Lens Harbor

When you have multiple lenses covering a core subject (especially one with its own jargon), it gets repetitive writing the same explanations over and over again.

Consider building a glossary lens to supplement the content on those lenses.  Then whenever you use a jargony term, simply create a hyperlink and point your readers to the definition on your glossary lens.

Benefits of this are:
1. A common set of original definitions that you write once and link to from your other lenses and blogs.
2. Continue to demonstrate your subject expertise by pointing visitors to explanations that you wrote.
3. Declutter your core lenses so they stay focused on the meaty content. If someone needs a definition, they can click on the link.
4. Another lens to earn revenue, attract search engine traffic and refer traffic to your other lenses!

After my 2nd or 3rd fantasy football lens, I built a fantasy football glossary to support them. About 2/3 of the visits come from my lenses that link to it but there are search engine visits as well. Plus it even refers a little traffic back to my other lenses.

My preference is to use a text module for each term defined. Use the term as your module title and write up an explanation in the body. Then you can link to that specific module from your other lenses using the term as the anchor text. Remember to add a handy Table of Contents for visitors who found your glossary from a search engine and are starting at the top of the lens.

Final thought…only hyperlink a term once per lens.  That way your lens text won’t turn into an unsightly mass of hyperlinks if you use that term a lot.

When I added a module about Sarah Palin and updated the tags on my Why Vote for John McCain lens yesterday (the day of the announcement) there were two other lenses on the “Sarah Palin” tags page.  Today there are ten lenses on it and there will probably be 50 or more this time next week.

Congrats to SusanVillaLewis for being way ahead of the search curve.  She had her Sarah Palin lens up back in March according to the earliest comments. I’m sure her pending comments list is overflowing right now.

Three groups that I was a member of closed in the past week. Two of the groupmasters entered a reason why they disbanded the group in the notification email. Both were basically due to the level of effort to maintain the group and lack of participation. No idea why the third closed.

I wasn’t an active participant in any of the three but I am sad to see the “Dads of Squidoo” group close down. It was one of the first groups I joined on Squidoo and I always thought it was a good group theme.

Maybe I’ve been lucky or it’s because of their niche focus, but my two groups don’t take much time to maintain. I get the occasional off topic submission but those are dealt with easily. I doubt they’ll get to a point where I want to shut them down completely. At worst, I would just post a note that the group is closed to new lenses.

With many lame groups being created daily, it’s getting tougher to sift through and find ones worth joining. Fortunately, Spirituality did a lot of the work for us by building the Great Groups Guide. It’s a cool and handy guide to focused groups that actually feature their members’ lenses. What a concept! (Full disclosure: both of my groups are listed on the lens.)

Last night I posted about competing in The Great Urban Race.  This morning I checked my GUR lens and saw that the Google blog search module on it had already picked up my SquidTop post.  Found it in less than 12 hours…that’s cool.

My wife and I are preparing to run in the Washington DC leg of The Great Urban Race on Saturday. Yeah, I never heard of it either until last month. It’s basically a mini version of The Amazing Race (one of our favorite shows) where you compete against other teams to complete tasks across the city.

As a lensmaster, part of my preparation naturally involved building a lens. I’ll update it afterwards with tips and stories from our experience on the race.

After DC, the race hits Chicago, Portland, the Twin Cities, Austin and San Diego before the National Championships in Las Vegas. If you live near any of those cities and want something different and fun to do, then give it a go.

Woohoo!! It took nearly 2 and a half years, but I published my 50th lens today!

Now I’m officially eligible to become a Giant Squid in September. I haven’t been this excited since I turned 35 and became eligible to run for US President! (hopefully I’ll have more success becoming a Giant Squid)

So what was the 50th lens? It’s my review of an excellent book called American Shaolin. The author took a break from college to study kungfu for two years with the Shaolin monks in China and wrote about his experience.

Hi, my name is Mac and I’m an Office-aholic.

It’s true…my wife and I became addicted to NBC’s The Office over a year ago. We own every season on DVD. After season 4 ended and we had watched every episode from the previous seasons, we went into a sad withdrawal.

Right when I thought I had hit bottom, my family intervened by giving me the original British version of The Office on DVD for Father’s Day. (my family rocks!)

What a rush! Different (but similar) characters, new jokes, new levels of incompetent management plus that also addictive British sense of humor. We flew through every episode and bonus feature before we could stop ourselves.

So now I’m back in withdrawal and left wondering…is the American or British version of The Office better?

I’m creative writing challenged. I can wing it occasionally, but it’s not a skill that I’ve practiced much. So it’s a challenge to come up with funny or engaging lens and module titles.

Then I read Shane Amber’s amazing Rubberwood lens. It was featured as a Lens Of The Day back in the early days of Squidoo soon after I joined. Sadly, the lens has disappeared, it was one of the best I’ve seen…on topic, well laid out, witty, informative and about an interesting topic I didn’t know existed.

Anyway, Shane credited a site on the lens that he used to generate his module titles. It’s called the Advertising Slogan Generator. Simply enter your subject and the site returns a real advertising or popular slogan with your subject mashed in.

A few examples using “Squidoo” as the subject are:
Moms Like You Choose Squidoo
Snap! Crackle! Squidoo!
There’s First Love and There’s Squidoo Love
Obey Your Squidoo

The site has been very helpful to me when I’m struggling to find the right title. Now, instead of staring blankly at my lens workshop, I click over to the generator. I’ll use a slogan as generated or one of the slogans will trigger my creativity to develop the right one myself.

Give it a try when you need a creative catalyst! And thanks to Shane for the link!

The new eBay royalty stats are awesome! Someone bought a $200 golf club after clicking through to eBay from one of my lenses. The best part? I don’t have any golf clubs listed…it’s not even a golf related lens. The most expensive item in that eBay module is less than $10. You never know what people will buy after clicking through to Amazon and eBay from your lens…but it sure is fun finding out.

I do wish the Amazon and eBay stats would show the commission for each order.

Title credit: The Advertising Slogan Generator

While checking the stats on my LOST book list lens today I noticed it’s gotten a lot of referral action recently. Turns out there’s a blog running a LOST books challenge and they linked to my lens as a source for the challenge’s book list! Way cool!

The goal of the challenge is to read 5 of these books by the end of the year (before LOST season 5 starts). I don’t know the blogger but from looking around her blog, it’s clear she’s a big time book fan and has some interesting info. Any readers up for a challenge out there?