A Squid Named SusanVillasLewis

Went on a run this weekend making lenses on the new Lego board games. They are just totally cool from getting to build the game board yourself to the minifigures that are the game pieces. Even the die for each game are built – sometimes as the game goes along – and the sides are usually colors rather than traditional numbers.

One of the challenges I had with these was trying to figure out what else to feature on the lenses. In some cases, the connection with classic games like Connect 4 and Mastermind and Pictionary was obvious. In others, I couldn’t figure out anything that might even come close, leaving me with a rather sparse lens. Gotta fix that later.

For your browsing pleasure – Creationary, Lava Dragon, Pirate Code, Minotaurus and Monster 4 from Lego.

These are part of my niche I’m working on for family game night fun.

Developed a better system for keeping track of lens promotion stuff. Had a spreadsheet going at one point, but it was next to impossible to keep track of. Particularly when I would go on a lensmaking spree and forget to add new lenses to the list. Maybe I needed a system for adding lenses to the list.

Paid more attention to my titles. Afraid to change them now because of the potential hazard of losing Google love. But as I look down my list, so many are my main keyword and that’s all. Not overly appealing, unfortunately. Unless you’re a really focused buyer. Which I like. And they’re doing well. Just figure they could do much better. (That’s a tricky one, isn’t it? You always assume they could do better if only you had done/did X. Maybe they’re doing as well as they can. Who knows?)

Not published so many lenses that weren’t quite ready. Finding it hard to get motivated to get back to them. And it’s less motivating when they don’t do great. Which could be because they aren’t quite complete. Or could be because they’ll never do well, in which case why bother. Yes, I’m running in a circle on that one.

Been just a little less perfectionist about a lot of stuff. Ugh. The time I’ve wasted.

Spent more time making lenses rather than thinking about topics.

Not felt a lens had to be long to be complete. More tightly focused and shorter is good too.

Not wasted so much time prettifying lenses that never had a chance. It was good practice, but could have been had just as well on a lens with good keyword research.

Learned about keyword research first, foremost and above all. So much better now that I know how to do that stuff.

I run across stuff at all kinds of random that I never knew about. And sometimes it becomes a lens. I always knew there were cars for kids. I’m pretty sure they had them when I was a kid and they fell into the category of cool things we couldn’t afford but it seemed like everyone else had. *sob* But I had no idea they had motorcycles. For kids. Seriously. And since I’m getting my own grown up version now that I have my license, I was intrigued. And dang it, they’re so cute! So a lens with kids motorcycles was born featuring the Ducati model I found.

Along with that, and still in my backyard fun and outdoor toys theme, I did a lens on the Peg Perego John Deere pedal tractor. Also adorable, but less something I would have wanted when I was a kid. Wasn’t really into the farming thing. Now, if they had had a blue convertible like Nancy Drew, we would have been getting somewhere. These days, they have almost everything else, so why not!

Part of keyword research is poking, poking, poking until you can find a hole. And I’ve been surprised over the last few months where I find keywords that are worth chasing within what should be an oversaturated market. (And I always assume I’m doing something wrong because surely the pros would have seen this already, right? How could there be a hole in a really popular topic?)

Again not sure how I got there. My brain makes weird jumps and I’m always snooping around in odd places just to see what my keyword tool tells me about that market. But I got into some things from my childhood and discovered some options worth chasing around Nancy Drew books and Hardy Boys books. Really. Totally surprised me because you’d think there was already enough competition out there for those topics, but there actually were some holes. Finally got these out of WIP this past weekend and had a lovely trip down memory lane as I hunted down what’s on offer these days. Gotta get me some Nancy Drew graphic novels, me thinks!

Ya gotta love it when someone buys something from a lens. My joy point every month is when I finally hit the average of $1 a lens. And particularly as I get more and more lenses completed, because that number has to be higher each month. As I create more lenses, the odds of hitting on things that make money go up, but I also have higher targets to get to that $1 mark.

Loving someone out there today who bought $1,000 worth of stuff off of a lens. And from one of my affiliates rather than Amazon, so I got a 10% cut. Sweet!

Love to see bumps up in my money column but I wish there was a way for the ones that change to be highlighted in some way. I can’t always tell just what has changed in part because I have so many lenses, but also because so many of them have some kind of money in the column. If there was a simple way to download things, I’d just do that on a daily basis, but no go.

I get way more ideas for lenses than I could ever do. Pretty sure there are at least 200 floating around here in various computer files and notebook pages. Ideas not a problem. And sometimes, I manage to actually execute on a lens related. That’s what happened when I ran across an article talking about the crazy pants the Norwegian curling team wore during the Olympics. (I didn’t even watch any of the Olympics, so the fact that I even heard about them is a sign of how much of a story these were!)

I tracked them down, established a new affiliate relationship and a new lens on LoudMouth golf pants was born. We shall see just how it does and if I can still catch some of the popularity wave from the Olympics with this one. Not holding my breath, but it’s a fairly simple lens that shouldn’t need a lot of updating work over time. So I’m good with low traffic and a few sales.

With this lens with tropical bedding, I’m up to more than 30 lenses just on bedding sets. Yowsers. And they account for a good percentage of my sales these days. Never, ever thought that would happen. Sign of good keyword research. And dumb luck. They aren’t my favorites really because there’s not a lot to say about anything related really. It would be almost impossible to not repeat myself every single lens. So they’re product heavy, content light. But I make a good faith effort to include items from lots of different locations to make it a real one-stop shop for finding that particular style.

I have a parent lens for this set focused on children’s bedding, but am moving into a lot of styles that aren’t child-related. Pondering a new parent lens that could be content heavy and link out to the different styles. Hmmm.

One of the first types of products I see available for any kids movie is the line of birthday party supplies. So, I’ve had a lens on How To Train Your Dragon for a while (and it’s starting to do quite nicely as the release date nears) and a natural extension is a Train Your Dragon birthday party. Which turned out to be tough to add non-movie tie-in items to because dragons seem to equal knights generally, not vikings. Going to have to work harder to find all those cool things I usually add in.

I’m excited about the movie coming out, despite the fact that it’s not even close to the same story as told in the books. Which I loved. Which is why I was interested in doing the lens in the first place. But I feel my lens suffers a little for being more about the movie than the book. Looks like I need to just start a totally different lens just to talk about the book set because they rock. Great for boys. And now I’m off on a book review rather than just telling about a new lens. Focus!!!

Was trying to remember what even started me down this path. I was browsing around on Stylin Online, where I have an affiliate relationship, and started looking at Wonder Woman t-shirts.Jillions! And popped over to start some keyword research and in that process, ran across Wonder Woman costumes as having some potential. Mildly surprising as I would have thought to be completely overdone by now, but a new lens was born.

BTW, did you know Wonder Woman actually had some other costume options? A blue body suit that served as both an aquatic outfit and her motorcycle outfit in season 2. And yes, she did actually have a cape occasionally, although it was a big-ass, super-duper, flag-styled cape and not a tiny red one like you see on commercial costumes. I totally didn’t remember that until I started researching for this lens. And there really was a skirt option that went on top of the shorts, which moved from shorts to the more swimsuit-like style later.

Working on more stuff to add, like tips for making your own costume bits rather than buying a commercial one. Could be a lot of fun!

Well, I was getting down on myself because I only have 236 published lenses and 246 total (gotta get those WIPs cranked out!!). Then I looked back at when I was setting my goals and noticed that at that time I had 238 total, including nine WIP. So despite deleting non-performers and WIPs I’m never going to get to, I’ve actually made some progress. Nothing like what’s needed to get to 350, but still, progress! And realizing that I need to have at least 11 new lenses a month for the rest of the year. Not impossible, but sounds overwhelming. Especially since I’m in a circle-running mode at the moment. Stupid lizard brain!