I see the heading “My Lens Needs a Blessing” often on Squidoo’s Angels Forum and it always makes me want to shout, “No, it doesn’t!”

Quite often the body of the post reads like the writer thinks an Angel’s Blessing is something to which he or she is entitled just by virtue of finishing a lens.

This attitude is usually confined to new Squids, though. Anybody who has been on Squidoo for a while knows that this is not how Blessings work.

A Squidoo Angel’s Blessing is only given to pages that are, in the opinion of the Angel who gives it, exceptionally good. It isn’t for a page that is quite good or just good, it is for those that are excellent.

Going on to the point about ‘needing a Blessing’ – no lens needs one. Any well written page can rise to the top of its category and even into Squidoo’s Top 100 lenses without being Blessed. The Blessing only gives it a temporary boost in lens rank. If the lens isn’t good enough to make it on its own, then it will slide down the rankings fairly fast once the Blessing wears off. A more long term way to success is make sure your work is as good as it can be:

• It should be well written.
• There shouldn’t be any big slabs of text making it hard to read.
• You should illustrate it well – pictures help to break up text.
• You should know your subject.
• You must have written it with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind. That means using keywords sensibly particularly in titles, subtitles and in the opening paragraphs. It doesn’t mean writing for search engines, it should all still read well.
• You need to work hard at promoting your lens by getting backlinks (links from other sites to it).
• You then need to be lucky.

Don’t worry if your lens isn’t Blessed. It can still be big success in terms of both lensrank and producing an income.

Santa Squid from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

I’m finishing this year feeling I’ve accomplished some things that I really wanted to do. There have been some disappointments and sad times too – just like many years, in fact.

At the beginning of the year, I was making very few new lenses on Squidoo. I’d become a Giant in October 2008 by making 50+ lenses. After that I just lost inspiration for writing. I’d start a new lens, think about it, then delete it because I couldn’t think of more to write or I was bored by the subject. Worse still, I sometimes finished a lens, read it the next day, decided it was rubbish and so deleted it. Although I made a few lenses, they were a struggle.

Early 2009 two things pulled me out of this Slough of Despond. I joined Senior Squids and started to take part in their weekly lens Challenge. The second was I received an invitation from Michelle (a_willow) to join the Wiwon Team to become a Giant 100 Clubber. That was in April and the deadline to have 100+ lenses was June 30th 2009.

Joining in the Senior Squids weekly lens Challenge helped me start lens building again. Only having a week to make a lens concentrated my mind – I didn’t have time to dither and decide I didn’t like what I was doing. I made lenses on so many different subjects, it was this that started me off doing gardening lenses like I Love Lilies, Moonflower – Night Blooming Plants and Best of Garden Flowers on Twitter.

Salute to Giants from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids

Not only did these count towards my 100+ lens target, they also started me writing again. I made the Giant 100 Club having met the required number of quality lenses by June 30th.

Then Michelle asked me to be a tutor on Wiwon for people wanting to make Giant or the 100 Club. She would decide she wanted a lens on some aspect of writing for Squidoo and that I was the one to write it. Sometimes I only had a couple of days before she wanted it. Funnily enough, it really helped me too.

Now I’m a Squid Angel and I love doing this. It gives me the opportunity to help new Squids particularly. Sometimes I see newcomers with great potential and all they need is a little guidance on the best way to use Squidoo. It’s also lovely when I get an email or message on my Angel’s lens telling me I’ve made somebody’s day by blessing their lens.

That’s the really great thing about Squidoo – for many of us, it’s all about community and giving back as well as taking.

Both pictures came from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids.

I’ve also got a reputation for being blunt in my critiques of people’s lenses. I won’t say something like “You’ve made a good effort but…” when I look at a lens and think it’s terrible without any redeeming features. I cannot bring myself to utter false praise. One reason is that it calls into question my own judgment. People reading it will assume I really think it is a good effort when it’s plainly not. The other reason is that I don’t think false praise helps the person improve.

I always try to offer advice on how to improve the page and the writing when needed. I don’t just say, “It’s rubbish.”

Now I’m an Angel, I have to be more cautious in my approach although I still won’t give false praise to a hopeless piece of work. The reason for my caution is because, as an Angel, I have the reputation of all Angels to consider.

Even when I don’t bless a lens, I sometimes write privately to the lensmaster (when they have contact enabled) to make suggestions for improvement that would make the lens eligible for a blessing or at least 4 or 5 stars.

Helping new Squids is the part of Squidoo that I have always enjoyed the most. I’ve got great pleasure from seeing some lensmasters do a reasonable to good first lens and then go on to become great lensmasters. Some of them are now Giants. It’s great to spot talent early and see that person go on to meet or even exceed your expectations.

If you want to know what I look for when I’m deciding whether to bless a lens, take a look at my Angel in Disguise.

Since I made Giant with fifty lenses at the beginning of last October, I needed a break and was fresh out of ideas for new subjects for lenses. The incentive was one of my Squidoo friends, Willow, was one of the Angels who had started one of the teams for aspiring Giants or Giant 100s. It is a competition between teams so I joined hers – Willow’s Wonder Squids. Now I have a responsibility to the team to reach the 100 lens target.

Since signing up for the team I’ve done three new lenses:

1. Care for Antique & Collectible Glass
2. Antiques & Collectibles of the Future
3. Should Art & Antiques be Restored or Not?

You can follow the team’s progress because members add their new lenses to this page as they write them.

The inimitable Drifter has even done our team its own fan page – Willow and the Wonders: The Best Giant Greeter Team Ever. Just the title tells you Drifter is the master of understatement and this page doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it’s probably got some members of other teams a little riled. Never mind, it adds to the fun.