a huge amount of money before a few months - a new business needs some time to mature and earn money constantly - but at least I won't have to worry about updating lenses or Hubpages or whatever. I'll maybe create the 5 lenses I agreed to build when I reapplied for Giant but if by the end of June I don't see an improvement in traffic numbers on Squidoo, I don't really see the point keeping a status that is too demanding for the reward --> food for thoughts.
Halloween was a mess, Christmas was even worse than Halloween and I don't expect anything from Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras and Carnival, not to mention Easter. Last year prom night didn't work since I had to rework all prom lenses to comply with the new TOS. I don't expect them to work this year either but the lenses will find a place on my holiday site juste like most other lenses.
Maybe the historical ones and tarot lenses will find a place on Wizzley or Hubpages with a clear and clean rewrite, as they lost 9/10 of their readership on Squidoo. Since I don't have any site that can host them, I'll have to find a new home for these articles that I put so much work into.
So, here we are in 2014. Here's to a fantastic year doing business online. Wishing you all the best :)
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
Yesterday and today I deleted two more lenses that didn't pass the keyword filter. Although I rewrote and replaced more than 80% of the keywords that could have triggered the filter, it was impossible to republish those two lenses. Unless words like "the" and "a" or "I" and "you" were those that actually hurt the filters - and I don't think my text would have been understandable without such words. Therefore deletion was the only solution. I don't want to work hours and hours on pages that don't earn me a single red cent - both lenses didn't get traffic nor generated sales for six months.
I'm thus left with 12 Valentine's Day lenses and 8 recipe ones. Hm... The recipes will almost all be moved. The Valentine's ones will stay on Squidoo till after the holiday. Then I'll make decision on moving them as well or not. I already split a few Halloween lenses that were rewritten and posted on my Halloween site and scheduled for publishing.
Ok enough with Squidoo. My post title is "moving forward" therefore I move.
Among the sites I own, there is one that used to be managed by a team. The members were me and two other lensmasters. However, I'm flying solo with this site for two years now and I thought it was time to take another step forward with it.
So I started the year pretty well with revamping my main holiday site that was powered by Concrete 5. Although I love Concrete 5 I didn't like the template I was using and wanted to have a brighter header and colors in general. I reworked the header and the colors. The site is now clean and looks good - at least to the friends I asked advice from and I'm happy with the fact that I turned it into a blog instead of a site.
I also changed the pattern: from a site working by months I switched it into a site working by holidays. Major ones minus Halloween and Christmas as categories, each having their own sub-category. Then other holidays with subcategories and sub-sub-categories. I'll add even more categories when the site will have more articles on it.
The blog feature will allow me to schedule my articles - though Concrete 5 allows me to do that too - but also won't have to update former articles unless there's only one article about the holiday. This eases the process of updating the site. In addition, whenever something runs outdated, I can just write a brand new article about it.
The move was smooth, smoother than with my previous switched sites. It went so fast that I'm still surprised to be done with it. From tomorrow till Friday, I'll honor a job I accepted for someone I know and next week I'll start working on this new business adventure I planned a few months ago. I'll have to manage to work on my sites in conjunction of the other work but it's going to be a piece of cake if I stick to my program:
- Monday: writing one article for each site and schedule it.
- Tuesday to Thursday : working on this new business.
- Friday: writing one article for each site and schedule it and/or writing for my other blogs that don't need too much update.
- Saturdays: go shopping and do something else.
- Sundays: promotion.
I think it's going to work fine for me from now on. Not that I expect a huge amount of money before a few months - a new business needs some time to mature and earn money constantly - but at least I won't have to worry about updating lenses or Hubpages or whatever. I'll maybe create the 5 lenses I agreed to build when I reapplied for Giant but if by the end of June I don't see an improvement in traffic numbers on Squidoo, I don't really see the point keeping a status that is too demanding for the reward --> food for thoughts.
Halloween was a mess, Christmas was even worse than Halloween and I don't expect anything from Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras and Carnival, not to mention Easter. Last year prom night didn't work since I had to rework all prom lenses to comply with the new TOS. I don't expect them to work this year either but the lenses will find a place on my holiday site juste like most other lenses.
Maybe the historical ones and tarot lenses will find a place on Wizzley or Hubpages with a clear and clean rewrite, as they lost 9/10 of their readership on Squidoo. Since I don't have any site that can host them, I'll have to find a new home for these articles that I put so much work into.
So, here we are in 2014. Here's to a fantastic year doing business online. Wishing you all the best :)
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
Happy New Year and I hope all your plans for working online are successful and profitable.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Carol ! Sending the wishes back to you and here's to a healthy, prosperous and very happy New Year both online and offline :)
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