Squidblog

The Giant Squids are showing us that Summer School isn’t just for remedial math and taking organic chemistry a second time.

No, summer school Giant Squid style is about going above and beyond and innovating and building. It’s about going faster and pushing yourselves and helping each other refine the craft of making lenses. While the rest of the world is in a summery daze.

Here’s what they’ve done so far. And there are still 5 more weeks to go!

Week #1: Caption Contest Lenses
For week one, Giants in summer school had to make a Caption Contest lens (and were the first to see the brand new module). Here are just a few of the best so far:

• How To Bathe a Cat
• Rocky the Raccoon: Caption Me!
• My Wonderful West Virginia Family

Week #2: Prized Possessions Lenses
We challenged Giants to make Prized Possession lenses for week two. Why? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard that the oddball, niche, personal review lenses are the ones that (unexpectedly) perform best. Plus, as we know, recommendations that come from personal satisfaction go a long long way. Here are some standout lenses that came out of that contest.

• A picture of my grandmother, Rose
• Whittards of Chelsea: Coffee Mugs, Cups & Teapots
• My favorite paint brushes

Week #3: Restaurant Review Lenses
This week Giants are busy getting creative with Restaurant Review “local” lenses. Check these out!

• Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina
• Judy’s on Cherry: Hearth-fired Euro Cafe
• Johnny Carinos Italian Kitchen

And hey: If you’re not one of the few who gets to take the Giant Squid Summer School challenge, maybe it’s time to ask yourself the question: What lenses could you be working on, for 5 minutes every day, while everyone else is taking the summer off?

The most recent application deadline for Giant Squids has passed, but the good news is you have plenty of time to whip your lenses into shape for the next round!

Many a Squid-in-waiting is wondering, “does my lens have to rank well to be considered great?”

Here’s what Giant Squid Mentor and Organizer RMS has to say:

***

How Is Your Lens Ranking?

Whether they are being found by thousands of people or only just a few, Giant Squid lenses always rank high with their individual readers and that, in my opinion, is what makes their lenses great.

***

There you have it! All lenses start out at the bottom of the ranking scale, and must earn their way to the top. So just because your lens isn’t currently ranked well doesn’t mean it’s not great. Plus, as the number of lenses grows, the competition gets more fierce. By regularly maintaining and promoting your lenses, you’ll soon create a reputation for developing content that’s clean, fun to read, and newsworthy.

Got more Giant questions? Get your answers at the Giant Mentor lens.

In June, Squidoo welcomed seven new charities that successfully completed the application process and have made a promise to work hard to promote themselves on Squidoo!

BuckHawk Center Animal Rescue
The BuckHawk Center is a nonprofit organization providing rescue, rehabilitation and adoption where possible for animals in need, located in Southern Missouri.
 

Paws Animal Kingdom
Giving a voice to animals all over the world.
 
 

Michael’s Way
Michael’s Way is to help the families of children with cancer to cope with the extraordinary non-medical expenses that come about as a direct result of the child’s illness.
 
 

Share Our Strength
Share Our Strength is the leading national organization working to end childhood hunger in America. We weave together a net of community groups, activists and food programs to catch every at-risk child and make sure no kid in America grows up hungry.
 

CAER Food Shelf
Community Aid Elk River (CAER) is a non-profit, community-based Christian organization, whose mission is to provide emergency food, clothing, furniture/household items, and limited financial assistance to needy families in and around Elk River, MN.
 

Athletes for a Cure
Athletes for a Cure is the sports fundraising initiative of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. We provide athletes in all sports a fundraising platform for any event they choose, anytime, anywhere.
 

Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
Empowering people to achieve success since 1985, REC helps a diversity of present and potential small business owners in the Bay Area through business training, consulting, incubator services, support, network-building and more.

Starting right away, you can set your lenses to donate their earnings to one of these worthwhile causes, or create a new lens to show your support for them! In a month or so, check the Donations Module to help them earn even more.

Congratulations, and welcome!
~Kimberly
YOUR Charity Organizer on Squidoo

PS - not yet a sponsored charity? Learn about our criteria and apply here.

Charity Central is your one-stop-shop for all of Squidoo’s best resources for charities.

Stop by to find:
- links to helpful lenses
- tips on building a better lens
- short stories and photos from our charities
- a complete list of the charities we sponsor
- notes and news about upcoming events on Squidoo

If you have a short story or photo to share, we’d love to spotlight you on Charity Central. Just send your image and blurb to charity(at)squidoo.com. You could be our next famous charity!

PS - knowing how to make lenses can come in handy. SUPER handy. Spend just 15 minutes every day getting to know how Squidoo works. Soon you’ll be a lens building expert. Trust us, this is a skill you want to have!

There’s never been a more exciting time to become a Giant Squid.

Giant Squid Summer School is in full swing. Purple stars, those elusive magical marks of greatness–they are for Giants only. Giants get perks and chats and sneak peeks and seminars aplenty. Not to mention that much-coveted Giant Squid badges for their lenses.

Yeah. It’s good to be the king.

If you’ve got your 50 amazing lenses lined up and ready, remember to apply before end of day on June 30th! Here’s how.

There’s been a lot of debate lately about lens ratings and some upset feelings about lenses that are great - seriously great - having to be rated R because of their content.

We know where we’ve stood in the past regarding lens ratings. If something’s ok for a 6-year-old to view and repeat, it can be rated G. If it gets into swears, violence, or grown-up topics, it needs to be rated R.

Nonetheless, we’re always interested in what lensmasters think about what should be rated what, so we’ve put together a survey:

http://www.squidoo.com/lens-rating-survey

While we don’t have plans to change ratings right at this moment, other than do away with the X category, we’d like to see what you think.

Thanks for playing!

As I posted a few weeks ago, it’s time to update our old “min” lens design from the dark ages. It’s a few years old by this point, and for coding and debugging and style reasons, we’re upgrading it to the recently released new “max” design.

What does this mean? If you’re new to Squidoo and this sounds like gibberish, skip this post. It’s not going to change the way you build and publish and promote your lenses. Just keep on doing your thing.

If you’ve been around for a while and currently have a min lens, starting on Thursday it will inherit the max lens default style. In short: Min gets a facelift, and Max becomes what it was intended to be — the experimental choice for lensmasters who enjoy having the first mover advantage of trying out new stuff on their lenses going forward.

One caveat: For the sake of simple testing, the 2-week long experiment with ads will run on all lenses on the site, regardless of max or min status. (Unless you chose the charity opt-out setting, of course).

Here at Squidoo, Summer is a time for fun projects, new experiments, and working extra hard while everyone else is off frolicking at the beach.

If it feels like we’ve put a lot of new stuff in front of you in the last few weeks, it’s probably because we have! From a new max layout and more modules, to a suite of look&feel themes for your lenses; from purple stars and Giant Squid Summer School, to a new direction for spam and junk policies. And we’re not done yet. Not by a long shot.

This note is to give interested lensmasters a heads-up on what we’re doing next. Starting Sunday at midnight EST, we’re embarking on a 2 week experimentation with ads. Before the words are even out of my mouth (off my fingers?) I know many of you are groaning at the idea. Oh no, not ads!

I know, believe me. But here’s what we’re aiming for, and what I hope you’ll keep in mind when you see them.

We believe in investing in our community. We believe in giving you tools and platforms and connections for making terrific lenses that you enjoy and benefit from. If you’re here for the money, we want to help you make as much money as we can from your good work. For you or charity.

Now consider the circumstances. 2009 is not a terrific economy for advertising. Ads aren’t worth what they used to be. When that happens, the overall ad pool that lensmasters benefit from goes down. And unless you made it up with your directly attributable module sales (many of you do!), your royalties last month might have felt a little light in the pockets.

So here’s what we’re doing.

Over the next 2 weeks, we’re going to run some advertising tests to see if we can reach previous levels. To start, we’re going to try a new display ad unit at the top of lenses. It will run from Sunday at midnight EST for one week. We’ll watch numbers, and if they’re considerable, we’ll work on a way to design that spot even better. If the numbers aren’t worth it, for us or for you, we’ll take the ad down. And try something else the following week.

What this means is that 2 weeks from now we should be smarter about what (if any) new ad layout works better on lenses, while being very sensitive to maintaining the integrity of your content and continuing to create a good experience for you and your readers.

As always, if you’re not here for the money, consider changing your royalties 100% to charity. Then you can opt out of display ads on your lenses in one click.

Thanks for your patience.

Just wanted to let you know that you can now pick a theme and add it to all your lenses at once. In one click.

Oh, and you don’t have to publish your lenses in order for the theme to work. Just select a theme for the lens and voila: it instantly shows up.

This is what you’ll see in your Workshop:

Non-profits and I go way back. My first above minimum-wage job was as the executive director of a county-wide United Way. One thing that’s always on the mind of charities is money. How much we have, how much we need, and who to ask for a donation next.

Charities spend a lot of money asking people for more money. It’s traditional. It’s necessary. It’s in our blood. But what if you turned the tables a bit?

Just for a day or a week or a month, instead of spending money on tools to ask for more money, what if you put all your money into promoting all the good stuff you do? Instead of working only in order to generate more income, what if you put 110% of your energy into making sure everyone knew about the amazing things you’ve done? No strings, no requests. Just pure, unadulterated bragging.

Which do you think would attract more attention? One lens on why donors should send money, or 100 lenses that show off your last ten years of events and staff?

In fact, it wouldn’t really cost that much, since Squidoo is free. And you can earn money. Which means you’re really just getting paid to shamelessly promote yourself. It’s good clean fun that every charity can profit from.