Hello dear lensmasters -

Angel blessings are precious. They are meant to be a reward for your efforts to improve the quality of Squidoo.com by creating attractive pages. So, blessings need to be earned.

I'd like to point out a few things that might help you to get the blessings of one or more Squid Angels.

Consider this: Squid Angels are lensmasters like you, who volunteer their time to look at your work, because they love Squidoo and believe in the vision of its founders: to create a space for people to write about their passions and make money for charity and themselves.

Squidoo made it easy to make a simple lens - but Angels look for a bit more than a couple of modules with pasted Wikipedia text and a bunch of affiliate links. Again, Squidoo made it easy to achieve greater sophistication by providing a gaggle of tutorial pages on The Squidoo Answerdeck.

In addition, Squidoo is about communities, relationships, mutual support, generosity, kindness, participation, in short - giving. Giving back, yes - but also: giving first!

Angels - like everyone else - can see if you are participating in our community by visiting and rating lenses, and posting in the forum.

Can you imagine our hesitation when you demand a blessing ("Hey angels - need some blessings!") and it turns out that your lens looks somewhat like this:

  - Quickly clobbered-together page with default module headers

  - "Content" copied/pasted from outside pitch pages

  - Little if any content on personal experiences (and mainly pre-fab hype)

  - Minimal creative use of available modules

  - No guest book or contact enabled (if you prefer isolation, don't ask the community to       
    contribute to you in form of blessings or ratings)

  - No profile description (are you human?)

  - No apparent interest in using the many tools provided (html, css, widgets, etc.) to make
    a remarkable lens

  - Zero ratings or favoriting of your peers' works

I felt compelled to write this note because many such lenses are being presented in this forum. Angels visit here all the time, yet responses to posts are few. Why is that so?

Too many lenses are simply not ready for a blessing!

Don't get me wrong - we appreciate all of you. We love to have you with us and hope we can contribute to your success as a Squidoo lensmaster.

Two simple steps before you come here and ask for a blessing: go to The Who's Who of Squid Angels and browse through our portrait pages. You'll find out about what we are looking for in a lens. Then grab your tools and tutorials from the Answerdeck and bring your lens up to Angels' standards. Ask for advice in the "Critique me" or "Help" forums, and let us know who you are in the "Introduce yourself" or "Chatter box" forums.

Then come back here - and we might just be delighted to sprinkle you with our precious Angel dust. Deal? 

A little extra...

Don't forget to subscribe to your posting here. It's very disappointing when we bless you and/or give our advice, and we never hear back from you.

Last edited by chefkeem (10/29/2008 1:55 pm)