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Lensmasters won’t buy off your lens.

I’m not sure if some people realize that.

If they were inclined to, they probably would have spent all their money by now on other peoples lenses before they got to yours anyway.

And if they haven’t, well they could just as easily insert a module on one of their own lenses and make the purchase and get the sale.

Now why am I saying this?

Because I want people to realize, understand, BELIEVE me when I say that fellow Lensmasters are not your target audience.

Okay, I have a lot of “How To Squidoo” type of lenses and obviously the people I’m targeting are Squidoo Lensmasters. But I’ll share something with you, even when I do have an Amazon module or two I’m not making any sales*.

So why do I have these lenses? Because I can. Because at the time there were none available. Because there was a gap that needed to be filled.

Because I had no where to send my friends that explained adequately what Squidoo was and how it works and why they should give it a go.

So I wrote Why Squidoo? and I could invite people to read it and understand what I was up to. I wrote I’m A Lensmaster! What Now? to point them in the right direction after they’ve signed up.

As a consequence they’ve come in handy in answering questions of a constant flow of the new and uninitiated.

And yes, they have plenty of stars. Plenty of voters. But that doesn’t make them any more important than any of my other lenses whether they are new or established. Whether they have votes or not.

My other lenses were not published for the intention of enthralling an audience of Squidoo Lensmasters, which will mean they have less stars, if at all, and less guestbook entries, if any (which is why I don’t have guestbooks on most of my lenses).

If you’re asking for stars you’re having a conversation with a very limited audience.

Spread your wings, venture out of Squidu** when it comes to promoting your lenses. I would not rely on the community to be my primary source of traffic.

Once upon a time you may get a spike by enticing people to rate yours and you’ll rate theirs but the traffic is anything but quality.

Think outside the square. Go to where your target market is, whether that is online or offline.

Find them, reach out to them, invite them.

And who knows, you may even make a few sales***.

* I’ve got the Amazon modules on those lenses because it pretties up the page without much effort on my part.
** That’s not to say you can’t get quality feedback from fellow Lensmasters. Just don’t depend on it to provide a regular stream of visitors.
*** Or even a lot.

I’m both honored and delighted to have been given the distinction of being a Mega-Mentor in the first Giant Squid Awards.

It’s such a privilege because SquidU is filled with a lot of quality mentors.

Others to be given awards are thefluffanutta (Genuine Genius), Janet21 (Seller Superstar), Comfortdoc (Generous Giant), KimGiancaterino (Courteous Commenter), blondeheroine (Pop Culture Pro), kab (Deliciously Devilish Debater), katiyana (Craftiest Creations), genglo (Animal Activist), JaguarJulie (Liveliest Lensographer)
and ThomasC (Top Producer).

Myself and my fellow award winners will be flying to New York to attend the special dinner party and awards presentation to… Just kidding. The celebrations don’t stretch that far unfortunately. But I have raised a cold can of Coke in respect to my fellow award winners.

You can see the official announcement here.

In other news… I’ve been missing in action from the SquidU forum for over a month now. In case people are wondering where I am, I’m stuck in dial-up hell. I’m actively avoiding forums at the moment, because when it comes to threads, you can’t stop at just one. Before you know it you’ve got 20+ pages open and that’s just to read the new interesting ones that have popped up in the last 12 hours. So rather than torture myself and possibly drink far too many cups of coffee while I wait for pages to load, I’m steering clear for now, and using that time to get the house in order. Not sure when we’ll be getting Satellite, but as Arnie once said, “I’ll be back”.