Who Was Who on Jan. 25, 2007 Squidoo's Top 100

I don't remember anything like that happening - it's almost 11 AM PST when I'm starting to write this and the LensRank numbers on my Dashboard are not changed yet from yesterday. There were even questions in the Lounge about that, but no change yet…

Wouldn't that be a result of my previous post? Who knows… Well at HQ they know, but I don't expect them to follow what you I'm writing here.

Still, Megan wrote in the Lounge a nice comment about my blog - good for Her! I really appreciate it and I wrote there a "thank-you" note.

However, with that unusual delay in showing the LensRank numbers, I really got a feeling that they must have realized at the HQ that the current LensRank algorithm is one of the worst they ever had and they are think hard and fast about how to change it. And there are at least few places in the Lounge when this important issue is being discussed, with a number of smart, experienced lensmasters involved.

It can only be good for Squidoo…


But before I see a newly-reworked Top 100, I will tell you some interesting things about what we had in Top 100 by LensRank as of Jan. 25, 2007 and how it changed since the first day of the existence of the new algorithm that was introduced on Jan. 23, 2007.


On Jan. 25, 2007 there were 23 NEW lenses - i.e. lenses that were not in Top 100 by LensRank (LR) on Jan. 23, 2007.

The highest NEW lenses were:

#37 - One Deal a Day Sites by EllenC,
#46 - World of Warcraft - bots - cheats - walk thru guides by tmdblogger
#49 - Couplestouch.com - Swingers & Swinging Lifestyle-Lifestyle Couples & Singles - Swingers dating! By JadeHernandez

[Note: all of them actually became NEW on Jan. 24. Totally NEW on Jan. 25 were: #60. Top 10 Valentine's Day Gifts for 2007 by MrLewisSmile, #69 - Most Innovative Churches by kevinhendricks and #74 - How To Get Backlinks by thefluffanutta]

By the way, among those 23 NEW lenses, the videosense group had 2 new lenses (#51 and #100) and the affiliate marketing contest group had 1 new lens (#71) in Top 100.


Which lenses made the BIGGEST JUMP UP?

Congratulations to relache whose lens Corsetry, Tight-Lacing and Waist-Training was up remarkable 46 spaces - to #21 from #67.

How well did the videosense and affiliate marketing contest groups do?

Well, nice moves too, but not as big as relache's:

Up 32 spaces - to #34 - funny videos cash money by fran1326 (videosense group),

Up 34 spaces - to #43 Affiliate Marketing 101 by Writertiff (affiliate marketing contest group), but this was tied by #48 Affiliate Marketing Guide by bhopkins


Now, worse news - THE BIGGEST SLIDE…

Sorry, relache, but it was your lens No-Knead bread (no kidding!) that went down a lot - 47 spaces - to #90 from #43. In fact, another of relache's lenses also was down by 47 spaces - Temporary Tattoos - to #97 from #50.

And, again, how did the videosense and affiliate marketing contest groups do in this "category" - BIGGEST SLIDE?

Down 42 spaces - to #98 - Make Money Simply Sharing Videos by thevideosense

Down 22 spaces (only!) - to #55 - Beating The Warrior Affiliate Marketing Competition by Simonj007.


How many lenses DIDN'T CHANGE position from Jan. 23 to Jan. 25, 2007?

It isn't the most important "category", but let's notice that - #1, #2, #4, #16 and #99 - 5 lenses in total DIDN'T CHANGE position from Jan. 23 to Jan. 25, 2007 .

In fact, I should restate what I just wrote - it's very important to the lensmasters involved - congratulations especially to the owners of the first two lenses - #1 - Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop Bags by mynameiskate and #2 - Handbags: Deals and Steals by Greendrv.

It really doesn't matter to them what the algorithm is, what tweaks are being done - they just stay on the top all the time! It's very impressive and I salute these both fine lensmasters for doing such incredible job!


Would you like to know how do relate to the Top 100 LR the other rankings made available by the HQ - Most Emailed (ME) and Most Profitable (MP)?

I wrote it before - ME appears to be irrelevant - only 5 lenses from the ME are also among Top 100 LR. Which are they? Here you go:

#20 on Most Emailed - Metal Clay - Precious Metal Clay by MSchindel
#28 - Blogging Starter Checklist by rajesh301
#53 - Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop Bags by mynameiskate
#57 - Google Earth (My Passion) by jeffryv
#58 - New for January '07 Gemstone publishing's Disney Comics! By seitler

Interesting combo, isn't it?

Finally, how many lenses from the MOST PROFITABLE ranking also appear on Top 100 by LR?

There are 34 lenses from the MP ranking that also are on the Top 100 by LensRank. But I believe that it is also important to notice the lenses from MP that are not on LR, but their owners have OTHER lenses there. I've got a feeling after careful looking at both rankings that it is important element of the algorithm. Anyway, there are 9 lenses like that among the Most Profitable.

Here are the highest ranking lenses from the Most Profitable that made it to the Top 100 by LR:

#1 - Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop bags by mynameiskate
#2 - Handbags: Deals and Steals by Greendrv
#67 - Your Guide To High Definition TV by Mt_T

So here you go… Just look at those numbers over the weekend, read again my previous post and think what you can do to be on the top.

I hope to see you there… Yeah, I just looked at the Dashboard - it's 11:45 AM PST and noticed that finally there are new lensrankings and my lenses are doing much better today. And actually, I have one lens back in the Top 100 - The Beatles lens… Congrats to myself. But seriously, I hope to see you on the top!

Ilona Zuzalek
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music

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Another LensRank algorithm tweak at Squidoo - who's happy and who's not…

Encouraged by the recently published Squidoo Forum Rules, I decided to use its point 4 - "The SquidU forum is a place for lensmasters to interact, to share ideas and inspiration (and yes, gripes... maybe another lensmaster can help) and have fun with their lenses".

So just to start, I decided to share with fellow lensmasters my analysis of Squidoo's most important ranking - Top 100 byLensRank by using data from Jan. 24, 2007 and Jan. 23, 2007. Something, I'm sure will be of interest to both seasoned lensmasters and the greenhorns…

Just recently, Squidoo experienced a little shakeup - not only one naughty lensmaster was expelled; we also got rid of two rankings - Top 100 by Most Visited and Top 100 by Most Blogged and finally - we had a serious tweak to the LensRank algorithm.

On Jan. 22, 2007 Editor Megan wrote: "Just a headsup that we're doing another (small!) tweak to the LensRank algorithm tonight, so if lenses shift around a little in the morning that's why. As ever, we're constantly trying to come up with combos that reward a) good handbuilt content that is b) promoted well and c) recommended by readers."

Apparently Megan was using here her unparalleled sense of humor, because when I woke up on Tuesday morning (Jan. 23, 2007), I found out that the tweak wasn’t so small - all of my lenses were gone from Top 100!

It took me two days to get composure after seeing that on the tweaked ranking my best lenses were at # 109, 111, 116 and 123 while a number of lenses without any content, with very low star ratings and just visibly worse than my lenses had better LensRank positions… I got so frustrated that I basically didn't touch any of my lenses for two days. I know it's not healthy for my lenses, but hey, I checked a number of those allegedly better lenses and many of them weren't updated for more than 7 days. But what really shocked me was when I saw that the lens that I consider to be the best ever made - "Michelangelo's David" by Margaret_Schaut was at #91, while a lens such poorly made as "funny videos cash money" was at #66! … OMG - this lens doesn't even have proper title! Just please don't tell me that this is "licentia poetica" - it simply is an error and grammar untidiness.

[Important update - today - Jan. 25, 2007 - "David" lens is no more in Top 100 and "funny video cash money" climbed to #34.Think for yourself…]

Now, I really feel that if the Squidoo HQ announces a LensRanking tweak and the ranking is re-done, a situation after that is like a point zero for each lens – we’re are being showed how we measure up against each other as of the day of the tweak. At least that’s what I understand based on FAQ, Q&A, SquidU and Forum posts.

Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to bother with tweaks and all the rankings, too.

So I believe that the new-looking Top 100 by LensRanking shows the direction in which Squidoo is heading as well as what kinds of lenses in opinion of HQ are the best and deserve further promotion and showcasing. No one can dispute that lenses that are not in Top 100 get much, much less of that.

So, without any further ado (already said a lot), let’s take a look at the most fascinating stuff – let’s analyze what kind of lenses made it to the revamped Top 100 by LensRank – with a bit of Most Profitable ranking too.

For this analysis, I’ll be using the rankings of Jan. 23 and 24, 2007. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the scoop!

As everybody noticed, two rankings disappeared from the public eyes at the beginning of this week – Top 100 by Most Visited and Top 100 by Most Blogged. Based on that, it can be assumed that those two factors - visits and blogging - are gone from the LensRank algorithm, which leaves us with only two other categories that are made public - Most Profitable and Most Emailed.

The fact is, however, that the Most Emailed is totally meaningless; I looked at the first 5 lenses in that category on the first day of the tweak and their average LensRank was awfully low - 2,800! I don’t think much changed since that.

So what we really have to work with is the Most Profitable (MP) category and it is absolutely a biggie!

I think that it can count for as much as 50% of the algorithm. Why? On Jan. 24, 2007, almost half (it was exactly 47%) of the Top 100 lenses were either in Top100 MP - 33 of them or in 14 cases even though the particular lens was not on the MP list, the owner had at least one lens on the MP list.

By the way, who had most of the MP lenses? Well, on Jan. 23, 2007 the honor was shared by relache and MrLewisSmile - each had 7 lenses, but Lewis had most of them in Top 50!

It's very interesting to know what subjects are most popular among Top 100 lenses. So here is a very important tip for you. If you make a lens on one of the following subjects, you will have a very good chance to get in top 100: videosense, tattoo, affiliate marketing, cellphones, automotive, social networking, animals, buying bags, warcraft, artistic hobby, cooking, TV shows and pop stars.

One thing that that probably not many lensmasters would expect is that being a Citizen Squid or a very frequent contributor on the Squidoo Forum almost guarantee a place on Top 100 list! I think not many people know what the Citizens' role is except for being most frequent participants in Forum discussions where they are most visible, but apparently being a Citizen helps a lot to get into Top 100.

I will explain here that the following lensmasters are the Citizen Squids: KimberlyDawnWells, Pandrogas (Alumni), AngelaHarms, seitler (Alumni), boredofeducation, Marti and oniyagi; sorry if I missed somebody. Sure, I know whom I missed - Mr.LewisSmile, of course! Now we have complete Citizen Squid Squad, I hope...

Who are the most frequent Squidoo Forum contributors? Let's see: AngelaHarms - 689 posts, relache - 625 , jeffryv - 455, boredofeducation - 400, KimberlyDawnWells - 362, MrLewisSmile - 347, oniyagi - 283 and Marti - 218. Each of them day after day tirelessly help smaller and younger squids learn Squidoo lenscrafting. Thanks guys!

And they really know very well how to make excellent lenses and how to promote them, because when we look at the numbers from Jan. 23, 2007 – the first day after the tweak we see the following:

Thirty (30) lenses from Top 100 by Lensrank were delivered by the lensmasters from that group (I think I'll call them "illuminati"). Most successful among them was relache (18 lenses) who practically has no competition with so many lenses in Top 100. MrLewisSmile had also impressive number of lenses - 7, but he can only be distant second... jeffryv had 3, boredofeducation - 1 and KimberlyDawnWells also 1.

Now, it looks like the members of that group were resting on their laurels during the first day after the tweak, because they lost ground a bit the next day... However, the next day they still had 26 lenses in Top 100, which is a significant number.

I don’t know what your or my chances are of becoming a Citizen Squid soon – probably very slim – and I already participate in the Forum discussions, so we better look for other ways to win the place in Top 100. It’s easy to notice by looking at the ranking that getting involved in promoting videosense would surely help. The way it’s being done is described in detail, with full instructions on this lens – http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-autopilot/ - don’t miss the Squidoo Congo line part!).

However, if you don’t like videos, I mean lenses about making money with videos, there is still another big chance for you – join the affiliate marketing contest! You can find the rules and the results being updated daily here – http://www.socialmarketing101.com/blog .

How strong are those two groups? Not as strong as the Citizens family, but still each of those groups was proud to placed 8 of their lenses in Top 100 (Jan. 23, 2007).

Very interestingly, though, I don't see many of them in the Top 100 Most Profitable. Actually, none of them was there on Jan. 23, 2007…

To realize how much – or rather how little is left – we have to add those numbers – 30+8+8=46.

Yes, it means that "independent" lensmasters - like you and myself – had only 54 spaces left on the Top 100 (58 on Jan. 24, 2007), but it seems soon it may be even less as those "videosense" and "affiliate marketing contest" groups are getting stronger (see their blog and forum) .

So what are the chances of other lensmasters to get into Top 100?

I believe that our chances will be good, if we do the following.

We have to create a high quality content lenses that are both informative and entertaining and they have to utilize the keywords (tags) properly.

As I said, Top 100 Most Visited and Blogged are gone, but it's hard to believe that good traffic and blogging (done properly - without spamming) could harm your lenses… Just the opposite! Do that and you will quickly get found by the search engines and will have plenty of visits. Also, don't forget social bookmarking! And for all of that you have to find a number of good keywords (tags) - taking into account both number of searches (demand) and number of pages (supply, or competition) on Google/Yahoo/MSN.

I just told you about very powerful and relatively easy ways of promoting your lenses. They are usually free.

Participating in a good Squidoo group, with a hard-working group master can make wonders for your ratings, links, guestbook comments. Everybody believes that all of that must be part of the LensRank algorithm. What else can be? Let me just list here – without bothering with trying to figure out how really each factor is – items that I think are included in the algorithm, both already mentioned and some more:

• Having a subject related to charities, coffee, social networking, affiliate marketing, warcraft, tattoos, cellphones, animals, painting and other crafts and hobbies, automotive, cooking, TV shows, pop stars, buyng bags, buying HDTV (could be some more).
• Having fantastic content – your lens should be informative and entertaining.
• Having particular lens on the Most Profitable list. The higher the Most Profitable position, the better.
  
• Having other lens(es) on the Most Profitable list.
• Being a Citizen Squid.
• Participating in Congo line ("videosense" group).
• Participating in affiliate marketing contest ("affiliate marketing contest").
• Updating lenses often (best – daily).
• Using many modules – especially plexus and commercial modules (especially ebay, Superstore, etc.).
• Using many outgoing links; the best are those to high-PR sites. Very important is how many times those links were clicked, especially if any purchase was made from them!
• Having many blurbs in your guestbook.
• Having lots of postings on Squidoo Forum (you should make them meaningful and helpful and don’t spam the Forum).
• Having well-designed keywords (tags).
• Having a lot of search engine listings, especially on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
• Being bookmarked in many social bookmarking places, best of them – technorati, digg, etc.
• Having your lens listed on Plexodex.
• Being listed among “Lense We Like”.
• Getting the “Lens of the Day” honor.
• Being among lenses rotated on the home page.
• Having lots and lots of friends never hurts, especially if they will do these about your lens: talking, blogging, digging (or other social bookmarking) or simply visiting (just tell them that spamming and excessive clicking is a very bad thing and that if Google learns about such sins we - the whole Squidoo - could be gone). Also please tell them that after recent changes they will not be able to vote down the competition on Plexo modules. By the way, online friends can be extremely helpful (e.g. myspace friends).
  

OK, you may say that’s a lot – but is it really? Not exactly… I do as much of that as I can (some other things I just forgot, about other I can't talk as I don't know much about them - especially using php, AJAX, etc.) and somehow I'm currently (Jan. 25, 2007) out of Top 100 - since Jan. 23, 2007…

But I'm sure that if you and I use most of those tips, we’ll soon be seeing each other on the top…

Good luck!

Ilona Zuzalek
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music

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Seth's Blog: When did the Beatles

Seth's Blog: When did the Beatles

So the Squidoo boss also likes the Fab Four? Hey, I really didn't know that! Interesting...

Ilona Zuzalek
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music

Technorati tags: The Beatles, Beatles
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Success Quotes, Success Tips And Success Ideas

Patric Chan - one of the most respected online marketing gurus - is writing about success and happiness:

Success Quotes, Success Tips And Success Ideas

Well worth reading!

Ilona Zuzalek
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music
Getting Married In Las Vegas - Romantic, Extravagant, Or Just Convenient...

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Starting New Year with a Bang!

Yeah, my lenses are doing very well - all six (6) of them are in Squidoo Top 100! In fact, they are all in first 36...

Here are their Lensranks as of today - Jan. 3, 2007:

http://www.squidoo.com/the-beatles-songs/
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music - at #7

http://www.squidoo.com/christmas-presents/
Best Electronics Christmas Gift Ideas For 2006 - at #9

http://www.squidoo.com/livingshadows/
Eugeniusz Tytyk - An Auschwitz Survivor, My Father, My Hero - at #14

http://www.squidoo.com/trading-currencies/
Trading Currencies - Introduction to Forex Trading - at #26

http://www.squidoo.com/amber-jewelry/
Amber Jewelry - at #32

http://www.squidoo.com/las-vegas-wedding/
Getting Married In Las Vegas - Romantic, Extravagant, Or Just Convenient... - at #36


Thanks for your support! By the way, have you voted at my Plexo lenses (Beatles and Las Vegas) - you should as it's a lot of fun...

Ilona Zuzalek
The Beatles Songs - My Favorite Kind Of Music

Technorati tags: The Beatles, Beatles
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