A Visual Dashboard Tour

We're a friendly sort at Squidoo and we'd love to see your smiling face. Of course, you don't have to show us your real face. A pet, favorite toy, or neat logo will suffice. We'd also love to read more about who you are, where you're from, and what you're up to.

Note about avatars: while we allow lensmasters to make R and X rated lenses, all avatars need to be G-rated for the general public. (Or else.) Thanks!

This "My Lenses" tab screenshot is made up, but looks a lot like yours. You'll see your regular featured lenses at the top, and your Work in Progress lenses in red at the bottom.

You can sort your lenses from this tab:

Lens Title: click on this to toggle your list into alpha and reverse-alpha order.

Rank: click to toggle from best to worst and vice versa. Remember, 1 is the best LensRank number.

Rating: click to sort your list by star rating. Then go give your lower rated lenses some love.

Visits: by default, this shows only visitors in the last 7 days, so if you see these numbers go down, it's because traffic counts from 7 days ago are dropping off.

$$$: everyone's favorite! Find out which lenses are making cold hard commissions and which could use some monetizing.

Edited: this tells you when the lens was last published. Readers and search engines love up-to-date content, so don't let your lenses get too stale.

Your dashboard gives only a few stats for each lens. To view more options for each lens, mouse over it in your lens list. Read on to find out what you'll see here!

When you mouse-over each lens on your dashboard, a little menu will drop down with more options for each lens.

Your lens title: clicking here will take you directly to the "view" page of the lens.

Edit: click here to go to your workshop and make changes to your lens.

Label: you can click this to drop-down the label menu. Note: you can only add labels that already exist. If the label you want doesn't exist, add it first in the left column.

Cast: let your fans know this lens has been updated! Send out a SquidCast and remind them to visit.

Stats: get detailed traffic and royalty stats, including past payments and where they went (cash or charity).

Delete: should you need to delete a lens, gasp, you can do it here with your password. (See note below.)

Health: is your lens as healthy as it could be? Give it a check-up and find out where you could improve.

Note about deleting lenses: if you're one of those people who likes to multitask and work on several lenses at once, this could be bad for your lenses! Just to make sure you delete the right lens, try rebooting your browser, log in, and go just to that lens to delete it. Otherwise, another lens you're working on could get trashed by accident.

Categorizing your lenses has never been easier! Now you can keep all those auction lenses separated from the Michael Phelps fan lenses, and edit them all accordingly. In the left column, you'll see some links to manage your labels. Go ahead, play around!

You can assign labels to individual lenses by placing your mouse over their name in the lens list, then clicking LABEL. Your screen will expand downwards to show labels. Check or uncheck them and click SAVE.

The basics of your account are all configured in the My Profile tab of your dashboard. There's a lot of stuff here, so we've broken it down into sections so you can find what you're looking for.

The top part holds "who you are" type info.

Name: this is your real name.

Default Photo: this is the default image you'll see on your lenses. You can change them up between individual lenses too. Many lensmasters use this as their trademark, so anyone who comes to their lenses knows, "Hey, that's that girl with the watermelon icon!"

Default Bio: this is the default bio that will display on your lenses. You can change your bio on any lens at any time. It's great to have one version of a bio for your world champion pig racing lenses, and another for your paper-plate origami ones. Or whatever you're into.

"So what's the tax information line about?"
Great question! If you live in the United States and your lenses earn you $600 or more per year in cash, we'll need your tax info for Uncle Sam. You don't HAVE to share it with us, but we won't be able to pay you until you do. So check it out if you see that link. Live outside the US? Don't worry about it, and just let us know your address if we contact you personally.

I haven't shown the whole section, but you can scroll down in your My Profile tab to see all the neat goodies we have here for you!

All the stuff in this section is what builds your biography page:
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/yourusername

So fill it up and make it pretty.

More important details are found in the third part of your My Profile page, under the Account Settings header.

Email address: change your email address here. (If you don't use this email for PayPal, read this module carefully for details!)

Password: change your password here. If you've had your password reset, we recommend changing it once more on your own to something you'll remember.

Safe Browsing: when you're logged in, you can choose what type of content you want to see. If you want to see only G rated content, set it to "Show G-rated only." If R doesn't bother you, set it to "Show G and R-rated lenses." And if you don't mind the whole shebang, set it to "Show all! G, R, and X."

Allow Contact? this option enables a contact form so visitors can get a hold of you. Angels, Giant Squids, and groupmasters frequently use this to leave feedback about your lenses that you might not want everyone else to see. But if you want to be left alone, we respect that too. (BTW, you won't see this on your own account when you're logged in.)

Open external links in new window: this is a setting that shows only for you. It's helpful if you want to keep tabs on a lens you're reading, while also allowing links you click to open in new tabs or windows.

Account Status: if you're ever itching to leave us, you can delete your account here, by clicking "change" and then the big orange "Delete Account" button. But be sure - deletion is forever.

This section is very important if you want to make money on Squidoo and earn it as cash, meaning paid out in PayPal to you.

Your PayPal email address: if the email address associated with your PayPal account is NOT the same as the one associated with your Squidoo account, you need to enter it here to make sure you're paid properly. Read more about how PayPal works.

Global Payment Settings: when you create a new lens, these are the default settings that lens will start with. You can change individual settings on any lens at any time. Read this module for more help selecting settings.

Cash Payout Threshold: the default minimum amount we'll send you via PayPal is $10, but you can set it as low as $1. Lookie here to see what options you have.

And last but not least, you can set up your Twitter profile on your account so when you publish lenses, you can choose to tweet the update to your friends. So social-icious!

Need to change your password? Click on "change" and edit it, then click "save."

Need to clear out your info? Click on "change," delete the info in both boxes, and click "save."

Here's a screenshot of your Global Payment Settings menu. You can make your new lenses default to give all your earnings to the Squidoo Charity Fund, another charity of your choice, or to you, in cash!

You can also split up where the funds go, by clicking the "I want a combination of the above options" box. Just make sure your directives add up to 100%.

When you sign up for Squidoo, we set your default payment threshold at $10. So if you make less than that and want it sent to you in cash, it will sit in your reserve hopper until it adds up. You can set your own minimum threshold as low as $1, or as high as "$1 million dollars!" *Dr. Evil laugh*