Megan Made a Great Offer! Calling All Squids!

Megan Casey made a very generous offer that can help YOU to learn more about Squidoo, how it works, and about the lensmasters coming into Squidoo!

Every month they'll be choosing 4 lensmasters to act as Citizen Squids for the "Citizen Squids Brigade," for things like helping newbies, working on the newsletter, and doing various small projects.

There are a LOT of fabulous Squidooers out there, and I think you are one of them!

Don't miss your chance to be part of what is up and coming at Squidoo and on the internet!

The Stumble is GONE!!!

Woo Hoo!

THE STUMBLE IS GONE!

816 Shops in the Mall as of Today!

As I mentioned before, the Mall on Squidoo is growing very fast! Today there are 816 shops, all of which want to be featured, highlighted, and get visitors to them! There will be more by the end of the day.

There are some really wonderful shops that are begging for traffic and repeat visitors, not to mention sales!

I look forward to the announcement from Megan about the decision that she will make about the stumble, because it will have an enormous effect on how I organize and manage the Mall group.

In any case, I plan to aggressively promote the Mall on Squidoo, and we may just have to accomodate the stumble as best we can.

I have plans that excite me, but I am actively seeking, and welcoming any suggestions you may have that would benefit all of us at the Mall group.

Pressing Right Along...

The anger that the information provided by magicality provoked, at least with the forum moderator, is quite a surprise to me. The positive reactions to that information from all but one lensmaster seems to me that nearly everyone is interested in the statistics.

Fortunately Gil has promised stats 2.0 which will probably clear up everything.

So, I think I'll bow out of the discussions around lensrank for the long term, just press right along with my pages and groups, my website and my business, and let headquarters do whatever it is going to do without comment from me. I can't seem to get on the right side of those discussions no matter what.

I have no interest in 'doing battle' with people I like and admire so much, or with the concept of Squidoo altogether, with which there can be no reasonable dispute.

The new phase of the mall is coming up, and the form of it will depend on the headquarter's final decision on the stumble and how it will work.

What we will do next, here at the Mall blog, is take a look at some performing lenses and see what is so good about them.

This will be FUN!

An Extremely Helpful Page

Much Thanks to Magicality for this incredible accomplishment!

Sometimes what we THINK is going on turns out to be different than what is ACTUALLY going on.

Here you have a way to gauge your lens performance against the top 100 lenses, though things like sales aren't counted for much on the global LR scale.

Looks to be Staying...

Well fellow commerce merchants, based on Megan's posting on the squidblog last week, it looks to me like the stumble arrow will be staying. The announcement hasn't yet been made, and so it isn't official.

Further, jeffryv, lounge moderator, made the point that Stumbleupon has a commerce section where merchants pay $.05 per showing to a stumbler. The benefit of it is that there is nothing else showing but your website when the individual stumbles, no adsense for anyone else's benefit, no other advertising, just your own page.

So, clearly Squidoo headquarters sees some potential for income and for interest among people for a stumble through Squidoo.

I expect Megan to announce with a couple of days Squidoo's final decision, how it will be implemented, what we can expect, and how they think it is best for us as lensmasters and merchants to use it.

Big Bad News that Just Can't Wait...

I wasn't going to post again until the stumble function on our lenses was finalized and decided on.

However, this just came to my attention and it is EXTREMELY WORRISOME for me, as the Mall groupmaster, as it SHOULD BE FOR EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!

The duplicate lenses are now being singled out by Google and assigned SUPPLEMENTAL STATUS in that search engine, which means that any lens that is buried in that way isn't even worth the paper it is written on.

We have SO MANY COOKIE CUTTER DUPLICATES on Squidoo now that we are running the risk of having some serious problems with more and more lenses being diverted to supplemental, and Squidoo becoming less and less favored in the Google search rankings.

If that happens, the whole benefit of Squidoo is OVER.

So, aside from the issue of the stumble arrow and its effects on the groups and the lenses, this issue will be FRONT AND CENTER for the Mall group.

If you have a lens that is duplicated or has been duplicated and you have no original content, then please consider the following for your membership in any of my groups:

1. Do you have good, original content?
2. Is your lens focused on a topic?
3. Have I seen you anywhere around??? Guestbooks, email box, forum?
4. Can anyone contact you?

Those who have all FOUR will be featured lenses and I will promote you as much as I can.

Those who don't will be booted from my groups. If you have more than one lens, I will look them over too, and make my decisions.

While We're Waiting to Hear....

You may have noticed the new arrow at the top right corner of your pages, which directs visitors who have just arrived on your page to immediately leave for a 'stumble' which takes them to the #1 in the topic category your lens belongs to.

Like Digg, it assumes a 5 second attention span on the part of any visitor and gives tham a command to take them elsewhere.

Most good lenses require more than 5 seconds to get a sense of what is really on the page.

Most good lensmasters are working very hard to drive traffic to their own lenses just to have it, what?, driven out???

The stumble arrow will be up for at least another week. I can't make any new decisions about what to do with and for the Mall group until I know how this is decided.

It is much too much unremunerated work to examine and organize over 700 lenses into a pleasant browsing experience for potential customers, just to have them bounced around squidoo like superballs. I am going to use this time to take care of some of my lenses and other projects, and will begin work on the Mall groups again when I know what is going to happen with this new feature.

In the meantime, for your enjoyment, take a look at this.

#1, #2 & #3 Today (MP, MP, LR)

This is a first for me, and I think a first for Squidoo, too! I have both First and Second positions on the Most Profitable list, and the Third position on the Lens Rank list!

The #1 today is an 'out of season' lens, meaning that you might think that at the end of winter, no one would be interested in buying a shearling coat! I've learned, though, that out of season lenses, like Christmas lenses, can surprise us, and it is a good idea to continue to update them anyway.

I'm watching the MP list, since I manage the Mall group, and I'm looking to see which of our merchants make it there! I want to focus on featuring those lensmasters, while also featuring the small business owners who's best sales will probably never show up on Squidoo's list. These are all success stories, and around here, it seems like success breeds success!