My lensography Books Make Great Gifts

Lensographies (lists of Squidoo lenses) are usually not very interesting although they can be useful. This is more likely if you do lensographies on individual niche subjects.  It is also possible to make them interesting and attractive to visitors looking for information on the topic of your niche too.

First of all, don’t use the word lensography in the title or text because this means nothing to anybody outside Squidoo. Think of a good title using relevant keywords and that is going to sound attractive to someone searching on Google.

Similarly, it’s important that the first paragraph of your introduction contains keywords and is likely to capture the attention of someone searching on Google.

I use two ways of trying to make lists of lenses interesting and attractive. The first can be seen on a page I did to gather my book reviews together to which I gave the title Books Make Great Gifts. I took the ‘give a book as a gift’ angle using my book reviews as suggestions. I wrote about why books make good gifts and the importance of matching the book with the recipient. I divided the lens up into different sections according to genre, eg Mysteries and Thrillers, Books for Children, Classic Books, and wrote a bit about each genre followed by a list of reviews of books of that type. I followed each list with an Amazon Spotlight and Amazon list of books in the hope of making some sales.

The other type of lensography I’ve done can be seen on England’s Seaside Towns. I wrote a little about individual lenses on individual seaside towns (one of them made by another lensmaster but it fitted in well) but mostly I’ve written about different types of seaside town with a link to more information from tourist information sites. There are maps for each place I wrote about on this page so people can see exactly where it is in England with pictures and a video of one place. Towards the end, I included a list of my lenses about seaside resorts. This seems to work quite well as it gets a few hundred visits a week – not earth shattering numbers but better than many lensographies. I used a similar style on a list of lenses about historic towns called Historic England.

Books Make Great Gifts

I write book reviews of fairly obscure books – never those in the top 100 best sellers, probably not even the top 10,000! This week I decided to publicise them a bit with a Squidoo mini lensography called Books Make Great Gifts.

I’m using a Christmas theme for now but, in the New Year, I’ll change it.

I’ve made the point that books make great gifts for birthdays and Christmas as I don’t want it to be seasonal. I wrote about why they make good gifts and the importance of matching the type of book to the recipient. I’ve done separate modules for different genres: Mysteries and Thrillers, Historical Novels, Classics, used Featured Lens modules for my book review lens links, Amazon Spotlight and Amazon list modules for newly published books in the hope of making some sales. I also put in a couple of polls. I want to make the page more than just a list of my lenses, I want to make it interesting in its own right too.

Making this kind of mini-lensography gives me a new lens and it might draw in traffic to existing book reviews I’ve written. If I make a few sales from it, that will be a bonus.

When you really don’t know what to write about next, take a look at the lenses you’ve done so far. Hopefully, you will have written some on a similar subject so that you too can make a mini lensography. You can always add new lenses to it as you publish them.

This week I’ve written two new Squidoo lenses (web pages). The first one was in response to a suggestion on Get Cracking With Bonnie and Robin to write about a specific fear so I wrote about my dental phobia. As I explain, it started when I was a child in response to something a dentist said to me and it continued for many years. It was desperation that finally led me to conquering it with the help of a very understanding, patient and sensitive dentist. You can read more about it on Fear of the Dentist.

Other pages on this topic featured on the Get Cracking page are:

• Overcoming the Fear of Poverty
• Fear of Insects
• The Fear of Bees
• Needle Phobia

I’d recommend visiting the Get Cracking page if you are stuck for a subject to write about. Even if you haven’t got writer’s block, you might fancy a change of topic from the ones you usually tackle. Another good reason for checking the page regularly is that the suggestions are usually for very niche subjects. Most of us are convinced that we can’t compete with the big sites on the most popular topics so the more niche the subject matter of our own pages, the more likely they are to come up high in search results particularly if we make several pages dealing with different aspects of the same niche subject and link between them.

The second page I did this week was a book review of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, the latest novel by this author. I’d never read anything by David Mitchell before and was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like the book as Mitchell has the reputation for writing very ‘literary’ books which I interpret as difficult to read and sometimes just plain boring. Nothing could have been further from the truth. This book gripped me from the first page and, as soon as I finished it, I wanted to share it with as many people as possible so I wrote the review. Now I can’t wait to read more of Mitchell’s work.

Reviews of books, movies, music, etc, are all good topics for a web page. If you have written several pages about a particular niche, you can usually find something to review that fits the niche to expand your coverage.

Now all I’ve got to do is keep up the writing.

Susanna Duffy, Squid Angel

I’ve known Australian Susanna Duffy online for several years and she has always made great web pages. It’s a talent she’s transferred to Squidoo and now makes great lenses too.

She was made a Squid Angel a few months ago and she has carried out her Angel duties assiduously – I wouldn’t expect anything else from her.

How does she find time for all her many activities and enterprises? I have no idea except I suspect she works long hours and doesn’t waste too long sleeping.

Read more about her in this interview.

When did you join Squidoo?
There are really 2 dates which mark my entrance into squidoo. The first was September 2006 when I joined and made a lens as a backlink to a website. After that I went off about my other business leaving that lens to sit alone, unattended, without a backwards glance from me for exactly two years.

I didn’t return until September 2008, a date which marks my ‘real’ Squidoo start. Things looked different – squidoo had changed! More to the point, I had also changed and from that day last year I embraced Squidoo with passion.

Would you call yourself a Squidoo addict?
One third of my time online is spent on Squidoo, I’m more addicted to my online business if addiction is a word which can be used for online work. I make 70% of my income online. The business is called Virtual PA.

What do you like best about Squidoo?
Squidoo is fabulous and fast! And where else do you find such a friendly community? Like all communities, there are ups and downs and the occasional pest, but the wealth of supportive lensmasters far outweighs the complainers. SquidU Forums are a source of answers, advice and tips for everyone of all levels.

What annoys or irritates you about it?
The abuse of Squidoo is more than irritating, it’s quite sickening. Cheats, liars and scammers have to be hunted down to clean it up for the rest of the world. They give us all a bad name.

Which was your first lens and why did you write it?
My original foray into Squidoo was about my first love, mythology. I’ve since turned that first lens into a lensography which lists some of my lenses on the topic. It’s still not what could be called a ‘good’ lens, it needs work, but I’m attached to it now and read the few comments with fondness.

I now have a much better understanding of what makes an interesting lens but it’s hard to say goodbye to my first shaky attempt.

What is your favourite lens of your own and why?
I’m particularly fond of my Roman recipes. I’ve been trying lots more too so I’m planning a second (or third) lens on this topic.

The fascinating part about ancient Roman recipes is that they have no measurement of ingredients, no explanation of many of those ingredients – and no instructions! You have to guess it, cook it, taste it and then make a judgement for modern palates. It’s like solving a mystery, a two thousand year old mystery.

I have a small restaurant, Cafe Porridge, and specialise in ancient foods so I’m always experimenting with something new – or ‘old’.

Have you enjoyed your time as a Squidoo Angel?

Nowadays I’m an Honorary Angel and I have truly loved my time with wings. Cleaning up the baddies in Squidoo has been a constant delight although not as delightful as blessing excellent lenses.

The Curious Town of Coober Pedy

You write about many different topics – Australia and Australians, myths and legends, recipes, to name just a few. Do you have a preference for a particular one or more subjects amongst those you’ve covered?

Mythology is my number one topic but I write on Australia as so many people really know very little about this vast continent. My favourite about Australia is The Curious Town of Coober Pedy.

Recipes? I love my kitchen.

Why are you particularly fascinated by mythology? Do you think some of them are based on real events and have just been embroidered over the centuries?

Stories told for thousands of years have an impact on us today. They don’t last because of fashion, taste or religion, they remain in our consciousness because they have an ageless message to give us. Look at the story of Demeter. As I say in the introductory module, myths can be read as symbols, and can be used as working templates for modern times. If you read past the supernatural, Demeter is relevant for women of today. Right here and now.

Have you any ambitions to fulfill on Squidoo?

I want to be in the Squidoo Hall of Fame! If we had such a thing. I should write a lens about it

The Dark is Rising Sequence

I now have a total of 92 lens on Squidoo and I need well over 100 to give myself a chance of making the Giant 100 Club because the definition is 100 outstanding lenses and not all of mine might qualify as outstanding.

I’m going to do the best I can in the time I have left – just 30 days as the final date is June 30th. If I don’t have the required number of the right standard by then, I will have to wait till the end of September to apply again. I have decided that I won’t beat myself up if I don’t do it this time, though. That way I won’t be so prone to the ‘headless chicken’ syndrome – going crazy doing nothing because I have so much to do that I can’t make up my mind what to concentrate on!

I’m a bit disappointed that lenses I think are good don’t do well and haven’t been picked up by Google. One of these is The Dark is Rising Sequence, a series of fantasy novels for children that I think are as good as the Harry Potter ones. I read them when I was in my 30s even though, since I’ve been an adult,  I’ve never made a habit of reading children’s novels but these captured my imagination.

I wrote about a series of books for adults, The Revelation Space Universe. After I read the first book, I found the series compulsive. It’s proper science fiction, not fantasy, so maybe not as universally popular as other best selling books. I defy anybody who like sci-fi to read one of these novels without wanting to read the rest immediately!

Another lens that doesn’t get the traffic I think it should is The Historic City of Bath, England. It’s got lots of pictures of Bath plus some videos taken in the city. I’ve also written about its history and the places to visit there. I live fairly close to Bath and, before I moved last year, I lived just 12 miles away. My dentist was there and it was the place we went when we wanted more than just basic food shopping. I know it well and I love the city. I hope that comes through in what I’ve written about it.

Oh well, next month I’ll go through the lenses that don’t do so well and either delete them or try to assess what’s wrong with them. Doing that isn’t as interesting as writing something new but I’m wasting the work I’ve already done if I don’t try to make them more popular.

I’ve always liked poetry, even as a child. That’s why I decided to make a lens called Classic Funny Poems for Kids. I included poems like The Jumblies, Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies and A Naughty Little Comet.

From my own experience I believe that even toddlers can appreciate a poem like The Jumblies with its repetitive chorus of:

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

This is especially true if you do actions like pat your head with your hands and then hold up your hands as you recite the third line. Very soon children will join in with the actions and eventually with the words.

I think reciting poetry, with enthusiasm, to children encourages them to appreciate it and it expands their vocabulary and understanding. The rhythm and the rhymes help the process.

This web page has proved surprisingly popular, appearing on the first page of Google results for ‘funny children’s poetry’ and ‘classic funny poetry.’ It’s also my number one lens on Squidoo, currently ranked in the top 200 out of more than 600,000 lenses. Not bad for something I did for my own amusement and which I thought would attract a tiny number of visitors.