Squidblog

And that means today’s the day to submit your Giant Squid application.

Do you have 50 lenses you’d be proud to show your old English teacher? Your mom? Your kids? Your boss? 50 lenses worth bragging about and staking your reputation on?

And are you ready to get some serious VIP perks and benefits in return?

We thought so.

Send in your application before midnight EST today. All the details on how to apply are right here.

We’ll be waiting for you.

Just like any great organization, Squidoo is constantly growing and changing to keep up with the times. If you’re not a frequent forumer, here are three things you’ll want to read that relate to changes with our TOS or payment processing:

Why is Kimberly here? And forum changes…
Join us in saying “thanks” to Adez7, and learn more about Kimberly’s job as Community & Charity Organizer

Do you have money in your hopper?
Unclaimed earnings are going to charity. If you haven’t collected cash in the past year, find out how this may apply to you.

DMCA and You
Have questions about TV and movie download lenses? We have answers!

And if you haven’t been to Squidoo’s Terms of Service page in a while, you’ll want to see what we’ve added and clarified.

Now you know!

Watchful lensmasters on SquidU already found this and are loving it.

Now it’s your turn.

Check out the new Photo Gallery module. It’s an easy way to upload multiple photos straight to your lens and display them in a rotating gallery. Don’t forget to write a subtitle for each shot — that’s the best part!

Use the Photo Gallery to walk your readers through a recipe, step by step.

Or to share the snapshots from the vacation you just took and tell a story along the way.

Or a million and one (or two) other uses.

If you’ve used the Photo Gallery module and want to show it off, join the conversation and see what people think.

Many of you aren’t. For you, Squidoo is about spreading ideas. Expressing yourself. Building your online identity. Getting the word out about something. Creating meaning.

Then again, especially in a down economy, it’s an awfully nice bonus to earn royalties from the good pages you’ve built on this free service.

So if you care about making money on Squidoo, please take a few seconds to read the info in this post.

In mid-April, after the next payday, we’ll be implementing our “unclaimed royalties” policy, which has been around since the company’s inception, but never put into effect.

The short version of it is this: If you haven’t claimed your royalties in over a year, not even once, we will assume you’ve left the site or are not here for the cash and will roll your earnings over to charity.

Here’s the longer version, straight from our payment FAQ: It’s worth knowing that if you go more than twelve months without reaching a payout, not matter how small, we’ll assume you’ve abandoned your account or aren’t here for the money, and your unclaimed royalties will be returned to our system and applied to our overhead and the Squidoo Charity Fund. In April of 2009, for example, we’ll zero out any cash generated by your account since April of 2008, only if you’ve haven’t claimed it via PayPal in that time.

So if you want to make sure you continue getting your money (we hope you do!) whether it’s $1 or $100 waiting for you in Squidoo, keep your Cash Payout Threshold low. And make sure your correct PayPal address is on file with us in your account. I encourage you to change or doublecheck all your Payment Settings in your Profile page. (You’ll need to log in first, of course).

Why are we even bothering with unclaimed royalties? Accounting clarity. We want to pay lots of people, lots of money! But we don’t want to “owe” lots of people a few cents, especially if they’ve abandoned their accounts or would be just as happy giving it to charity. Easier and cleaner for everyone involved if we zero out unclaimed pennies after a year and donate it to charity instead.

Who will this affect? Well, as a policy it applies to all lensmasters. But in action, it only affects people who have their payment settings earmarked to cash, and who haven’t claimed their royalties even once in the past year. So if you HAVE reached your Cash Payout Threshold in the last year and HAVE claimed your earnings from us via PayPal, you won’t even know that this policy exists. That’s most of you.

One more time: If you’re not sure if you’ve claimed your royalties in the last year, just

1. Check your Cash Payout Threshold and set it to $1.
2. Make sure your PayPal email address is correct. Then when we process payment in April, you’ll get your loot! And you won’t have to worry about any unclaimed royalties ever again.

9 Things Successful Charities Do on Squidoo
#2: Ask for the lens

People, as a rule, don’t have a lot of time. Their lives are bombarded with personal, family, professional, and volunteer commitments. They don’t want to guess what you’re asking them to do to support your organization. That’s why in order to get what you want, it’s important to be very clear when you are asking them to build something new to support your organization.

“Please create a new lens to support us.”
“Please set a lens to donate its earnings to us.”
“Please add to our TWTTRSTRM and promote it to your Twitter followers.”

These are clear statements that encourage action and tell your prospective donors exactly what you’re asking of them. Donors can see what these requests mean, and put a time-frame and value on them.

You can even help donors by putting together your own lens on the best resources for starting a new lens. Here are my favs:

http://www.squidoo.com/firstlensmentor
http://www.squidoo.com/theanswerdeck/hq
http://www.squidu.com/forum

While you’ll always have a small percentage of people who say “no” to any type of request, the fail rate is nearly 100% if you’re not clear about what you’re asking. Helping donors say “yes” is your best chance for finding follow through.

The deadline to apply to be a Giant Squid is right around the corner.

March 31st is just 18 days away!

How many lenses away from 50 are you? That is, 50 amazing lenses.

Whether you’re building toward Giant Squid status or not, I thought you might find this roundup of tips helpful.

Tips that could give you a leg up:

* Make lenses about things that interest you.
* Write good introductions.
* Have intro photos.
* Upload a photo of yourself (or your avatar) while you’re at it.
* Try out a bunch of different modules.
* Replace the default module titles, like “New Guestbook.”
* UUU - Unique, useful, updated content rocks!
* If you want to be a Giant, you need to have at least 50 great lenses in just one account.
* Don’t copy. Don’t cut and paste without credit. Don’t plagiarize.
* Keep an eye out for style. Junky, flashing, overdesigned lenses send readers running.
* Stop by the SquidU forum and get feedback. Ask politely.
* You’re an author: act like one. Don’t publish half-baked lenses. If you do, tell everyone it’s just a first draft and in-progress!
* Be kind to fellow lensmasters and your readers.
* Sure, sell stuff; but don’t sound like a snakeoil salesman when you do.
* Invite readers to participate. Or not.
* Explain your topic to new readers.
* Experiment with “front doors” like SquidWho and SquidSports and SquidBoo and SquidFlix, but don’t only make those lenses. (Those are meant to give you starter templates to edit, not just stop with the status quo).
* Own a niche and make lots of lenses in it. But don’t repeat yourself on the same topic. 40 lenses that say the exact same thing aren’t kosher.
* Link to and feature other people’s lenses. It feels good to give back.
* Be honest and straightforward and creative.

Things that could hurt your lenses:

* Spam.
* Spamming. No matter how good your lenses are, if you spam (the verb), you’re out.
* Copied lenses.
* Mean-intentioned lenses.
* Undeveloped “starter” lenses with no personalized content.
* Lenses that sell selfishly (lenses that yell at the reader, or flash BUY ME BUY ME in all caps).
* Being meanspirited or malicious on the SquidU forums. Regardless of how good your content might be.
* Typo-riddled lenses.
* Tricking your readers into clicking on links they weren’t expecting.
* Lenses on SquidDon’t topics, like pharmaceuticals and ringtones and gambling and weight loss pills and Yuwie and freemoviedownloads and various affiliate marketing programs.
* Empty introduction modules.
* No lensmaster photos.
* Anonymity hurts.

We’ve been playing Inspector Gadget over the last few weeks, learning more about activity on lenses and from multiple accounts. We started down this road while developing some new anti-spam tools, which is an ever-evolving process that gets better every day.

A few things I’ve learned are interesting, if not surprising. And I wanted to share them with you as a reminder, for which I evidently am becoming infamous, but hopefully, heeded.

First, lots of lensmasters have multiple accounts. That’s fine. We’ve all discussed reasons that you might want to maintain different lenses in different accounts. Remember, though, that being anonymous only hurts your reputation.

Turns out, though, that lots of lensmasters, even some really good ones, have been using their alias accounts to cross-rate their other lenses. To lensroll them, even stage comments in them. Part of me realizes that simply saying “don’t do it” is like telling people not to speed on the freeway. Everyone goes 70 in a 65 zone, right? But please be aware that real ratings manipulation is against our Terms of Service, and if we see it happening more than on the odd occasion, we will lock your accounts. This isn’t a new rule, and shouldn’t take anyone by surprise.

Third: If you ever run across someone complaining about a locked or suspended account, I’d recommend taking a second to wonder why. Chances are there’s something going on in the background. There could be multiple accounts locked for ratings manipulation, or for promoting SquidDon’t spambait topics, or any number of TOS violations. We respect every user’s privacy and will handle the matter quietly but quickly. It’s true that an infinitesimal number of lenses could get temporarily locked from view by mistake, as we continue work on our spam filters, and if you let us know we’re happy to unlock them. Suspended accounts, on the other hand… well, that’s rarely a mistake. Play hard and play fair, and you’re in the clear.

But it’s not all gloom and doom! Not by a long shot. You know something else we’ve noticed? That most of our best lensmasters are also our most generous lensmasters. They look at hundreds of other people’s lenses each week, offering good feedback in Guestbooks, and even help share their favorites outward with others. That’s so cool to see.

When’s the last time you told someone you loved his lens? When’s the last time someone told you that?

9 Things Successful Charities Do on Squidoo
#1: Polish your Charity Lens

Online, the first impression prospective donors get of your charity isn’t of your clean office. It isn’t of a smartly dressed organization rep, or even of your first class brochures. The first thing many prospective donors see is your website.

For charities on Squidoo, this means your lens is the first impression prospective donors get before deciding to donate cash or create a lens for your benefit. You want to make sure it’s the best it can be!

If you’re just getting started creating a lens, Creating your “About Our Charity” Lens is your first stop for helpful tips. Once you’ve done that, check out Polishing your New Lenses for more ideas on tweaking the details of your lens.

You can even drop by our forum at SquidU.com for a peer-driven critique.

A fun lens (or two or nine) is the best way to engage your donors and show off the sweet side of your organization. Show them in pictures and words why you’re worth it, and they’ll be hooked.

Stay tuned for Lesson #2!