As a last resort I posted a link on the Fresh Squids Forum and asked for help and got some good suggestions which I implemented. I’m delighted to report that the page was awarded a Purple Star yesterday.

Even though I don’t think this is one of my best lenses, I’m sure it wouldn’t have got a Purple Star without the help I received from my friends on Fresh Squids. The moral of the story is don’t be afraid of asking for help or a critique no matter how experienced you are.

Even the most experienced and brilliant writers and webmasters can have problems writing a new article for a web page. Sometimes, the subject doesn’t come together well for you or the writing doesn’t flow properly. When this happens, it often doesn’t read well either. Before you cut your losses and delete a lens, ask for help and you’ll find plenty of people on Squidoo or are willing to advise you on how to improve it.

Image via Wikipedia

Squidoo has changed the way its Angels operate again. Now that there are more categories and sub-categories for lenses, Angels look after a particular sub-category – mine is Growing Plants. It’s a subject in which I’m interested so I enjoy looking at these pages and have given out blessings on several. I’m pleased to say that so far I haven’t come across any lenses violating the site’s Terms of Service.

I’m really happy that my page called My Father – In Memoriam has received a Purple Star. I am so pleased because it’s such a personal and emotional subject. I’ve also had several pages blessed, including one of my earliest lenses – Dartmoor, Devon. The lensmaster and angel MakingaMark is the one who blessed it and also put a link to it on her own page called The Best of the UK.

It’s a straightforward sales page but I have written something about each clock I feature so it’s not just copy and paste.

One of the reasons I wrote it was because I wanted relevant pages for Unusual Novelty Teapots and Local Time and Railway Time. I’ve struggled for about a year to find something relevant to go with the page about Railway Time. I know novelty clocks aren’t very relevant but they both have something to do with time so that’s good enough for me!

I also like the subject of my new page. I enjoyed looking at various clocks on Amazon.com and found several that I would be happy to have in my own home.

For me, it’s important that I’m interested in the subject I write about, even on a sales lens, and that I enjoy producing the page. If I don’t, I’m sure it can come over to the visitor.

I kept meaning to write a post here about the new quiz but just never got up enough enthusiasm even to open this blog, let alone write anything. There have been other Squidoo related topics I’ve had in mind to comment on here but, again, haven’t written about them.

Right! This has to stop now. I’m going to make myself write here and on Squidoo. I know once I start I enjoy it.

I decided to be sensible and write a lens on Christmas gifts for children. It’s the right time of year, it might even be a little late now but not very much so.

When I started the lens, I wrote an introduction and put in a graphic. I even wrote content for another module and did one Amazon Spotlight. Then I was hit by overpowering boredom with the whole thing. The idea of having to write about several more products was more than I could bear. I haven’t deleted the lens. It sits there reproachfully in WIP, a reminder that I should finish it.

This isn’t real writer’s block. It’s not that I don’t want to write and to prove it, yesterday I wrote a book review about The Lost Garden, a novel by Helen Humphreys. The words flowed, I wasn’t stuck at all. I wrote it all in a couple of hours.

In the past, I’ve written commissioned articles for magazines. They haven’t all been on subjects I particularly wanted to write about but, nevertheless, I always fulfilled the commission to deadline and with the required number of words. Additionally, my articles have always been published with little or no sub-editing. Why, then, can’t I treat the Christmas gifts lens like a commissioned article and just write it? I think it must be because I have nothing to lose by not finishing it. If I had failed to deliver a commissioned feature, I would have never been given another commission by that editor again. I would also have lost face and reputation.

I have come to the conclusion that now I have retired from writing for magazines and I can please myself, I don’t have the incentive to produce articles on subjects that don’t interest me. Nowadays I don’t write to deadlines either. I write for pleasure. My work on Squidoo covers many different topics: books, collectibles, English towns and cities, gardening, the environment, and history. It’s quite surprising that even the most obscure subjects receive some traffic and some lenses that I was quite reconciled to never being read have slowly gained an audience. I also have my star ones that get a large number of visitors too.

If writing commercially doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry if you are writing for pleasure. Just keep writing on topics that interest you because there are always some other people who are interested by the same things.

On October 5th I gave my last Squidoo Angel blessing to Of Mood and Mind Surreal Original Paintings.

From September 1st to October 5th I blessed 180 lenses and some days it took literally hours to find just five I thought were exceptionally good – take a look at the full list of blessings.

In Squidoo’s forum there is a controversy about how Angels find lenses to bless. Should they consider those for which lensmasters ask a blessing? Should they look at lists of new lenses or use a search for different subjects? Does it matter how Angels find blessworthy lenses as long as the quality is high enough?

Personally, I don’t think it matters and the whole controversy is a storm in a teacup.

I did look at links to lenses posted in the old Angels’ forum but I never expected too much from them – usuallly quite rightly although occasionally I got a pleasant surprise but a page that truly deserved a blessing. I also looked at lenses posted in the forum or on Facebook. Mostly, though, I looked at lenses made by my fans and their fans. Then I would search by broad subject areas like ‘modernism’ or ’surrealism’ or ‘Italy’. It’s quite amazing the huge variety of topics that fall within these categories. With ‘modernism’ and ’surrealism’ I expected to get lenses about art but I got many others too including history and philosophy. Even putting ‘Italy’ into Squidoo’s search engine brought a huge variety: travel in Italy, Rome, Naples, Italian food, recipes, art, glass, and much more.

What happened to my own writing and Squidoo Lenses during my Angel period? Not a lot – I made one new page: Glazed Lemon and Almond Tart and that took several days when I should have done it in just a few hours. It was a recipe so nothing that involved a huge amount of work. As for existing lenses, many of them are in urgent need of updating because I didn’t do a few each day which is my normal routine.

In spite of this, I enjoyed being an Angel. I loved the pleasure and encouragement many people got from a blessing and I would do it again but not yet. I think I’d better get my own Squidoo work up to date with a few more new pages produced first.

Every morning since the beginning of September I’ve trawled through lenses on Squidoo looking for ones to bless. I have to bless a minimum of five a day. Some days it’s fairly easy and quick to find them, other days it can take hours and involve looking at an enormous number of pages.

If I wanted, I could do it very fast by looking at lenses made by Giants and Giant 100 Clubbers, particularly the best known ones. I don’t want to do that, though. I want to find pages from aspiring lensmasters because they often don’t get enough attention. When I was new to Squidoo, getting a blessing for a lens gave me encouragement and made me want to write more lenses. I want to pass that on to other newbies to the network.

So what’s the problem?

So many people don’t read the basic instructions or the Terms of Service (or if they do, they take no notice), and they don’t bother to look at lenses made by established lensmasters to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve seen pages with well written content and some relevant pictures but they’re a mess. Sometimes it’s just one giant wall of text with no effort made to split it into separate modules.  Sometimes the concept of paragraphs seems to have passed by the writer. Who is going to try to read that?

Other times writers haven’t changed the default titles of modules. It ain’t rocket science! If a module is called ‘New Introduction’ or ‘New Guestbook’ then you need to change it because it won’t be new once you’ve used it , will it? Titles should also be changed because they are an opportunity to use keywords for your subject so help to get the lens listed by Google.

Does any of this matter when it comes to giving an Angel Blessing? Yes, it does in my opinion. A blessing should only be given to outstanding lenses, not ones that are OK or ‘not bad’ but the ones that are truly memorable. I can still remember many of the lenses I blessed when I first became an Angel a year ago.

We all know that updating our Squidoo lenses is important. Google likes fresh content is one reason, another reason is it helps our lensrank. One thing that is worth remembering, when updating, is to check any dates of events that you give on the web page.

This was brought home to me just yesterday. I was updating my page Historic City of York, England when I noticed the section called Festivals in York. In it I’d put the actual dates of the festivals for the year I wrote the page – that was 2008! That’s dreadful and I am embarrassed to admit I was so careless.

Now for the excuses: this was one of my early lenses and I’d forgotten I’d put in precise dates – how stupid is that? When I’ve updated it in the past, I’ve obviously just skimmed that section without reading it at all.

When I use the Countdown module, I remember to check it. When I use it on a Christmas page, I make a point of changing the year soon after Christmas. I’m so annoyed with myself for not noticing I’d left these old dates in place even though I’d put links to the festival websites so people could check dates.

Of course, I’ve changed them now. I haven’t put in specific dates, some of the festivals haven’t published them yet for next year, but I’ve given the month they usually take place but kept the links in place. I’ve also checked that all the links work.

I’m not telling this story to punish myself! I hope that reading this might remind you to check dates and links on older pages.

One of my most personal pages, I Had a Mini-Stroke and What Happened Next, was featured on Squidoo Lens Review which is an honour particularly as the review was so complimentary.

Writing about something as personal as my health was very difficult. In my daily life I don’t go around discussing my health with people I don’t know so writing about it on the web is even more outrageous. In fact, I’m a very private person and don’t really discuss my life much with people I don’t know well. Writing about my life was a big step to take but it is one I recommend to anybody who is knew to Squidoo or other web writing.

You don’t have to reveal details of your health or anything very private, if you don’t want to do so. Bringing some personality to your writing, though, helps people enjoy reading your pages and to like you, hopefully. Just express an opinion on some aspect of the subject or write about a personal experience even if it is just how easy or difficult you found a product to use.

If you are writing a book review, tell us if you enjoyed the book and why you like it. Don’t keep it impersonal. I want to know if it’s worth buying and if you don’t tell me whether you liked it or not, then how can I know?

You can even inject some personality into a recipe page. Tell us if you make the dish regularly and how much you and others enjoy it. Think of ways to include some personality into anything you produce online. Of course, on most pages you don’t need to do this all the way through, just when it is appropriate.

I have accidentally started a new niche of Squidoo lenses: recipes for lemons.

I really do try to expand niches so taking my own advice given here in Nail that Niche way back in March of this year. Unfortunately, I have a bit of a butterfly mind and always want to write something new or different.

I am determined to turn over a new leaf and expand on topics I have written lenses about already and, if I start on a new subject, to first of all have ideas for other lenses in the niche to complement it.

It was funny how I started on this niche. I’ve mentioned Get Cracking With Bonnie and Robin before and how I find their daily suggestions for Squidoo lenses helpful and, sometimes, challenging – not a challenge I always rise to either!

On July 11 they suggested ‘Get Cooking’ as the topic. I wanted to find something a bit different to write about – not just another main course, cake or dessert but also something that might catch people’s interest. I came up with Make Lemon Curd, a delicious, traditional, sweet spread for bread, cakes or desserts. At the same time, I was reminded of how many excellent recipes I have for lemons and so I saw the possiblity of a niche.

The Lemon Curd page seems to have been reasonably successful in the short term (who knows how it will go over months or years?)  mainly because many Americans who left a comment hadn’t heard of it. Several thought it sounded easy and good enough to try as a way of using up a surplus of lemons in those places where they grow naturally.

This good reception encouraged me to make more pages with recipes for lemons. So far I have published Make a Glazed Lemon Cake and Make Lemon Drinks with links connecting all three lenses. I have another lemon recipes lens half finished and I hope to complete it today or tomorrow and I have plans for another two at least, perhaps more.

It seems to me that the way to make a niche of complementary pages successfully is by starting out with more lenses in mind even while you are writing the first one. Fingers crossed that my lemon niche does well.