New Hobby On Collecting Coins

A friend of mine got recently interested in collecting coins. I didn't know much about it until he's started hammering it all in my head - I guess he is too excited and has to share everything he's learning along the way.

So without actually going into a new hobby, I've been 'forced' to learn a bit about collecting coins. I've seen first hand what one needs to get started and how to best go about it (well second-hand, really, through my friend).

This gave me the idea to use that new-found knowledge in a few lenses that I created yesterday on coin collections.

I've written about the most useful coin collection books that one needs to get started, and about the basic numismatic supplies that is best to have (my friend has all of these). I tied these nicely together with a Wizzley article on how to start your own coin collection. I hope my knowledge of numismatics will come in handy to somebody who is thinking of picking up a new hobby in 2012!

Second Purple Star

Shortly after becoming a Giant Squid, I got my second purple star ever. Yesterday afternoon while working on adding a new lens I got some nice 'monsters' falling down on my Dashboard. Curious to see what that was, I headed over to my stats and saw the message that I got a Purple Star on my Things To Buy After Christmas lens.

Woohoo, it is my second Purple Star. Things start happening at Squidoo, got both my purple stars and my Giant Squid status in December, and sales have started increasing a bit too. Hoping the positive trend will follow in 2012 as well!

Became A Giant Squid!

Finally, after being rejected once in October, I woke up this morning to an email that I'm a Super Squid, which is the first level of Giant with 25 awesome lenses. Next I can go on and apply for 50, 100 and then 250. Further than that my mind doesn't even try to think, lol!

I'm doing my happy dance, I'm a Giant Squid! This was one of my goals for this year at Squidoo and I've made it (along with making at least 100 lenses, which I did as well, and with making more money than before). So I can safely say that I've accomplished my 3 goals at Squidoo for 2011. Now on to 2012 and what it will bring me (hopefully only goodies!)

Here are the two little trophies I got for becoming a Giant:

Scrooge Quest Finished

Yesterday I made my third lens for the Scrooge quest, with the title: Jewelry for new moms. A few hours later I got my 200 points and my little Scrooge badge (image on the left). I know these are just for fun, I don't really get much out of them in terms of anything else but the satisfaction of a job well done.

And let's face it, it pushed me to create 3 new lenses, which hopefully will start earning at some point.

And speaking of earnings, this month has been the best in Amazon earnings (lots of them made by my Squidoo lenses). My sites have been hit by Panda, so I've lost a big chunk of my earnings. Now thanks to Squidoo and Christmas, I got back to 7.5% commission at Amazon. It's middle of the month and I already made over $500 in Amazon commission (through my own affiliate links).

I have 100 Squidoo Lenses

Just added my 100th lens called Kindle DX Covers And Cases. I almost didn't realize I'm already there. Wow how the time passes...Just a few months ago I was struggling with a couple of awful looking lenses, trying to make them better and to create new ones, hopefully better ones this time.

Now let's see when I'll get to the shiny 200.

The Scrooge Quest

Every now and then I decide to participate in one of Squidoo's quests. The latest ones is called: 2011 You're No Scrooge - or how I call it: The Scrooge Quest.

Here is what the Scrooge quest is all about:

"Help Santa Squid by creating 3 NEW Gift Guide cobrand lenses before midnight [EST] on December 23, 2011 and he'll repay you with +200 SquidPoints AND award you the 2011 "You're No Scrooge" Trophy Badge on your dashboard".

I don't really care about the points and the badge, but since it's almost Christmas anyway, I've decided to join it. Even if I won't sell a thing this winter, there's always next Christmas...

So far I've made two lenses, the second one just finished a few minutes ago. One more to go...

1 - Best Origami Books For Paper Folders

2. - Holiday Gift Ideas For Employees

Let's see what will be the third one about...

My First Purple Star

I'm tickled pink! I've just woke up this morning to my first ever Purple Star at Squidoo! The lens that received the purple star is Curing Procrastination. But what does purple star mean in the first place?

Well, if you click on the '\Won Purple Star' link next to the little purple star on the right side of the lens, you'll see this little text pop up:

(click on the image to see it larger)

So either someone nominated as such, or Squidoo HQ found it and liked it enough to assign to it a purple star.

This lens is a T3 currently at 14,708 lens rank. Hope it will improve over time as well.

Got A Nice Comment From A Book Author

This morning I woke up to the nicest email coming through from Squidoo. It said:

""Hi Marcia,  Beauty and brains are a great combo . Thanks for the kind words about my book . Best, Jeff Keene"
Jeff Keane is a wonderful author of a book called Someone Else's Yesterday. I reviewed the book in my Books on Reincarnation lens. I've been interested in reincarnation and past lives for many years now and I've read countless books on the subject (I have I think 50 books at home only on the subject of reincarnation, past lives and living 'on the other side' so to speak.

So when I created this lens, putting together a useful resource and reviewing the books was quite easy since I've actually read them all. I guess Jeff Keane liked what he read, hence he took the troubles of going to my Bio page and leaving me the comment.




Thanks Jeff!

Web 2 Blogs To Post To

I've been asked if I know of other web 2 sites that allow creating free blogs, similar to Wordpress or here, Blogger.

Basically these free sites let you create a blog and simply keep a journal on whatever topic you want to write on. However these blogs are also great for promoting our Squidoo lenses. Let's face it, without a bit of promotion, there is no way other people will find our lenses in the first place.

I am using a few of these platforms so here are some of the more popular free ones where I have started a blog similar to this one, where I write about some of my hobbies, about Squidoo and life in general:

- Blogger (like this blog here) - PR 9
- Wordpress - PR 9
- Page.tl - PR 7
- Blog.com - PR 6
- Typepad - PR 8
- Livejournal - PR 8 (nofollow links)

Except Lifejournal which changes it's settings to nofollow backlinks (which makes it almost useless for getting backlinks from that blog - if that's the purpose of using it), every other platform is dofollow. Of course, the more blogs you're on, the more time you will spend writing, and the more Squidoo lenses you have, the more you have to backlink to them.

This is why at some point, you have to decide just how many of these blogs you can safely maintain on a regular basis. Because let's not forget, these are blogs, not some article directories, and as personal blogs, if you want to have followers and readers and authority, you need to post regularly, at least a couple of times a week.

Lens Reworking Experiment

Following my previous post on getting some of my bad lenses to gain some traction, here is my very first experiment.

Lens: Learning to Counsel
Stats: last one in my list, right at the bottom with rank 234,425, which is a clear lens T4
Got this lens as a gift from somebody in the Squidu forum who didn't need it anymore.

What I did: 
- Changed the title from Learn to Counsel to Learning to Counsel
- Added the changed keyword sprinkled throughout the lens
- Added a few related keywords
- Changed 'counsellor' to 'counselor' since I targed the US segment
- Added several modules, a poll module, an extra text list module, 2 social bookmarking modules, a lens like module, and a few Amazon product feature modules, and moved the Amazon ones towards the top. Also added a link list of online sources dealing with counseling and learning to counsel.
- Featured it in the squidu forum in the proper thread for an innocent little backlink and hopefully a visit or two

Let's see if any of these help the lens go up in rankings.

Interesting Statistics on Tiered Lenses

Just before yesterday somebody started a thread at the Squidu forum on the breakdown of our lenses by tier. Basically we took our total number of lenses and calculated the percentage of lenses by T1, T2, T3 and T4. 

This is my lens distribution across tiers:

95 lenses total 2 lenses
- T1 2% 5 lenses
- T2 5% 41 lenses
- T3 43.1% 47 lenses
- T4 49.5%

Sadly I have way too many in T4 which doesn't earn me anything. This is why I've decided that as soon as I hit 100 lenses (almost there), I'll start reworking and trying to get some backlinks to some of my T4 lenses.

While the T3 lenses only get around 46 cents or so, still when you have 47 lenses in T3 as opposed to T4, that little money also adds up to around $20, which would just about pay my Hostgator reseller account.

My Tier 1 Lenses are still pushing strong

I keep checking every day to see how my T1 lenses are holding up, and so far they're doing ok. I'm still extremely puzzled about the lens I made on November 4 about the free printable alphabet stencils that it got so far up to Tier 1 - within the same month.

Just for fun and to have it for posterity, here is a screenshot of the stats for this lens so far. See how fast it went up from 270,576 all the way to less than 1000 practically within 2 weeks. Hope it stays in tier 1 so I can enjoy the passive income from it (tier 1 lenses get around $47 or so per month.

Still Troubles With Indexing In Google

I posted earlier about Google not indexing various Squidoo lenses. In the meantime that lens got indexed, however I discovered another lens that I created October 16th, which is still not indexed in Google. That sux, especially with Christmas so close.

I was hoping that lens would start making some sales by Christmas, but if it's yet to be indexed, it will definitely need lots of time to rank. I hate it when Google does this. Wizzley posts, on the other hand, get indexed within practically 30 minutes - every single time.

Here is the lens on decorative wine glasses - and here's hoping that finally it will get indexed - before Christmas is over.

3 Years Old At Squidoo

Just 3 days ago I became 3 years old at Squidoo. In fact I completely forgot about it until I got 500 point for my 'Squidbirthday', so when I checked the date of my joining Squidoo, it was 18th November 2009. Nice touch from Squidoo on giving me points :)

The first 2.5 years I wasn't serious about Squidoo at all. In fact I only used it the Warrior Forum way, to backlink to my main sites, and not caring about quality almost at all. However this year in May I had a second look at Squidoo and realized its real potential. While I haven't started writing seriously at that time, I did start writing more lenses (1-2 a week) and tweaking a bit some of my older ones to look better than when initially started.

But the real hard work began beginning September, after I've just come back from holidays from a 2 weeks trip in Greece. Since then I've put up a new page almost every day and started looking more serious at backlinking and bringing my lenses to higher quality and to possibly earning a better income from it. So let's see how I'll be looking at it all in a year, when I'll celebrate 4 years at Squidoo!

Tier 1 Lenses

I'm super excited: two of my lenses are now in Tier 1. The first lens I've ever created on panic attacks while driving is the one, and I've been working at it for over 2 years for it to happen, and the second is my very new lens on Free printable alphabet stencils. Now this second lens is very new, I've made it November 4 and it already hit Tier 1, how cool is that!

But what is the big deal with the Tier 1 lenses? Well, we not only get paid at Squidoo for the affiliate sales we make, but we also get tier payments every months. So for example if a lens was averaging a tier 1 throughout the entire month, 2 months later (the payments are always 2 months back, just like with Amazon payments) that  lens will get paid a nice little sum of money.

Here are the tier ranks and payments for the Tier1, 2 and 3. Tier 4 doesn't really get anything, although there were cases when there were just a few cents allocated to some tier 4 lenses.

Tier1: rank 1 to 2000 $47.12
Tier 2: rank 2001 to 10,000 $8.01
Tier 3: 10,001 to 85,000 41c
Tier 4: below 85,000 nada

Most people have their lenses in tier 3 as it's quite difficult to get higher tiers for the lenses. Of course the higher the tier, the more fierce the competition. For tier 2, throughout the entire Squidoo, only 2000 lenses make it to the top. Considering that there are practically hundreds of new lensmasters joining Squidoo every day, that's dearly little!

Now of course, only to be able to keep these two lenses in Tier 1 and get more of my tier 3 lenses to tier 2 and 1! That's my goal (except making regularly new lenses) for the immediate future.

I Love Herbs and their Natural Healing Properties

I remember as a kid I used to go to the nearby forest (we lived about a mile from the start of the forest, at the beautiful Carpathian mountains) and gather all sorts of herbs, starting from wild chamomile, various types of mint, and even a few types of mushrooms while I was there.

I was drying the herbs, then mixing various types together to make interesting blends of herbs for teas. I was even drying the cherry tails and strawberry leaves - they are making some wonderful smelling teas.

I'm living in Cyprus now, so if I want to get some herbs, I have to go to the supermarket and buy them there. Not the same experience, let me tell you.

Just yesterday I wrote a lens on my favorite herbs for relaxation, adding my top 5 preferred herbs, lemon balm (melissa), passion flower, chamomile, lavender and valerian root. These are some great herbs that help with relaxation, stress relief and even insomnia. I love especially making herbal teas from them, but some, like lavender are also used as essential oils in aromatherapy or natural perfumery, or even at a Reiki session with a Reiki therapist.

Featured At Wizzley Under Interesting Authors

Just finished adding a new article today to Wizzley when I've noticed that not only 2 of my articles are on the front page, but also my author link is there (on the right in the screenshot below).

It's fun to be featured for a little while, makes me more motivated to write there.

I like writing at Wizzley and Squidoo as well because I can write about pretty much anything I want. For example my latest article at Wizzley is about the Day of the Dead in Europe. It is a bit different from the Halloween celebration in the US, and I'm pretty sure not everyone knows about this rather somber and serious tradition. If I had to set up a site to write about this topic, I'd get bored of the subject after a few articles.

Here, I wrote what I wanted to say, and now I'm moving on to something else that I want to write about.

On Polishing Rocks And Jewelry

As a jewelry artist, I keep gravitating around the subjects of jewelry and semiprecious gems. Today I took a second look at how to polish rocks and jewelry. The two are not the same, even though initially it might seem so.

Polishing silver is all about tarnished silver cleaning, which means cleaning the final pieces of jewelry (or other silver objects) from that dark urgly layer of deposit that occurs after a while due to the interaction with oxygen.

On the other hand, polishing stones is about taking rough stones (pebbles from the seaside, or rocks from the mountain, those kinds of rocks) and polishing them to a nice shine. Usually rockhounds are searching for beautiful rough rocks, polish them, even cab them (create cabochons out of them) and then sell them to jewelry designers - or keep them for themselves in case they make jewelry as well.

So here is the article I wrote on How to polish stones on Wizzley.

I've noticed that it takes me about the same amount of time to write one lens at Squidoo as it takes me to write 2-3 pages at Wizzley. It's so darn easy writing at Wizzley, and such fun. The tarnished silver cleaning article took on quite an interesting layout with all those moved up, down, left and right modules. I love the side-by-side modules, sadly Squidoo doesn't have this option. I think Hubpages does have it too, but I personally don't like to write there.

At Wizzley I have currently 14 pages and counting. And I've only started there a week ago...

Are You Good With Making Things By Hand?

I like doing crafts, from making jewelry to handmade greeting cards, to bookmarks, polishing gemstones. While I"m a lazy person in general, I'm quite good with some crafts.

Of course this is why I've added a few lenses related to my hobbies, either to showcase some of my works or teach others how to do what I also do.

For example my last lens is on learning how to make a bookmark for a book. My main passion in life is reading books and of course with that many books, I need some bookmarks. While I do buy at times bookmarks and I also trade with other book lovers from all over the world, over time I've also made bookmarks on my own.

It'\s really not difficult and it can be a fun activity when you have kids as well. The lens shows various types of bookmarks that you can make, from simple printing out bookmark templates, to bookmarks make of wood, origami bookmarks, and beaded bookmarks, it's all there. As a jewelry artist, making beaded bookmarks is something I like doing a lot.

Another craft I used to be interested in (sadly not anymore because I simply don't have the time for it) is parchment craft. If you've never heard of it, then head over to the lens called Pergamano - Parchment craft and check out some of the works I've done. Hint, it's about making beautiful handmade greeting cards with vellum paper. Totally awesome stuff!

And of course, making jewelry is another hobby of mine, but I've already mentioned that here in the Designer Jewelry post.

Are you doing any crafts with your hand? It's not only an awesome way to spend your time but it can be also very rewarding and relaxing. Sometimes when I make some piece of jewelry or another, I don't even realize the time flies. I'm somewhere else, in another place, zoned out I guess. And yet, before I know it, the jewelry piece is finished and especially in these cases it turns out to be a real winner.

Tidying Up My Squidoo Lenses

I've come a long way since 2008 when I first made my initial Squidoo lenses. There was a discussion today on the squidu forum about people who didn't get accepted to the Giant Squids. I am one of them so I also posted. Some people looked over my lenses and the critique on my first lenses from 2008 were rather negative.

Swallowing my pride and ego, I went ahead and started a cleanup job on my lenses. Removed some older ones that were just taking up space and were junk, cleaned up a few others (improved titles, added some more modules, etc).

I hope that this update on my Squidoo lenses will help me become a Giant Squid next time. I know that 1-2 years ago the criteria for entering the GS was quite easy, but since then the Squidoo "masters" have tightened ship quite a lot, so the quality has a different meaning now.

Since (hopefully) I'm here for the long haul, I've decided to really play along and do the best work I can here.

For example one lens that I fixed up a bit was about gaming mouses. I'm am avid online gamer and PC gamer, and while waiting for Diablo 3 to arrive (still takes a couple of months), I've decided to review some of the mouses (mice) that I've had experience with.

I've added a better title to the lens, added a few extra modules and made it more appealing to the visitors. Hope it looks better now.

Popular Articles At Wizzley

Just checked out Wizzley and I noticed that two of my articles are on the front page as popular: The Tipping Hairdressers article and the How to do Meditation at Home.

I've never been on the Squidoo frontpage yet, but I guess with a smaller community like at Wizzley, it's easier, so I'l enjoy my fame as long as it lasts!

Google Indexing of Wizzley Pages vs Squidoo Lenses

From what I've noticed, it seems that Wizzley pages get faster indexed in Google than Squidoo lenses.
Take for example one of my first Wizzley pages on doing meditation at home. I made it about 2 days ago and it's indexed.

However one of my Squidoo lenses that I made 10th of October (!!!) on Christmas tree toppers stars is not yet indexed in Google. That is exactly 10 days from when I made the lens.

That is just too weird. Squidoo has a PR 7 and it's loved by Google. Wizzley has only a PR 3 so far, but it seems that Google likes it too.

I do remember checking a few of my previous lenses and they were indexed quite late compared to what I used to see with my own website pages (which were indexed at times in a matter of hours). Maybe it's the fact that Squidoo has so many lenses, maybe it's something else, but it's definitely noteworthy - even if I don't know yet what I'll do with this information.

3 More Wizzley Pages Done

I've spent yesterday and today adding 3 more pages to Wizzley. One more to go and if all goes well, my nofollow backlinks to Squidoo and my site will become dofollow.

So what have I been busy writing about?

The second article was a fun fact finding mission for me. It's about tipping hairdressers. How much to tip them, when it's good to tip and then some other useful tips related to keeping your hairdresser if you really like her (or him). This was a fun Wizzley article to write, I truly had fun with it.

Then this morning I wrote about adding the Wizzley widget to a Wordpress blog. (You can see the widget right here in the previous post about joining Wizzley). The problem with this widget is that it's an iframe code, and Wordpress got rid of all iframe related code for various security reasons. So besically if you add this code to your Wordpress blog, upon publishing, you end with no widget on your blog at all. Btw, As you can see, Blogger blogs have not been affected by this.

So anyway I spent my morning creating a step by step tutorial, taking pictures and putting it all together as a Wizzley post. Hope some people will find it useful. Btw, with this solution you can add pretty much any iframe code to Wordpress, you are not restricted by Wizzley.

And finally this afternoon I wrote another fun article about meaning of eye colors, basically debunking this issue. So many people are trying to find the meanings to their eye colors and are taking online quizzes and reading article after article, and all this is crap really. The article looks at all this and tackles what the truth about eye color really is.

When I look at Wizzley compared to Squidoo, I have a feeling that somehow Squidoo lenses are more commercial in nature, they are more salesy, while Wizzley is more for writing information article. In a way it makes sense, since Adsense takes such a prominent place at Wizzley (we have our own accounts there entered in the preferences, and the money goes directly to our own Adsense payment). For example while at Squidoo I might have a long list of favorite books on a particular subjects, like my Best self-help books for women, I wouldn't do this type of article at Wizzley. But I guess I'll see as I go along and learn more about the Wizzley platform and way of doing things.

Joined Wizzley

I've finally bit the bullet and joined Wizzley. I first heard of this site over at the Squidu forum, but because it's so new, I didn't want to bother with it. Big mistake! From what I saw, Wizzley is off to a great start! There are so far no spammers, and the quality of the articles is just great.

And you can earn with Wizzley, albeit in a different way than with Squidoo. With Squidoo you earn with its modules (Amazon, Ebay, etc) whereby you get I think 4% of the profits when somebody clicks through, and you can also add your own affiliate links (even to Amazon if you are an Amazon affiliate). This way you get to keep all the earnings. However Squidoo doesn't have Adsense (at least not directly to your own pub id).

With Wizzley you can earn from Adsense, Amazon and a few others as well. As a starter, you earn 50%. With 50 good articles you earn 55% percent and after 100 great articles, the commission goes up to 60% which is not all too bad.

I used to be at Suite101, a site that I really liked, but it got hit by Google earlier this year and my earnings pretty much plummeted along with everyone elses. As you only earn there from Adsense impressions, I lost pretty much all my revenue from there.

However Wizzley and Squidoo are different. The earning potential is much higher and I truly like to write that incorporate also other elements such as videos, images, Amazon modules, pols and quizzes. It's much more fun than some simple articles in a dry text format like Suite101 has.

So here is my first article at Wizzley on a topic that is very dear to me, meditation: How to do meditation at home.

Since I am meditating regularly from home, I like to teach others to pick up this helpful practice because it does help a lot with stress relief and it has some benefits that everyone can gain from (health and otherwise).

If you want to see what Wizzley is all about, click below to see some of the best articles (not only mine) at this great new promising site.

Lensrank Update Late Today

Everyday the lensrank update for the Squidoo lenses happens at about the same time (at about 3pm my time). Today it's awfully late. Too late. Way too late. And I'm getting pretty annoyed. I've been pressing the Refresh button of my browser every couple of minutes - nothing, nada.

But why is the lensrank update so important? Well personally I like to start creating a new lens after the lensrank update (or way before that so I can actually publish it before the lensrank update happens).

The reason is that if you're still working on your lens or you haven't published it on time, once the update happens, the lens goes into WIP (not VIP) mode (which is work in progress), and it usually goes to a low rank of a million something. Dohhh. And this only means that it takes longer for it to come back up to higher ranking from the start.

So when I start working on a lens AFTER the lensrank update, then I have the whole evening and the next morning to craft away at it. Or if I'm in a good mood and I know well what I'm writing about, I can time myself well so that I do 2 lenses, one before lunch so I can publish it on time, and one after 3 pm.

So since now it's already 8 pm, I won't start on a lens anymore. Instead I'm blogging here and reading the Squidu forum.

With this in mind, here is my latest lens I've created yesterday on pendulum charts. If you like the subject of dowsing with a pendulum, this should be quite interesting to learn about (shown here is a dowsing board).

Not Quite On Halloween

Around here in Europe we don't really celebrate Halloween. We do have something else instead, much more serious, called the Day of the dead. This is when families of people who passed away visit the cemetery, clean the grave site and headstones and generally pay homage to the dead. It is a serious type of 'celebration', nothing like the crazy Halloween pranks people play over there in the US.

This is why I haven't created any Halloween lenses, because I don't really know much about this event. Well, unless you consider Triskaidekaphobia a Halloween lens.

What exactly is triskee..what?

Well it is a very specific type of phobia which focuses on the number 13. The work triskaidekaphobia is actually Greek (living in Cyprus, at least I know that much Greek, lol) and it means the phobia about 13.

Considering the many Freddy Krueger Friday the 13th movies that people enjoy around the Halloween times, I guess this particular lens sort of qualifies. What do you think?

All About Bela Bartok

Today I published a Squidoo lens on Bela Bartok, and have to say I worked at it for several days before feeling that it's ready to be published.

But why publish a lens on him in the first place? Afterall it's not like he's a popular modern song writer or anything.

Bela Bartok is one of the biggest 20th Century composers of Europe. He was of Hungarian nationality. And I have to proudly say that we are related (well were related really since he passed away long before I was actually born) through my father's family line.

His music is classical, so if you don't like this style of music, you might not enjoy reading about him too much. I researched a lot, found pictures in the public domain and common creative from Flickr and put the lens together. I really slaved a lot over this one, but I feel I managed to pay him tribute.

So here is the lens talking about Bela Bartok biography and music. I'm quite proud of it.

Designer Jewelry - My Favorite Topic

I am a jewelry maker / designer by heart making handmade sterling silver jewelry and I love working with sterling silver and semiprecious gems. I don't always have the time to create, and this is when I like to peruse new designs, new jewelry or learn about new stones.

I thought I knew everything about tourmaline but it turns out I was wrong. I didn't know there are so many different types of them out there!

One of the types I got in love with (it's a rare type from what I understood, very treasured by collectors) is the watermelon tourmaline. It's amazing just how gorgeous this stone is with the 3 colors, green, white and pink. Truly awesome!

I wrote about it on a Squidoo lens called watermelon tourmaline jewelry and I showcased some of the beautiful pieces I found. I haven't worked with this type of tourmaline yet, but guess what I'll be next hunting at Ebay when I find a good price for it...

Just look at this beauty here for example...

On Recycling, Reusing And Helping The Ecological System

Recycling, helping the eco-system is one of the things I'm actively trying to be engaged with. I've applauded the green point (Der Grune Punk as the Germans say) movement of recycling and I've adhered to it ever since.

Also I've learned lots in the process by researching and I've put some of the things I've learned in a few lenses dealing with this subject.

The history of recycling is a very interesting one that I wrote about because knowing the history and where it all started goes a long way towards better understanding how to help protect our environment.

Also when it comes to knowing how to reuse plastic bags, I've learned a thing or two. Plastic is a rather difficult material to recycle, and usually it ends up thrown away anyway by most people, so knowing that we can at least reuse it a couple of times before getting rid of it should help, even if only a little.

Finally, I also wrote a lens on knowing where to get moving boxes. This is not directly related to saving the environment, however I feel that it can contribute as well because it ties again into the issue of reusing things rather than just throwing them away after a single use.

I might write more on the subject of recycling and reusing time permitting because I think we all need to do our part - even if just to make other people aware of the fact that we CAN do something to contribute.

Why Writing At Squidoo

One of the things people ask me when I tell them that I write at Squidoo for fun and profit is ... why writing at Squidoo. Why not writing for my own sites.

Well here is why.

If you know me, you know that I have many hobbies (sometimes too many to count) and interests. From making jewelry to greeting cards, from spirituality to all aspects of the occult and esoteric (and supernatural of course), I have a lot to talk about because over the years I've learned a lot.

I have a few websites as well, however an actual website is usually on a particular topic. So basically each article on that blog or site is evolving around that topic (let's say making jewelry).

Thus on a website that is focused as such, you can't tackle several different topics because Google will be confused as to what on earth is the site actually about, and won't rank me anywhere (so people won't find my site in Google search at all).

And in all honestly, I might not want to spend all my time writing only on jewelry (I do have a blog on jewelry actually) but it would take all my time to just write and write all day if I had to create a blog or a site on every single topic that I'm interested in.

And this is why Squidoo is the perfect platform to write (I love writing!). Each Squidoo lens is like a blog post on Squidoo (I think of Squidoo as a big open blog where everyone can write their own posts).

I can write on any topic I want, and if I want to expand on that topic, I simply create a few other lenses on the same and interlink them so that visitors can find all my related articles on a subject.

Once I've exhausted the topic (or I moved on with my interests - which tends to happen quite often), then I create a new lens on whatever I'm learning about at the time, without feeling guilty that I'm neglecting my website.

You see, it's the perfect platform indeed.

For example the very first lenses that I created back in 2008 were on the subject of panic attacks and anxiety.
I create a sort of mini-hub (niche) on this topic because that was my interest at the time.

Here are the lenses on this very topic:

Panic Attack While Driving
Treating Anxiety Naturally
How To Overcome Anxiety Without Medication
Anxiety Panic Attack Symptoms

Looking back over these initial lenses, well let's just say that I've learned much since then how to properly use Squidoo and write better quality lenses. However they do earn me a coin or two so I am tweaking them and making them better as time permits.

Over time I added a few more lenses loosely related to the subject:

Instant Stress Relief Techniques
and
Wake Up Fresh In The Morning

I won't write too much anymore on the subject of panic attacks, but maybe I will touch more on stress relief as it is something I need to tackle in my own life pretty much all the time.

As you can see these lenses are closely related to each other (I have also interlinked them at Squidoo) so my visitors can hop over to another lens if they so choose. They are a mini-hub related to a topic. It wouldn't have been worth to create a full blown website only for a handful of articles because in the meantime I moved on to other topics that caught my interest more.

Welcome to my Squidoo adventures

My journal here will be all about Squidoo, my lenses at Squidoo and how well I'm doing over time.

I've started with Squidoo a little over 3 years, back in 2008, but I never gave it a serious look. This years, however, I've decided to work more towards getting out many lenses and also start making some money at Squidoo.

If I remember correctly my very first lens was on Panic attacks while driving, and currently this is my top lens. I guess age does matter as well.

I've just applied to become a Giant Squid so I"m waiting now to see if I get accepted. For it you need 25 good, high quality lenses. I currently have 57 lenses so I'm hoping that at least 25 out of them are good enough to qualify.