So what do I have? Sarah Palin, of course, which I started back in March. In the last few weeks, though, totally based on some cool products I found, I did a lens with items for Democrat donkeys and Republican elephants and one with supplies and ideas for throwing an election night party. Biggest challenge was figuring out the right keywords for the URL and titles.

Having gone through this, I really wish that Squidoo had done a 2008 election front door. Would have been fun to see all the lenses in one spot. Or maybe not. I think I’ve had 15 people try to leave the links to their Sarah Palin lenses (created after she was nominated) on mine. There were a lot of people trying to grab that opportunity. Kind of surprising to me. Unless I was already in that vein and working on related lenses, I don’t think I would have bothered to do one on her. Wouldn’t have seen it as worth it at that point. Too hard to build an audience after the fact.

So have I done everything I possibly could now at Squidoo? I’ve had #1s in three categories (non-profits, people, movies) and now #1 overall. I’ve got a couple of LOTDs. I’ve got sales, I’ve got traffic. What am I missing here? I need something else to shoot for!! (Not that I’ve really shot for top ranking or LOTD.)

• Of my 133 live lenses, only seven of them have had no traffic in the past week. Given that one’s my testing lens and five are events that are long past, that’s pretty good. Another nine have only had one visit, so that’s a little over one percent that are really struggling. I’m good with that.
• I’ve got two lenses that have dropped below the 200,000 mark. Both are still featured.
• My iCarly related lenses have apparently returned to favor with Google as the traffic is picking up again. Looking at the dates it’s been almost a month since any of them have been looked at though. Yikes!
• Halloween traffic is definitely starting. My Tinkerbell costumes lens is getting more than 500 hits a week now and my lens on the renaissance festival held here in the Dallas area (which has a few costumes on it) is getting almost 200 despite not being a true costume lens. People mostly like to look at the pictures, though.
• My lensography has suddenly taken off. While there has been a dribble of traffic from Sarah Palin, there hasn’t been any consistent reason I could see as to why. More traffic to my twitter and blog though as a result.
• First women in politics is getting some nice traffic. Unfortunately, haven’t touched it since June, which is probably why it’s not getting above the 10,000 mark. Missed opportunity there before the end of the month.
• Think I missed some opportunities with my green chile lens as well. Traffic just didn’t pick up there as I hoped, but I didn’t get on the promotion enough before the Hatch festival.
• Things I see that make a difference in lensrank - ratings, sales and clickouts. I’ll have two very similar lenses in terms of freshness, clickouts and traffic, but one can be ranked 30K higher just because it has stars. I quit announcing every time I had a new lens because that gets annoying after a while for others, but I’m beginning to wonder if I need to do a little more on that. Squidcasts on every new lens? If a star is the one element needed to bump something from third tier to second, that’s probably an effort that’s worth $1.35, right?
• My oldest WIP was started in December last year. Actually, I have a WIP on my hubby’s account that’s over a year old. Guess what my new goals for the month are?

First lens ever

• Green Chile (someone one-starred this guy almost as soon as I published it. and I got my first suck-it-up comment from Glen.

Then the two for my husband’s account related to his TrackAddict forum

• Skip Barber Racing School (I am still really proud of this guy. I did a great job for having no clue. Only updates have been to add links to forum posts and change that Kevin went.)
• Car Clubs
• (Just noticed that I had started a lens for him that shows a date of 8-24. Never got back around to finishing it!!)

Second lens I did for me

• How to Donate Your Hair (have done one complete re-vamp of this guy. Considering another one)

(However, it seems to be taking a little time for Gravatar to update. But I think I’ve done all my other major ones. I made this guy over at http://www.facemymanga.com. First one I’ve done online that I was able to actually download properly to use.)

I did a page about collecting pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House. I had no idea there was such a need for this information out there, but I’ve quickly gone over 120 visits per week and the number just steadily grows. I have absolutely nothing on the lens to sell. Good or bad? Does it distract from the purpose of the lens to include items for sale? (And what would you include, anyway?) Am I wrong to want to take advantage of the traffic I’m getting?

I didn’t do this to make money really, so I’m startled by the traffic I’m getting. Mostly, I just thought it was a cool off-beat idea that was a great way to get your kids into the habit of giving. Hmmm.