A Squid Named SusanVillasLewis

And then made a lens on it -  http://www.squidoo.com/hedge-trimmer

Can’t spend all my time indoors at the computer. I think.

I am quite frustrated with my pictures right now. For convenience’s sake, I put everything into Picasa. Works off my Google account, so it’s easy to get to and I don’t have to remember yet another log-in. But I’m finding it rather erratic as to whether my pictures actually show up. Perfect example is my new lens on ancient Rome fiction. All the banners I made are in the same folder at Picasa, used the exact same method for posting each of them into the lens, and yet, only one of them shows up. I can fiddle and get them to show for a day or so. But then they go right back to not being there.

The only other place I have right now to upload pictures is in my Googlepages area. And that’s equally frustrating because you can’t organize the pictures. Ugh. Could this be a bug between Picasa and Squidoo? (I know clouda9 has had similar issues.) Or should I just find a new place to host my pictures? And where? I know of Photobucket, but is there something better?

I’ve been watching my traffic all day - that line at the top of the Daily Digest that says “you have x lenses, visited x times in the past 7 days”. (Not mentioning that the AP style side of me doesn’t like numerical 7 there. It’s been steadily creeping up and had made it to about 2,937. I kept hoping it would go over 3,000 before some of my freak traffic from earlier this week fell off. And it did!!

So what happened. I’m being a good girl, sitting here doing my promotion stuff. I stumbled my Judy Moody lens, which ended up in the popular book category and it got more than 100 visits in a minute. I know, not necessarily quality traffic, but it got me over the 3,000 visits to all my lenses for the past week. I’m good with that. It’s just nice to see that number once.

Freaky traffic can be fun, but I always wish I had better info as to where it came from! Had 65 people drop by my Adventure & Exploration: First Woman To lens yesterday. Not a clue why or how. (Which is frustrating because you can’t duplicate it.)

Life of Lewister post: How old do you like your books? Features my newest lens on historical fiction set in Rome.

Isle of Squid question - Just submitted my first lens over there. (What can I say? I’m slow sometimes.) Have a feeling I’m missing something there about the process. Not sure what the reciprocal links are supposed to be or how I figure out what mine is. It asks you for it when you first post the lens. But given that part of the link is your lens number, you can’t know what the reciprocal link is until you’re accepted. Hmm. Not getting something here.

Just got emails that two of my CJ companies are changing affiliate programs. This is where having a system would be helpful, huh? I can’t remember if I ever actually created links to anything on those sites, much less where they would be. Sigh. I know where I used one, but I can’t be certain it’s the only place. Another to-do for the list.

I really didn’t like the TOC/Explore bar when it was put in this last layout change. Still would like to have it elsewhere. But I can say it definitely works - in some cases. My Child’s Play Charity lens (which I should promote more) has been getting 10-15 hits a week now, up from 0. And every single one comes from the Explore bar on my hair donation lens. So this lens would be getting no play if it wasn’t for the Explore bar. Still don’t like the location, but at least in this case, one lens has been rescued from obscurity because of it.

Long-tail lenses. I seem to have quite a few, which is great. But how best to promote them? How best to tag them? How best to word them? I’m at a little bit of a loss because it’s just overwhelming. And I seem to have quite a few for some reason. Something to ponder.

Well, my novelty cycling jerseys lens has been de-indexed by Google. Which means traffic has seriously dropped off. However, thanks to the efforts I’ve made adding it to lensroll, bookmarking at de.li.cious, blogging here and on my main blog - if you search for “novelty cycling jerseys” in Google, nine of the first 10 entries are actually pointing to me.

Now that’s good, but most of my traffic was coming from people searching for something specific, like Iron Maiden or Queen or Snoopy jerseys. Those searches don’t pick up any of my backlinks, unfortunately. But I’ve ridden this roller coaster before. I’m hot for a couple of weeks, Google drops me like a hot potato for a while, then I’m back in Google and life goes on. So I’m not that worried. Yet. This lens has potential to be a really good money maker for me, so I hope it’ll be back in search soon.

NOTE: I have disabled comments on this post in an effort to thwart spammers. Please leave a note on another post and reference this one if you’re planning to comment. Thanks!!