Squidblog

Jess is one of our Squidoo summer interns. She started with us in May. Jess is great. But this story isn’t about her, it’s about her lenses.

In the past 30 days, Jess has created 13 lenses on topics ranging from the Guillotine to Vermeer paintings. She spent about 45 minutes on each one. They’re good lenses, useful lenses, cheerful lenses. People like to read them.

Jess did a little bit of light promotion, like emailing her lenses to her friends, and blogging about her favorites. Sure, she could have done more, but she’s a busy girl.

Fast forward to this morning. Jess noticed that her lenses had earned $22.59 for charity. In just 1 month. With just 13 lenses.

She didn’t get any shortcuts or help just because she’s an intern. She did this all on her own.

It used to be hard to make $22 online. Even on Squidoo, it would take a few months for your royalties to stack up like that. I used to tell people: Well, it will probably be a drop in the bucket at first, maybe a few quarters, but give it time.

Now I’m revising my message, for all the world to see. Start now. Start fast. Focus. Make 10 amazing lenses that you think people will enjoy reading. Be a perfectionist. Be impatient: tweak and improve and tweak again. Spread the word about your lenses. Don’t settle. At the end of the month, I’m going to bet you’ll have enough money to buy a few mosquito nets for children in Africa. Or just to treat 20 of your friends to Papaya King hot dogs.

The Squidoo-eBay 10 Day Challenge starts June 4th, 2008
eBay sellers use Squidoo to sell more stuff. (And win a few prizes).

To celebrate the upcoming eBay Live expo and to showcase our best eBay sellers on Squidoo, Katiyana (eBay seller and lensmaster extraordinaire in her own right) is running a contest for you.

“eBay sellers have been exploring how to use Squidoo to showcase their eBay stores, their best selling items, and their eBay business in general as a way of driving more off-eBay traffic to their listings. Creating a Squidoo lens for your eBay store is like building a second front door or window front to your business. If 1 lens can do that – think what 10 can do for you!

So here’s the challenge:

Make just 1 lens a day.
Spotlighting just 1 item or theme of items you have for sale.
For 10 days.

The challenge runs from June 4th through June 17th (We’ll give you the weekends off).

By no later than 10pm EST on June 17th, email your list of 10 fabulous eBay lenses to us here. All lenses will be reviewed by Katiyana, our Squidoo Challenge Organizer and gangbusters eBay seller, who will work with a panel of fellow Squidoo lensmasters and the official SquidTeam to select a winner.

Winner takes all. Wait, you mean prizes? You bet.

Winner gets:

—A free ipod
—Gets one of their eBay lenses showcased as the Squidoo Lens of the Day on June 19 (The first day of eBay Live)
—And gets featured as a case study in Seth Godin’s talk at eBay Live!

Find out all the details and see some examples by visiting the official Squidoo-eBay Challenge lens at: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-ebay-challenge.

If you’re ready to dive in and get started, go to http://www.squidbids.com and let Squidoo help you build a colorful, interactive lens about your eBay business!!”

You’ve all heard the expression “running with the big dogs.” It means that you’re prime time, in the soup, mixing with professionals, top of your class. Here at Squidoo, it’s called “swimming with the Giants.”

The tireless Giant Squid Organizer Team is on the lookout for new Giant Squids. Here’s some info you might be interested in, straight from them to you…

Got 50 quality lenses? Really good, unique-to-you, creative lenses? Lenses that you’d be proud to show your mom, neighbor, coworker, professor, best friend or boss? (Okay, maybe not your boss, you might not want her knowing how much time you spend Squidooing from work…). Then chances are you’re prime Giant material.

The next deadline to apply for the Giant Squid program is June 30th, 2008. This means you’ve got exactly one month to spruce up your lenses and make sure they’re in tip top shape.

Don’t have your 50 lenses quite yet? The Organizers have written an ebook just for you. This handy little PDF will give you some tips and tricks on how to perfect your lenses. Our hope is that this guide will answer some questions, get you motivated, and help you in your quest for Giant Squiddom. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and wow are the benefits worth it!

Click here to download the free ebook as a PDF: So you want to be a Giant Squid?

Okay, so what’s next? When you think you’re ready, there are a few ways to apply to the program:

1. Dropping us a note at wannabeagiant at squidoo.com by June 30th. Link to your lensmaster profile page so we know where to look. We might not reply, but we’ll be watching…
2. Doing nothing. Just make sure you have 50 amazing (like, unquestionably superb and highly ranked) lenses by June 30. If you do, and we find you and agree, we’ll invite you into the program.
3. Getting an existing Giant to nominate you at giantnomination at squidoo.com. Nepotism? We don’t think so.
4. Or, if you’re an overachiever (and we bet you are), do all of the above to make sure you get prime consideration for the program.

If you don’t quite have your 50 lenses by June 30th, don’t despair. We’re now accepting new Giants on a quarterly basis and the next deadline is September 30th, 2008. So just keep building those awesome lenses!

P.S. Questions about the Giants program? Here’s a quick FAQ that should help.

The SquidU forum is a peer-driven hive of Squidoo activity. In the last week, we’ve seen some really awesome things happening there. Here’s a quick recap in case you missed them:

• Learn what’s great and vote for your favorites at the Squid Choice Awards.
• Find out how lensmasters are succeeding in sending more money to charities.
• Discover why SquidUtils.com is still a lensmaster favored tool.
• Give high fives to the originator of the Squidoo Dashboard Extension for Firefox.
• Find out what we love about Janusz’s Squidoo logos.

In the last seven days we’ve had nearly 200 new lensmasters visit the forum to introduce themselves or get a critique of their lens. Wowsers! That’s amazing.

If you haven’t lately, stop by the forum to get help or share your knowledge with others. We bet you’ll learn something great!

Squidoo hearts SquidU forum.

You might not have met our Giant Squid Organizers yet. If not, you should. These women are incredible, and chances are they can make a world of difference in your Squidoo life.

Introducing Bonnie (BDKZ), Robin (RMS) and Patti (GypsyPirate).

They are 3 of our best, cleverest, most gracious lensmasters, working with me to run the elite Giant Squids program for the next few months. In their precious spare time on nights, weekends, coffeebreaks, or whenever the kids are napping, they are working like gangbusters to make the program something we’re all proud of. They’re in charge of things like mentoring people into Gianthood, managing the application process (nope, they don’t take bribes) and perhaps most importantly: championing our existing Giants.

If you’re already a Giant Squid, or hope to be one soon, or you’re new to Squidoo and would love a leg up, keep an eye out for the Giant Squid Organizers. And when you do see them in the halls, give them a high five. They deserve it.

In the meantime, here are some of their blogs and lenses for Giant Squids that I highly recommend bookmarking or subscribing to:

–http://bdkz.typepad.com/giant_squid/
–http://www.giantsquidshowcase.com/
–http://www.squidoo.com/SquidooTipsFromAGiantSquid
–They also post on another blog just for Giants, but sorry, that one’s secret…