The Language of Squidoo

BBCode is not unique to Squidoo, but it was the first place I encountered it. As I began to participate in the forum I found that I might want to do a little non-obtrusive promotion while I was there. I wanted to link to of my lenses in my signature. Simple, right? Well, not if I wanted it to look slick.

I could copy and paste my URL but that wasn't pretty. I tried HTML but that didn't work. Then I discovered that what I needed to use was BBCode. What the heck was that?

Well, per Wikipedia:

"BBCode is an abbreviation for Bulletin Board Code, the lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards. It is also called forum codes. The available tags are usually indicated by rectangular brackets surrounding a keyword, and they are parsed by the message board system before being translated into a markup language that web browsers understand, usually HTML or XHTML."

Luckily you don't have to learn a lot here, just a simple format to allow you to post URL's and have them look nice. Here is an example from one of the lenses I currently have in my signature. You can just delete my lens name and URL then insert your own.


[url=http://www.squidoo.com/international_text_messaging]International Text Messaging[/url]

To add this to your signature, just go to the SquidU forum, log in, click on the Profile Tab and then you will see "personality" on the list of choices. It's here you can compose your signature and add links to some select lenses.

The Discovery Tool is located in the Introduction Module on each lens. It's a tool that searches out related lenses to link to your own to assist visitors in finding related topics they might be interested in viewing. It's similar to having topic related AdSense ads on your webpage but it's internal within Squidoo. These lenses show up just under the Introduction Module as "Explore Related Pages".

Lensmasters can turn the tool on or turn it off. With the Discovery Tool on, your lens will appear on related lenses increasing the chance of additional visitors. With it off, your lens is isolated but on the otherhand other lenses won't be listed for visitors to click away from your page.

The Discovery Tool also allows lensmasters to list up to 3 lenses of their choice to show within this area.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to understand what a "lens" was, and why I would want to make one. Basically, it's a webpage; a focused webpage, thus the name lens.

Making a Squidoo lens is free, it's simple and fast, and there are many good reasons to build one. You can promote yourself, your website, your blog, a passion, an interest, a charity, or you can earn money, educate others, or get the word out about a cause. The list goes on and on.

Once you know what a lens is, it's easy to guess what lensrank might mean; it's an internal system that ranks your lens compared to other Squidoo lenses. However, the more common question is "what is lensrank really"; how is it determined?

The algorithm used isn't known but it is believed to include things like lens fresheness, # of visits, # of clickouts, # of sales, rankings (stars), # of comments from visitors, # of times favorited, and so forth.

The term lensroll is also pretty straightforward; it's Squidoo's version of a blogroll. It allows you to link to other lenses; preferrably those with a similar or complementary topic. You can link to some of your own or to the lenses of others that you like. When you view your completed lens you will see the lensroll link in the right hand column.

If someone calls you a lensmaster don't be shocked. As you might guess a lensmaster is the equivalent of a webmaster in the rest of the online world, they are the those of us who build lenses.

When building a Squidoo lens, there's an option in the right hand column to select "Maxed" or to opt out of it.

Maxed is merely the typical Squidoo lens layout style. To opt out gives the user a layout that shifts the location of various parts of the lens and the background color. The maxed layout means that large colorful display ads will be shown on the page in addition to Google ads.

The only lenses that can opt out of the maxed layout are those that are donating 100% of their earnings to charity.

A Squidoo lens is made up of modules. These will be the various sections or building blocks of your lens.

The most used module is the Text/Write where you can type in the majority of your content. Other modules allow you to:

add interactive features such as polls

sell things from e-bay, Amazon, and others

draw attention to important points

insert Flickr photos or YouTube videos

pull in an RSS feed, and so forth.

A Squidoo lens should contain at least 3 modules aside from the introduction and Guestbook to be considered "improved" and published.

The term "Plexo" was completely foreign to me but I saw that I could add them to my lenses; they are a type of module.

My definition of a Plexo is that they are a voting module. They allow visitors to your lens to vote links, photos, videos, websites and such up or down. It is an interactive feature which can spell repeat visits.

Most of the Plexo modules can be found by going to Add Modules while in the Edit mode and selecting either the Unique Content or Interact tabs.

The term royalties is generally understood as the percentage of revenue paid to an individual from the sale of goods. In Squidoo of course, this is no different but the confusion sometimes comes in knowing exactly what constitutes royalties on the lensmasters dashboard.

On the dashboard, under $$$, pending royalties will show as sales are made. These are sales from Amazon, e-Bay, and similar modules the lensmaster places on their page. It does not include the percentage of revenue that lensmasters make based on Adsense revenue. (see more about this under "Tiers") This revenue is generally paid out 2 months after it's earned.

Obviously, these royalites also do not include any other sales from affiliate products from external sites or products from your own store which you may offer on your lens.

If you view the stats for an individual lens and click on the Royalties tab you can view the actual payments made over time (versus pending royalties). This amount will reflect Adsense revenue and the sums made from Amazon, e-bay and similar Squidoo based sales.

One might guess that Squidaholic means someone who is addicted to or over indulges in Squidoo but although many such individuals exist, and understandably so, that isn't what it means.

Squidaholic instead refers to a diagnostic tool that allows lensmasters to look at how their lens is performing and provides quick help for promoting it further.

Squidaholic includes information about a lens' rating, rank, the number of times it has been "favorited", the number of visits in the last week, a listing of backlinks to it on the web, and plenty of easy links to identify and add more tags, submit it to various social bookmarking sites, tools to compare it to other lenses, and information about recent related news items that you might be interested in adding to your lens.

You can find Squidaholic most often in the orange box on the right hand side of your lens when you are viewing it.

After you create some lenses you will be able to view them on your dashboard which will pop up as soon as you log in. You have the option of labeling your lens (categorizing it), viewing it, editing it, viewing statistics regarding it, deleting it, or Squidcasting it. (It sometimes shows up as just "cast")

Basically, to Squidcast a lens is to broadcast it to your "fans" and those who have marked it as a "Favorite". Your Squidcast will show up in their "Favorites" folder (as seen on their Dashboard) where they can check it out.

A Squidcast is most often made when a lens is first introduced/published and then when there are significant updates made to it.

You will enounter a number of "Squids" with different titles.

A Giant Squid is basically a lensmaster who has created at least 50 quality lenses. You can learn more about them at this Giant Squids lens.

A Squid Angel on the other hand is a lensmaster who is able to "bless" really great lenses which gives that lens a bit of a boost in lens rank. They also have the power to "demote" a really poor lens but do so sparingly. Learn all about them at this Squid Angel lens.

A Giant Squid Organizer exists to mentor and help those shooting to become a Giant Squid. Learn more about them at this Giant Squid Organizer lens.

A Giant Squid Greeter can "celebrate the current Giants, champion potential Giants and establish relationships with and recruit potential Giants". They are out there to help and encourage; learn more about them at this Giant Squid Greeter lens.

The Squidoo lens format will become familiar but in reality there are quite a number of specialized formats that can make lens creation easier for a given topic. What are these other Squidoo formats?

SquidWho for lenses about people

SquidBids for e-bay auctions

SquidVids for those who want to create their own TV channel

SquidFlix for movie review lenses

SquidLit for book review lenses.

SquidBoo for Halloween oriented lenses.

There are also Monkeybrain lenses for debates and Ever lenses as well. Learn more about the various formats in this Lens Types page.

The term tags is not unique to Squidoo but how many you're allowed within Squidoo and their power is critical.

I think of tags as keywords. They are words and phrases that relate to your lens topic. Search engines pick up on them. Through your tags, Squidoo links your lens to other lenses with similar keywords. If you do a Squidoo search on your tags you will see a search result page listing your lens and others like it, Google loves these pages.

In Squidoo, you can have as many as 40 tags per lens! Research them well. You can learn more about tags at this Tagging Tricks lens.

Another payment related term you will hear thrown around in the forum is Tiers.

When Squidoo lensmasters refer to payment tiers they are discussing a hypothetical breakdown of lenses based on lensrank. Lenses in the highest tier would receive the highest royalty payment per lens when total Adsense revenue for Squidoo is calculated and divided up each month.

As an example, Tier 1 lenses may rank between 1 and 1,999. Being the highest tier, they would have the highest payout; perhaps $9 per lens while lenses in at the next level would receive a lower payout.

To better understand the breakdown and what has been paid historically, check out this Squidconomy lens.

Photo credits
Introduction: Manchester Library.
BBCode: berbercarpet.
Lens: Kapungo.

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You can also find this site at LensMasterWorld.com.