SquidU

Happy New Year!

w00t! It’s 2009! Already!

Some of our lensmasters are brand new, ready to take on the world, and working hard on creating their first lenses. Some are rocketing towards Giant Squid status, soaking up every bit of information they can. A few have been with us since the beginning, and will be working on their 150th, 300th, or 500th lenses this year. Incredible.

As we know, time does not an expert make. Not every fifty-year-old is a college professor or rocket scientist or the president. Not every three year Squidoo-veteran is a Giant or an Angel or a Citizen, or earns enough to pay their mortgage. But the opportunity exists for everyone to get there.

So what DOES turn an average internet user into a top-earning lensmaster?

Passion
Planning
Commitment

Passion is the internal force that moves a person to take action. It’s what keeps graduate students up way too late and why athletes train in the rain. It’s what sparks idea after idea in a lensmaster and makes their copy exciting and contagious. It’s the subconscious alarm clock that drives you to check your dashboard every few hours.

Passion can’t be forced. You have it or you don’t. The key is to find your reason to be passionate or topic to be passionate about. This is different for every lensmaster. Some love the thrill of seeing their visitor count jump. Many are here for the support of a special charity. And just about everyone gets a high from seeing their payday royalties. But most lensmasters are passionate about Squidoo because of the freedom they have to express themselves and the topics they love.

It’s easy to see if you have passion for Squidoo. If you’re still reading, chances are you do. If you have passion, the rest can be learned.

Planning is knowing what you need to do to get to where you want to be, and when it needs to be done by. Planning helps truck drivers deliver their goods to the right locations and on time, and it helps lensmasters create the right lenses at the right time. Poor planning can cause your 4th of July lenses to be started on the 5th. Solid planning helps you outline your back-to-school lenses in May.

Planning is easy to do. It takes just a few minutes a day to decide what you want to capitalize on and when your deadline should be for finishing it. If you use a calendar system, it’s even easier. Pick the dates and events that are most important to you, and set the due date for creating lenses a few months in advance.

Commitment is manifested a few different ways. Committed lensmasters keep making lenses after a critique is less than stellar. Committed lensmasters work through slow traffic and poor sales, and don’t give up when Google boots their listing from the first to thirteenth page. They understand that time and consistency and being a team player are the keys to building a reputation on Squidoo.

A lensmaster without passion is just a lens factory. A lensmaster without planning misses out on holiday sales and traffic. A lensmaster without commitment has a lot of WIPs. A lensmaster with all three is destined for great things.

2009 is upon us! What will Squidoo be for you this year? Will it be a great place to dish about your latest hobbies? Will it be your secret weapon for blowing your business competition out of the water? Will it be your saving grace for connecting with other lensmasters who face similar challenges? Will it be the place you earned record breaking donations for your favorite charity?

Share your goals with us on the forum!

At Squidoo, we’re passionate about the ideas our lensmasters have for using lenses. We’re planning great new tools and contests to help you succeed, and we’re committed to Squidoo being the best place to build free web pages. We’re excited you’ll be joining us.

Happy New Year, from the SquidStaff!

Hey Happy Lensmasters!

Even if you did a chunk of your holiday shopping online, chances are good that you, like millions of other sale-seeking shoppers, will be doing your post-holiday shopping around town. And you know what that means? Why, a fabulous opportunity to tell them where to go, that’s what!

SquidZippers is one of Squidoo’s front doors that lets you create a lens about your locale, including what everyone is looking for right about now - a super deal. So get out that newspaper and score points with local shoppers by creating your own post-holiday sales circular right on Squidoo!

• Who’s got the goods? Don’t tease me, just show me the deals! If you hail from a small town, you can use more space on your lens to share exciting sales. A module a piece is enough room to let shoppers know where to go and what great discounts they’ll find. If space is limited, categorize clothes, holiday wares, toys, and tech with lists.


• Make your own map. Every hard-core shopper knows you must have a plan of attack. Use Google Maps to plan the path of least resistance.


• Leave room for cocoa. Shopping is hard work, so be sure to point out the best watering holes.
  
• Don’t keep this secret to yourself! Email the lens to your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors. Encourage them to do the same. You’ll be the instant Clearance Diva.
  

You can even add special links to online deals so when the weather outside is frightful, as it is right now in northern Wisconsin, bargain hunters don’t have to leave the comfort of their jammies to snag a fabulous find.

Capitalizing on the holidays doesn’t end with New Year’s. In fact, now that the relatives have gone home and the tree is on the curb, there are only six weeks until that next heart-warming holiday comes around. Valentine’s Day is near!

Get started today at SquidZippers.com .

Stay warm!
~Kimberly
YOUR Community & Charity Organizer

If you’re at all like me, the holiday hustle and bustle of late has filled your head with dozens of ideas. Shopping lenses and gift lenses and activity lenses and entertainment lenses. Recipe lenses and decorating lenses and how to survive your crazy cousin Melvin and how to host a kindergarten recital. The best locations in town for after-Christmas shopping specials and how to string out gift giving for eight days. Your ideas for surprising your honey on Valentine’s Day and your new wish list of stuff you didn’t get for Christmas. Your resolutions for 2009 and all the foods you’ve sworn off your diet.

And, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been busy with relatives and presents and cleaning and eating, and haven’t made time to get these thoughts down on lenses. What a wonderful opportunity to share Squidoo! In fact, when is a better time to share Squidoo than the holidays? You have a captive audience of out-of-town relatives and record royalties to show off. And think of all the great new modules and tools we’ve added this fall. Oh yeah, Squidoo is definitely cool holiday entertainment.

So gather the family ’round ye old laptop for a spell and show them how it’s done. Take some of those ideas and whip up a few lenses, with the help of your company, of course.

• Record your family’s special wishes for the new year.
• Host a Stickler Family Stuffing Showdown.
• Create a virtual tour of your holiday decorating techniques.
• Debate whose Secret Santa gift was truly the best.
• Publish your own holiday how-to mini-series.
• Say hi to distant relatives.
• Memorialize someone special.
• Make a wish list for charity.
• SquidWho for everyone!

(And be sure to help them sign up for their own accounts!)

Young and old, there’s a Squidoo for everyone. From a collection of the “cute” things your kids have said far too loud in public to a showcase of your great-aunt’s vintage cuckoo clock collection, Squidoo is what you make it. This year, make it a family affair.

Enjoy your time together!
~Kimberly
YOUR Community & Charity Organizer

For the last two years, volunteer lensmasters called Citizen Squids have been testing and promoting new features, and teaching fellow users how to make the most of Squidoo.  This past summer, the Citizen Squids morphed into the Citizen Mentors, a group of users who are each dedicated to helping you master one aspect of Squidoo.

We have:

Margaret_Schaut, First Lens Mentor, teaching you how to create your first lens on Squidoo and get started using all the basic features.

jeffwend, Promotion Mentor, showing you how to spread the word about your lenses with dozens of possible social tools.

Barkely (Linette), Groups Mentor, with great ideas for creating, promoting, and using groups to build your niche on Squidoo.

RMS (Robin), Giant Squid Mentor, teaching lensmasters how to become and make the most of being a Giant Squid.

boredofeducation (Damon), Module Mentor, showing off tips and tricks for using all the fun modules we have on Squidoo.

Have you ever wondered how YOU can become a Citizen Mentor and show off your love and knowledge of Squidoo? Here’s your opportunity! We’re looking for five dedicated lensmasters to give 1-2 hours of their expertise each week to share one-on-one knowledge with others.

* HTML Mentor, to help lensmasters master the HTML and CSS tricks they can use to jazz up modules
* Image and Video Mentor, to share ideas for displaying images and adding great videos to lenses
* Module Mentor, to take over Damon’s awesome lens on using all the modules Squidoo has to offer
* Charity Outreach Mentor, to help our newly added charities create great lenses and become active on Squidoo
* Lensmaster Donors Mentor, to help lensmasters create great lenses for charity and promote the use of lensmaking off Squidoo

To learn more about what we’re looking for in a Mentor, visit http://coolest.lensmasterperk.ever.com. You can apply right from the lens!

Our Mentors have worked hard to make help on Squidoo an interactive process. If you’d like to become part of the next wave of mentoring on Squidoo, apply today!

~Kimberly
YOUR Community & Charity Organizer on Squidoo