Along The Same Lines

Latest in updates? I made a lens that was geared towards Holiday or Birthday gift ideas a couple years ago, and it is too bad it hasn't done well, but it is now updated. I say "too bad" since getting someone a gift from WFM, either by creating a gift basket or simply sending a gift certificate would be something that is well received and guaranteed to bring enjoyment. I know because I've been on the receiving end.

The idea came from an actual Christmas gift one year from one of my sons. I loved receiving it since Whole Foods Market is one of my favorite places to shop.

 I know the jokes, but the prices have come into line with most other stores nowadays and the reasons for shopping there have only grown.

I hate to say it but I did notice a definite drop in the ability of employees to give the standards of customer service that the store began with. However, they are still fairly helpful and consumer oriented. The cashiers are the most noticeably less able. The food remains some of the best available in my area.

 With that mini-review, go ahead and visit the newly updated "Why I Shop At Whole Foods Market, for reasons to get that special someone a gift certificate to the same!

 Here are featured Amazon offerings, if you don't have a store near you:

Happy Days On Squidoo

My Newest Topics

One hint: Calla Lilies,... Brimberg &... Buy This at Allposters.com

True, I haven't been as active making lenses as last year, but it was always in the plan to resume building my own sites and writing articles for Ilona's Garden and the Garden Journal. I still am behind in posting to the garden blog, but it is better than before I slowed up on Squidoo at the start of the year. 

But I am not completely dormant. I created some new lenses and the latest ones that have been published are:

• Calla Lily Wedding Flowers
• Fresh Summer Candle Scents
• Summer Fashions For Over Forty

I haven't had the time to resume making lenses for quests, although those are great ideas. It simply felt a little overwhelming and I took a break.

Sales in Zazzle:

Joy Morning Glory Tee Shirt by HigherLife
See more Joy T-Shirts

Vintage Butterfly Collection Business Card by ilonagarden
Order business cards from Zazzle.

Many are still struggling with the filters that Squidoo has installed to weed out the poor quality lenses. After working very hard for a couple of weeks, I cleared through all of mine and have not had any additional flags so far. I filled in content (wrote more) inside some lenses, deleted extra "selling" modules ( although not too many). I updated titles and made sure my photos were cited. I worked on anything that I found that was not current ( Amazon products that were 404), and most of all deleted or changed too many keywords that were repetitive.

Those are the main faults I was finding in my own lenses. Now I spend more time updating and improving the ones that I have already created, and the new lenses are to make more of a niche with previous topics of mine.

I wouldn't claim this to be the best policy, but it works for me. Unfortunately, I become attached to my writing, good or bad. I tend to treat articles like children that I cannot bear to let go of... and to delete a lens is too hard to do. I allow the hoarding tendency full rein in the writing arena. All three of my new lenses are branches of previous ones. 

The money on Squidoo has reduced due to their google woes. I make less now than back in the end of 2012 because the payout is less, even though my lenses rank higher and some are continually making Amazon income. This is the rule rather than the exception in online income, in my own experience. The going advice, which I'm taking for myself, is to branch out. I've seen some uptick in Zazzle sales, and improved the Google adsense by reducing the sites I posted ads on and improving keyword targeting ( I use a wp plugin to help me with that).

That is my Squidoo news for now. Toodles!

Top Trend In My Squidoo Dashboard

Even though I consider myself a garden writer, it is the beauty lens topics that consistently rate the highest for me.

Here are my top Beauty lenses:

1. Silver Fox Gray Hair
2. Prettiest Nail Polish Trends For 2013
3. Magnetic Arabic Eyes
4. Pamper Your Hands And Feet
5. The Beauty Toolkit For Older Women

Another top trend is the way people seem to love costumes no matter what the season of the year may be. But there may be another reason that my Arabian Costume lens has consistently stayed in the top five of my dashboard: Bible costume needs for Christmas and Easter plays, as well as the usual Halloween dress up. When I created the lens there really was no idea that it would prove so versatile.

I hope the demise of empty lenses that are gaming the system will prove a boon for my content filled lenses that never seem to gain traction.

For now, I have kept busy updating and improving lenses that are struggling and those which people like; not much time is left for making new lenses at this time.

Five Lowest Ranking Lenses For First Week Of November and What I'm Doing About It

I've had trouble with some of my lowest lenses dropping into WIP (dreaded red) status. What do I do to try and lift them? Read on... it involves checking them, sprucing them up with attention to pictures or interesting new module additions, re-ordering the information flow, and sometimes using social media to "get the interest going".

First, what are those lenses today?

1. Franz Liszt 
2. My Zazzle Lenses
3. Squidoo Fireside Chat
4. Best Belly Dance Sites
5. Ilona's Garden, On The Web

I am in the process of improving all five, but have finished only a couple of these low ranking lenses.

Franz Liszt went into the red zone and it had been awhile since it was updated. I decided to change around how the information was presented, added some modules including a Youtube module with more music, and Blackbox with Liszt's birthdate. I may add more info in the future, but I don't want to make this a very long lens.

My Zazzle Lenses was too short with too few examples for a showcase; also, I had found a great lensmaking tool for Zazzle products which is now highlighted in this lens. I added much more of my Zazzle work, and a few more tips.

I have not yet worked on the next three:

1. My Fireside Chat has been needing an overhaul for awhile. I intend to rewrite some of it and compile the information in a more logical way.
2. Top Belly Dance Sites could use more information and more sites listed.This lens also could use some different types of modules and pictures to spruce it up a little. I'll look to see if it needs more links from related lenses.
3. Ilona's Garden On The Web was the very first lens I created on Squidoo. Because of its limited topic it often struggles to maintain rank. I think I could add and recompile the info better. Perhaps build a few links to it or share it, once it has been improved.

All these lenses could use listing on the Lensroll site. I think I will get to work on that once they are improved to my satisfaction.

Well, those are the bottom five at the beginning of November 2012, and what I am doing to improve them.

Updating A Beauty Lens

Source: glamour.com via Ilona on Pinterest

I told the story of how I tweaked the Silver Fox Gray Hair lens to improve it and update the hairstyles. It is ranking within the top 20 of the Fashion and Beauty category, after receiving the Purple Star Award. It encouraged me to improve another Fashion and Beauty lens that has languished in the lower reaches of rankings, around the 222,000 mark. My hope is to also achieve improvements of both rank and sales in that lens.

Here are some of the improvements I made to the "pretty nail polish" lens:

• I changed the title to The Prettiest 2013 Nail Polish Trends
• Updated the trends to fit with the title by researching articles that reported on fashion weeks and the types of nail polish and makeup looks that the 2013 designers exhibited.
• I wrote about them and included new pictures.
• Added credit information to the pictures where needed.
• Updated the sales and added products to achieve the new fashion trends.
• Created a fashion trend board on Pinterest for future use with fashion lenses and to help me track trends.

Hopefully, this will draw more interest to one of the lenses I worked hard to create.

Squidoo Adjustments

The Flickr bug has not been worked out yet, and now Morguefile cloud is down for an extended period of time. That means that many photos are not working in a wide number of my lenses. I started uploading more photos to my newly made photobucket account (which I know has been a problem for some websites in the past- the photobucket generic show up for some reason). It seems the only viable alternative for now.

First lens to get extensive replacement photos: The Quaint Cottage Garden lens.

I have lots of updating this summer, apparently.

Latest Lenses, Updated Lenses

It is all about improvement

Working through the stubs of new lenses I finished and published Ilona's Garden Shed which is a lens highlighting my Cafepress store. The idea came from the posts that others had made on utilizing Squidoo to work with Zazzle and Cafepress. It has spurred me to develop my understanding of Cafepress and to try and get the store going like the Zazzle store has this year. I hope to improve my, and the readers, grasp of how to use Cafepress to make some income.

Landscaping 101 is a new lens under the gardening topic. Home improvement should include a basic knowledge of how to care for your landscape... so this lens is a starter for that pursuit. Color in Your Garden is another general garden topic, newly published. It concentrates on the use of foliage along with flowers for garden color.

I have been trying to improve older lenses and those improvements have lead to raising some nominal lenses from the red zone. Squidoo has new filters working to weed out duplicate content, so more attribution links are needed to identify quotes, etc. They are overly strict in some respects, but the way to avoid being unpublished is to link to another source of the information. I put source links in the Women's Gift Suggestions and it improved ranking  right away.

Some content has been edited for clarity and in the case of 'About Ilona's Garden' Lens I removed some peripheral content to create a new lens that I hope to publish soon.

_______

I have leveled up to 65 and won a new trophy for 500 SquidAngel blessings given out.  When I went to Atlanta, my momentum was thrown off and I am behind in recording blessings given me. Maybe I can play catchup later this summer? These are the big news events at my Squidoo diversions for now.

I just had to...make more lenses

You would think after I made so many and published them in the past week or so that I would have run out of steam. Not so. I have some new lenses that have been unveiled today.

iphone Cases for Anime Lovers - the inspiration fo rthis lens was the fact that my daughter has been collaborating with me in Zazzle. Her art, and my store and product know how. I wanted a lens that would highlight some of her art. We don't have a lot of things made yet, compared with what needs to be in a Zazzle store, but her art is really good and it is never too soon to start getting her some exposure. We are hoping that it will garner some income to help her go to school next fall. It is also my first HOTAPPS magazine lens.

Next up... another Weird Holiday lens. I wanted one for March and will be way too busy to work steadily on lenses like I am doing now. So, National Fragrance Day is up.
It was fun, but a bit time consuming to do. I won't be able to use it for a quest, probably, but the time for it to gain some eyeballs will be good for it. A new lens is also so likely to drop very low in rank...sometimes back into WIP land. I thought it would be better to publish. I hope people like it. I like it;) although I am not allowed to actually "LIKE" it.

OK, what else? Oh yes, since I consider myself a garden writer and haven't contributed much in the way of garden lenses, I made one for the Perennial topic area. That area hardly ever has new lenses- I know, because I am always checking it to bless as many qualified lenses as possible. I remember how encouraged I was when first making lenses when a SquidAngel would come by and bless mine. Anyway, I made 10 Best Perennials, a topic which is my specialty. I was able to do it in a day- which was a solid 5 hours work at least. I didn't do much else today. EXCEPT... take the reading quest and then update a number of my lens images, which all need to be different shape and size now, than previously. I hope more of my lenses get on the front page once I have replaced the images with the square shape photos. OK. That is all for now. I think I will start to post a Zazzle picture here and there.

Yellow and Black Anime Boy Skater by eLainesLocker
Browse other Anime Postage

Red Hearts Chibi Friends by eLainesLocker
Browse other Cute Casemate Cases

Isn't This Cute?

In Sleepy Oaks Woods by Fearneve
Search for another artistic poster on Zazzle

I love these kind of drawings, and it inspires me to pick the next top ten Zazzle choices around a Fantasy theme.

Top Ten Favorite Zazzle

I might write more on Fairy Houses, to add to the rest of my fairy pages. Not sure when I will find the time for it, at this point, though. Did an update on the Fairy Garden Extras page. Products change so quickly. This was the most recent of my fairy garden pages, and I found several things that had to be deleted and substitutions found. All is well, since I saw more of the absolutely cute things that are offered for fairy garden aficionados. The fairy houses are especially desirable and getting more economical.

On Another Note

I have a new lens that I made for a quest:
Winter Decor from Scandinavia
This is a lens I worked really hard on, and I love all sorts of Scandinavian products. IKEA is one of my most favorite places for home decor.

I also saw a lens drop into the nether region of red lenses.
Enlightened Gifts for Yoga Lovers is not gaining favor on the Squidoo board. Which is kinda too bad, because it has a terrific selection of gifts. I know I would love several of them right now :)

Updating- Suspicians

I've had to update my wordpress sites continually. Not sure how or if, but it seems that there has been an unusual amount of problems since Netfirms sold itself to another hosting company. And not too long afterwards there were "offers" for security "protection" to keep the websites on ones account secure, for a fee of course.The new company is Endurance International Group.

That just seemed a little suspicious to me.

They also have had a number of downs times for my site, which after I ask for support are fixed. Not sure what that is about. Maybe the new normal.

I hope these are just hiccups for the changeover of ownership. Fingers crossed.

Norton caught a couple files when I tried to create a backup of my site. That is what first made me wonder if there was backdoor activity. Google adsense always fluctuates for me, but it had had dropped to unusually low levels, and other such things that made me go "Hmmm".

Then I had a fatal error today in the admin part of one of my sites. The index.php was taking too much memory to load. What? So I downloaded fresh copy of wp and uploaded it. Now everything is working again.

New Lenses

There were a few additions to the Middle East set of lenses:
Bellydance Goes To The Movies
Middle Eastern Clip Art
Moroccan Oasis Bedroom

And then, even though I should try to stay focused in order to finish the "quests", I was sidetracked into beginning a few new topics, which will be published soon. Continually updating the rest of the lenses, I'm not sure whether to keep trying to do that on the scale I have attempted, but these are some with tweaking:

My Personal Squid Journey -included more on purple stars and giant squids.
Butterfly Paradise was changed around.
Helen Mirren's Style had a few tweaks, as well.


If you want to know who is on the bottom of the barrel, unfortunately it is one of my Belly dance lenses.


I appreciate the support of the Squidoo community although it has slowed down a bit. People might not realize that "liking" is an important service to their fellow Squids. I try to like and comment as much as I can to encourage others to keep up the effort to write and improve, just as I like others to do for me. Well- that is the scoop.