I would, instead of splitting the lens up, make more lenses on the topic.

Thanks wstrauss73 for your advice on the lensrank.

Thanks KimberlyDawnWells for your suggestions on new lens topics.

I also appreciate your comment MrLewisSmile, as I have already made one additional lens branching off from this one. Why would you keep the original lens at the current size? I'd be interested to know what you see as the advantages of this. One person told me it may be to slow to load for people without broadband. What are your thoughts?

Much appreciated :-)

Hi thefluffanutta,

Could you please expand on the comment  "Competing with yourself" is one way to get more traffic and money...

Thanks :-)

I would keep the lens as it is because if it is getting you visitors - GREAT.

I would then put a Featured Lens module at the very top (right under the intro) and near the bottom (you can find the module only under the "NEW" tab when you're adding modules), and in it I would feature the 4 or 5 other lenses with a title something like "Other Visitors Also Visited:".

The visitor would then see my 4 or 5 related lenses. And I would do this on each of the 5 lenses.

Don't break down a winning lens if you have one! Just make more on the subject and link them all together!

Wow, you're getting lots of great feedback !

I agree with what's being said. If anyone would know, it would be these guys.

Definitely don't change too much about your original lens if it's doing fine, as Lewis said.

And there's no rules against monopolizing here so go right ahead and make as many similiar based lenses as you want. A little extra creativity may be needed in order for them to look and seem slightly different.

Good Luck!


  Bill

flaminglacer wrote:

Please make them more than just 'slightly different' - this is one of the problems we are having at the moment.  I have just banned a number of lensmasters from my groups because all they produced was a 'slightly different' variation on an increasingly boring theme.  I'm all in favour of spinning lenses off a successful but overly large lens but new and/or varied content please.  Fine if some modules overlap but the bulk of it should be new - or am I being too picky here?

No, you're not being too picky at all.  I think that a groupmaster who holds to higher standards is going to wind up with a stronger group of lenses in the long run.

Part of why I created my 100 Best Movie Lenses was to give what I felt were better movie lenses a showcase without dozens of repetitive and annoying "download movies" lenses hogging any of the limelight.

Also, when you see a lens that you think is "spammy" remember to report it as such.  That's really the best way to increase the number of original and quality lenses.

My lenses "AllAboutTraffic" and "Domains4Dummies" are both large subjects splitting naturally into a raft of sub-topics.  The total scope of each topic is way too large and unwieldy for a single Squidoo lens.

I can't complete all the sub-topic articles on day one, (and there's pelnty more to add), so decided to publish as a part series.  This has the advantage of flexibility and also getting something published quickly. 

I started to implement "AllAboutTraffic" as Squidoo based "chapter lenses" linked from a "contents" summary in the master lens.  I'm starting to have second thoughts about this structure and wonder if a series of more independent lenses might not be just as effective and more flexible to manage.

"Domains4Dummies" is more commercial in nature and is based instead aound a group of blogs containing full length articles, indexed by article summaries posted in the Squidoo lens. 

Q1  Do hierarchical set ups such as these make sense for Squidoo?  Or, do better ways of structuring large topics leap to mind? 

Q2  I need reader input to democratize sub-topic implementation - and drive me to focus on matters of widest interest.  To capture feedback systematically I want to build a survey module into the lens. 

Can anybody suggest "how to" references about integrating survey software into Squidoo?

I just split out a lens from my cake lens here. I am considering breaking out more stuff since the page is so large.  My cake lens has great rankings and traffic so I am afraid to mess with it too much, but I am trying to move some stuff onto other lenses.

Last edited by Janet21 (08/16/2007 7:30 am)

Hi Wenfri,

I think you've done a fantastic job so far with your lenses.

Since you have a business with several lenses, you might consider doing what I did - using Google Apps. Just do it in small steps.

1. If you haven't done so already, register a domain name for Online Business Alliance through Google Apps. Chapter 2 of SuperchargeSquidoo.com explains the steps. Ony US$10 to register domain name through Google Apps - about $8 savings over registering directly with GoDaddy.com. Google does all the technical setup automatically for you. For $10, it's worth taking a chance and experimenting.

2. Create an admin account for your new website. You can also create up to 200 other GMail email accounts on your domain for free. Select one as your main email address for customers. Then open a new Squidoo account using that email address. Now your email address matches your domain name.

3. After a couple of days (give Squidoo time to update its records), transfer your OBA lenses to the new account. Now when anyone sends you an email, they are using your OBA business email. And all of your responses to inquiries use that email account. Very professional looking.

4. Play around with Page Creator to make a home page. Simply select a template and fill in text, pictures, links, whatever. Especially link all your lenses to this web page.  Because Google owns Google Apps, Google usually crawls the Google Apps web page(s) within a few days, so you get into Google Search much faster than with other web site hosts.

This is a simple way to get started building a full-blown business web site. You can probably do most of this quicker than the time it took me to write this message.

You do all these processes by selecting options from menus. Very simple. There are free online tutorials for almost all this. Links for the Google tutorials, Help sections, Discussions Groups and teaching videos are all in the chapters at SuperchargeSquidoo.com.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Robert

Last edited by RobertACarr (08/17/2007 1:33 am)