Next Squidoo goal met, but need some motivation

Well, with the publication of my lens on Amanda Seyfried (of Mamma Mia and Veronica Mars fame), I have passed my goal of 125 lenses. Rah. I thought I'd be more excited than this. But you know, as the list has gotten longer (and the competition keeps growing!), I'm finding myself a little blah about a bunch of my stuff. It feels as though I have far too many lenses in the basement (although I understand why each one is there) and far too little in the $ column (and that was the second part of the goal - making more affiliate money). I'm getting something probably 3-4 of 7 days of the week, but I want more. (Why? Because it's a competition and I want to win!) How badly? Enough to start buying e-books that people promise will revolutionize my earnings? Or buy products "guaranteed" to make me money using Clickbank? Sigh. I'm cheap and cynical. I might need to just start looking at this a little bit like Jennifer and Victoria do and spend money because it is "market research". Sigh. I don't even buy real books; I'm a huge library user. (Missed out on my latest excuse to buy a book. Too slow. Sigh.)

Yep, feeling a bit like an Eeyore at the moment. Not looking for lots of comments to cheer me up. Just logging my state of mind. I'm a moody sort, so I tend to bounce back and forth between Tigger and Eeyore anyway.

Keke Palmer and Josh Peck join my people group

I know I've confessed that I'm not entirely sure I like people. In lenses that is. And yet, here I go again with another spate of them. They definitely require more work in general to maintain, but that's exactly the appeal of them. There's always a reason to be tweaking and massaging what you have there.

I've picked on four up-and-coming actors for this most recent batch. Published two of them today, although they still have a long ways to go before I'll be happy with them. The first is on Keke Palmer, whom you might remember from Akeelah and the Bee. I totally loved her in that movie; I think she reminded me of my niece. Well, she's just gotten a deal to star in a new Nickelodeon sitcom starting this fall, so I've done this lens in anticipation of that show becoming a hit. If not, I'm sure she'll break out in some other way. She's still just 15 after all.

The other people lens I published today had me on a see-saw. I had started looking through the recent Vanity Fair issue on the hot new young stars of Hollywood, and found several people I knew (although not names). And one that I didn't make connections on until after I started researching him was Josh Peck of Drake & Josh fame. Can't say I watch the show, although I have caught it a few times just because it came on right after some thing I was watching. The issue with Josh is that he's making the move from the cutesy kid in tween appropriate shows to an adult actor taking on daring roles. How do you balance the hijinks of Drake & Josh with the clothing-missing scene in The Wackness? I think over time, provided he doesn't flame out, it will get easier as he gets farther away from his role as Josh Nichols. (And yes, I'm concerned about him flaming out. He looks a bit doped out in his interviews.)

Decking out the house with sports decor

Baseball season is heading into its second half, and pro and college football will be on us in a few more weeks. Are you showing your team enough love?

During the NCAA basketball tournament this past spring, my family was having a case of Volunteer fever and my dad wanted Rocky Top on his phone. After doing a little research, I discovered that you could get all kinds of fight song ringtones and wallpapers for the various colleges. Got him all set up (just in time for Tennessee to get beaten) and, of course, made a shop lens with info on all the schools I could find.

Since then, I've started a few more sports team gear shops where you can show your team some unique kinds of love. It started with garden gnomes - yep, those lovely resin guys who will guard your front yard for you. Seems they're considered lucky, so you can get support your team with college garden gnomes, NFL garden gnomes or baseball garden gnomes. I know, crazy huh? Topping that, I also set up a shop with NFL furniture. So you can watch the game this fall from the comfort of your very own team-logo recliner or sofa. Yep.

Need some art to complete the den decor? You can get great posters and prints for football, baseball and college sports at Art.com. That's where I got the lovely football art for this post and for most of my others.

How to Boil Eggs

So I never really learned the "how" of how to boil eggs as I was growing up. Not that my mom never boiled eggs - we had them in our tuna fish all the time. But her method pretty much consisted of put the eggs on the stove and come back to get them if you remember. Result? I grew up thinking that the yolks were supposed to be pale and with a green coat.

When I started a low-carb way of eating, eggs became a key food source and hard-boiled an easy way to eat them. Which meant I had to learn how to cook hard-boiled eggs. After a lot of research, a little trial and error, I finally got the system down easily and efficiently. There's a lot of info out there on boiling eggs, but so much of it is conflicting or confusing. And, as it turns out, most people looking for directions just want to know how long to cook them to make Easter eggs. Funny! So of course, my expertise is now encapsulated for all to see in a new lens. Enjoy your yummy eggs!

Nothing better than baseball music

In case you missed it, The Baseball Project released its first album last week -Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. It's a random project from a couple of guys from REM among others and the original songs cover baseball greats and some infamous moments in the sport.

The big song they're pushing to start with is Past Time, which explores whether baseball is past its prime because all the great things in the game happened so long ago. There are tributes to Ted Williams, Harry Haddix, Satchel Paige and more. Well worth checking out.

Texas Tuesdays: Keeping Austin Weird

Everyone has one in the family. The sibling, cousin, unmarried aunt - the relative who is slightly off from the rest of you. In Texas, it's down the road from me in Austin.

The thing is, Austin is proud of being so different from the rest of the state. This is the home of Hippie Hollow, after all. It's a blue heart in a red state. And happy about it.

If you want to know more about the weirdness that is Austin, head over to a great lens in the Texas group that features the weirdness of Austin and a few of the weirdos that make up the place. Keep Austin Weird!!

Introducing the Mysterious Benedict Society

I love books meant for the 10-to-12-year-old set. Frankly, they're just a lot more fun than many adult books. (Much like I enjoyed doing murals for kids' rooms better than painting adult spaces. People are more willing to take chances with stuff for kids.)

So, back to books, the latest one I loved was The Mysterious Benedict Society. In fact, I have my husband reading it now. If you keep up with my reviews over at Book Bindings, you'll already know that I loved this one and can't wait for the the second book. As with other kids books I loved, I did a lens on the Benedict Society. There are polls for you to choose your favorite characters, rate the book and keep up with the Curiosity Chronicle.

Book lenses can be fun, particularly if there is great art in the book that you can showcase. I have yet to tackle a more "adult" book with the SquidLit format, but I suppose I'll get to one some day. It's kind of tough to get passionate about many of them. (Hmm. Maybe Tom Peters' The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness would be a good place to start. Loved that one!!)

Meet Baby Quilt Queen

Yes, I've gone off the deep end, starting yet another blog. But I figured this wasn't something I wanted to start getting into here at The Life of Lewister, so it seemed appropriate to start a new blog to tackle the topic.

One of my many hobbies is quilting and I particularly love doing baby quilts. They're fast, you can try new techniques, no one is being hyper picky about whether your points are right. All around, just a much less stressful type of project to tackle. So my new blog - Baby Quilt Queen - will be tackling baby quilt patterns, techniques, ideas and more. My hope is to review books and patterns as well as talk about my own projects. And maybe someday I'll develop my own patterns. Who knows. Right now, it's just a way to get deep into a topic I love. And of course, there are new Squidoo lenses to go along with the blog.

Changes to the comments

Hey gang! OK, I've signed up over at Disqus to help deal with the comments. (So someone leave one so we can see if it works. :-) As part of that, comments should now be threaded, you can vote them up or down, links are set to dofollow and you can leave video comments using Seesmic.

I hope. We'll see if I set it up correctly. Have fun!!

Have you gotten caught in the iCarly craze?

(UPDATE: Looking for the shirts Carly and Sam wear on iCarly? Start here for some ideas. And go here for iCarly merchandise including shirts with iCarly logos.)

If you have a pre-teen, you've probably heard of iCarly, the latest hit show in the TeenNick line-up on Nickelodeon. This show grabs hold of the Web 2.0 wave as the theme of the show, which is about the lives of teens Carly, Sam and Freddie and the webcast they create called - wait for it - iCarly. The show brilliantly manages to capture the interactivity the web is famous for by showing viewer videos and develop a two-way conversation via its website.

Being the weird adult I am, I actually got on this bandwagon early, but just recently completed my series of lenses on the actors who make up the iCarly cast. I've had a lens on Miranda Cosgrove for a while now, but just recently finished Jennette McCurdy, Nathan Kress and Jerry Trainor. I even have a lyrics lens on the show's theme song - Leave It All To Me - sung by Miranda.

I'm pondering what else I should do with the show and it's characters. There's just so much competition on the web right now related to the show, but there's not really a good lens on it as yet, so I could sew up Squidoo at least on that score. I also wanted to add the clothes that Carly and Sam wear (and Spencer's socks if I can find some!), but am thinking about making that its own lens. There there's the whole "how to do a webcast" thing for those kids who want to do their own show like Carly and Sam's. Or just want to do a video to submit to iCarly.

Thoughts? I know I can kick butt with the new lenses, but given that 90 percent of the people visiting are kids who don't buy anything, would it be worth it given the amount of competition? Hmmm.

Journey out today with Brendan Fraser

OK, I have to admit. I'm not entirely sure I'll be going to see Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. Even if it does star Brendan Fraser. (Who has been absent from the big screen for quite a while.) We went to see Indiana Jones this past weekend - a rare trip to an actual theater - and were highly disappointed. So I might end up waiting for this one (which has had quite the mixed reviews) to make it to a dollar theater or something. Think they'll still give us the cute glasses? Hmm.

Fraser has been highly enthusiastic about this movie, touting the 3-D part as being the wave of the future for movie-making. But ya know, I'll settle for better stories and story-telling and do without fancy tricks and effects. Remember WaterWorld? Battlefield Earth? No amount of special effects can overcome a bad story. So stick to the basics, Hollywood!!

Texas Tuesdays: Take a spin on the Texas Motor Speedway

So it's time to take another stroll around Texas to see what's going on in our fine state (and group). Texas is a big state for sports, but not just the Cowboys or Spurs or Astros. There's also a lot of hunting, fishing, NCAA and now, cars. Yep, we're heading up the road from Dallas this time to check out the Texas Motor Speedway.

GypsyPirate has put together a nice comprehensive lens here with everything you need to know about visiting the speedway, including the track configuration, 2008 schedule, weather, maps and more. There's great photos and videos to get you in the mood. It's one of several lenses Gypsy has on Nascar racetracks (and her passion for Nascar shows!). Check it out.

How I manage my Squidoo lenses

So someone asked me the other day what kind of system I use for updating all my lenses. After all, I have more than 100 in my main account and almost 100 in my song lyrics account. So surely I have a system, right?

Actually, as I’ve gotten more lenses and more experience, I think I have fallen into some kind of system without noticing. So what is that system? How do I decide what to update or focus on when I sit down to work on my lenses?

Hot lenses
These get touched every day, just because they are hot. The perfect example of this kind of lens is Kung Fu Panda. For the two months leading up to the movie, there was something new every day to add, either a new toy or review or video. So the first thing every day was to find that something new and get it on the lens. (These don’t come around that often, thank goodness!)

Google Alerts
Check the daily emails I get on the various topics and people I have lenses on. I’m looking for news of awards, shows, appearances, products, anything that I need to add to the page to ensure it’s complete. These are particularly important with products and people.

Traffic stats
Once I’ve taken care of the basics, I take a scan through my traffic numbers to see if there are any major changes of note. I’m looking for anything unusual like a sudden spike. When I find one, I check out the stats further to see where it’s coming from – someone mention it on a forum? Was there some kind of news that I missed? I’ll look for any new tags I might want to add and (if I haven’t touched it in a while) will give it a good going over to make sure all the links work. If it’s traffic that just really shouldn’t be there – like on an event lens where the event has been over for months – I’ll take another look and ponder if there’s something there to make it be more evergreen.

On the edge
I am trying to generally not pay attention to lensrank, but around the middle of the month, I start taking a look at lenses that are just above or below the cutoff points for the top two tiers. (This is around 2,000 and 10,000, in case you didn’t know.) So I take a look, see if there’s anything I could do to freshen up the lens to either bring in more traffic or create more interaction with the traffic I have.

So that’s it in several nutshells. It was great to have the question because it really made me stop to think about my process recently.

Counting down to July 15 for latest Joss Whedon project

Love anything Joss Whedon does, so can't wait for this to get here. I'm sure it will be tons of fun. Singing! Evil guys! Funny (punny) jokes as only Joss can deliver! Awesome!

Making little things - like pop tabs - count

I love weird/different/offbeat ways to help out. And that's reflected in several of my lenses over at Squidoo. Enter the latest in that line of lenses - collecting and donating pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House. Idea was generated during a recent trip to visit a friend and she kept after me to take the tabs off my cans. I thought it was just the average 8-year-old's idea of a collection, but it was a collection with a purpose. The pop tabs are taken to the recycling centers with the money then going to help pay for the operations of the house. (Just to be clear here, we're talking about electric bills and food, not medical treatments. Lots of rumors on the Internet about turning tabs in for treatments.) Its about the smallest thing you could do, but it's easy enough for any child and a great way to get them in the mindset early of doing for others.

(I like these kinds of things so much that I made a lens of offbeat charities featuring mine and others on Squidoo. There are lots of really creative ways to give.)

Parking lot etiquette

Nothing like shopping during a busy holiday weekend to get me started on a rant. Seriously. One of my biggest, grandest, hugest pet peeves is about the way people drive in a parking lot. Way as in direction, that is. (Crazy parking lot drivers are another issue.)

Why is it so difficult for people to figure out when an aisle of a parking lot is one way? It's not that complicated, really. Are the butts of the cars facing toward you? Can you just drive straight into an empty spot? Then you're good. Are the backends of the cars facing away? Do you have to back into the spot or do a wide swing to get into the spot? Is there barely enough room to get past a car coming at you from the other direction? YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!

Now, I know. I'm an insane rule follower, particularly when the purpose of the rules is to make things run smoothly for a group. And someone out there is thinking there are more important things to get my knickers in a twist about. But really, this is a bit of a safety issue. When the aisles of a parking lot are designed to be one way, there is usually not enough room for two cars to pass each other in the aisle. Not to mention the fact that you increase the risk of hitting cars if you try to actually park while going the wrong way. It's not that difficult and it makes life easier for everyone, OK?

(Yep, I know. We live in a society now that's narcissistic. So you think I should just get out of your way because you should get to do whatever you want. We need more considerate people in the world.)

We won't even get into the issue of randomly left carts or people who put them in the flower beds like that's better. OK. I feel better now.

Made the Giant Squid 100 Club!

Well, my latest milestone has been hit and passed. There was a competition on for members of the Giant Squid 100 club. Entry fee is 100 quality lenses, which I passed around the middle of June. I have 108 including my group right now with 11 in the wings waiting to be finished and published. I think I'll make my goal of 125 by Labor Day even at my current slow and steady pace.

It's interesting how my lensmaking ebbs and flows. I went from 30 to 60 lenses in no time flat, but it seemed like it took me a long time to get close to 100 and I wasn't sure I'd ever get across the line. I start a lot of lenses, but don't necessarily get around to finishing them. (Thus my 11 in WIP right now.) My pace has definitely become more steady, like two per week, although I can still rattle off a quality lens in about an hour if something strikes my fancy. And it often does. But I've spent a lot more time considering keywords and potential traffic before I start something new. Which is good. I'm maturing as an internet marketer. :-)

(Think you'd like to become a Squid? Think you have what it takes to make some real quality lenses and eventually become a Giant like me? Head over to Squidoo and sign up. Yes, I get a bonus if you use that link, but so do you! It's really a lot of fun, particularly if you like to write and have a flair for design.)

Care to Sing-Along?

I've created an alter-ego over at Squidoo to house some stuff I'm doing on song lyrics. They're kind of cookie-cutter style lenses, so I didn't really want them mixed in with my other lenses. Thus the second account.

My lensmaster name is Sing-Along, which is indicative of my musical taste for the most part. I like classical music - love some of it even - but I just like to sing. Which works well with the formula I'm using on these lenses as they have the video for the song as well as the words, so you can easily sing along with the group. (I'm not a fan of all the music I've chosen to feature. Some of it I did just because it's popular. But some of it, definitely loving it!)

Texas Tuesday - Lady Bird Johnson and the wildflowers

We're going to start something new here at The Life of Lewister. To help promote my Texas group over at Squidoo, I'm going to start featuring one of the lenses in the group over here every Tuesday. Thus the Texas Tuesday bit. Get it?

And we're going to start with just about the best of the bunch. It's about Texas wildflowers but also the woman who gave them the precedence they have in Texas today - Lady Bird Johnson. It was made by Margaret, one of the most major masterly lensmasters we have over at Squidoo. (And she has the e-Book to prove it!) Margaret does a lovely job of mixing information about Texas wildflowers (particularly the bluebonnet and paintbrush) with information about Lady Bird's passion for preserving the flowers. Margaret's lenses tend to have a lot more textual content than I ever put - a reminder that I need to work on that part more. I'm supposed to be a writer after all.