How I Became A Giant Squid in 40 Days
Ranked #666 in Squidoo Tips, #113,670 overall | Donates to Long Hopes
From Zero to 50 in Under 2 Months
Let me tell you all about it....
An Absolute Beginer
I joined on May 10th.
Welcome to Squidoo!From: Squidoo Team (squidteam@squidoo.com)
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Hi there! You recently signed up with Squidoo (lucky duck) so we wanted to drop you a quick note to say welcome. We're really delighted to have you here, and hope you'll take 5 minutes to set up a few free pages of your own. (Just to be difficult, we call them "lenses"). To help you get started, below are a few shortcuts and resources that should come in handy while you feel your way around. And don't worry -- we know your inbox is crowded and precious. So you won't hear from us again unless you've registered for one of our free newsletters, like Lens of the Day or the SquidU Review...........
Update - August 16th, 2008
As of today, I have 125 published lenses, 20 WIP lenses, 1 lens in the Top 100 (overall - lensrank 65), and 19 top tier lenses.
Brainstorms
I first started writing lenses as a way for my holistic health clients to access specific information about remedies and treatments. These ones were actually quite easy and quick to make. 90% of the original content of those was information off the top of my head. I had already been working on "fact sheets" to give to people and had written a few of them for my website already, so all I had to do was learn how to transfer that information right on to a lens - the basics were easy. For two of the remedies, all I actually did was pretty much cut and paste right off of my own website (I plagarized myself - lol).So, hint #1 - Write what you already know about. If it's a topic that you're knowledgable and passionate about, the lenses come rather naturally.
My First Lenses
I've gone back and updated and improved these quite a bit since originally publishing them, but most of the original content is unchanged.-
Holistic Health for Pets
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Help your furry or feathered or scaled companions in times of stress or ill health with homeopathic remedies and flower essences. Many people have successfully used flower essences to help deal with fearful pets, dogs who have problems being home alo...
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Introduction to Homeopathy
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A VERY brief introduction to the history of homeopathy and its uses around the world today. Homeopathic medicines have been used successfully for over 200 years. Remedies are regulated as drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the FDA) and a...
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Flower Essence Remedies
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Flower Essences are infusions of natural flowers diluted with water and are very helpful in dealing with negative emotional states. Flower Essence Remedies are approved by and regulated by the FDA as over-the-counter drugs (they are NOT herbs or supp...
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You Need Apis in your Homeopathic First Aid Kit
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Sometimes I think that the only things in the world who enjoy my garden as much as I do are the bees and wasps who hang out there. Don't let a bee or wasp sting ruin your fun this summer. Be prepared by keeping Apis on hand to bring immediate relief...
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You need Aconite in your homeopathic first aid kit
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Homeopathic Aconitum nappelus is very handy remedy to have around the house and in your portable emergency kit. If you have small children or pets in the house you NEED this! Aconite can calm the panic and fear of being injured and make dealing with...
Branch Out
After I became a bit more comfortable with writing lenses and exploring the Squidoo universe more, I decided to make some lenses that had nothing to do with my professional life, just topics that I LOVE. These ones weren't as quick and easy to do like the holistic ones, but they were an absolute joy to write.Tip #2 Branch out, find new topics that interest you, cover more bases, and find more readers! If you are passionate about a subject, not only will you have a lot of fun making a lens about it, but readers will enjoy it too because your enthusiasm will shine through. Even if it's something that you don't expect others to be interested in, you never know...
Exploring New Subjects
The first lenses I wrote that weren't "holistic", were about my loves and hobbies.-
The Poe Toaster
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Each year on Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, his gravesite receives a visitor......who is this stranger who arrives in the wee hours for a toast at a headstone? Why does he or she do it? What symbolism is hidden in the gifts left for a long dead poet? "...
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Playing With Toads
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Did you ever wonder how you could combine 2 seemingly opposite hobbies in to one really weird pastime?
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Dark and Noble Ravens
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....while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered,...
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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, affectionately called BPAL by its crazed masses of fans, formulates original, exotic, complex and affordable perfume oil blends with a dark, gothic, neo-Victorian, hip, exotic, mysterious bent. Beth, the mother of BPAL and...
Quality Control
Tip #3 Learn from other Squids how to make your lenses shine.
Lens Development
Lenses that taught me how to improve my own.-
A Step-by-Step Primer on How-to Squidoo
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This step-by-step primer gives you plenty of how-to information on how to get started building your Squidoo lens. Get some useful tips about how to build that lens with plenty of helpful pictures of the various templates you can use. You'll see plent...
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The Text/Write Module for Anything!
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I love the Write module. It's really one of my very favorites... you can do anything with it. It is one of the easiest ways to make your lens stand out. It is the primary carrier of your best content, originally written information or stories, and it...
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Squidoo CSS - my favorite code to spice up a lens
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I've gathered my favorite Squidoo-code for later reference. I'm tired of trying to find that specific lens I used a css effect on and then having to go to edit-mode, copy paste, and then go back to the lens I was working on. This lens will help me be...
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Squidoo Modules
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The sole purpose of this lens is to test out the various modules available to lensmasters on Squidoo and see how they look in use. Feel free to peruse what I have here, but understand that this isn't really mean to be a public lens - just worki...
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Basic HTML for Squidoo
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You can use basic HTML in a few of the lens modules. Mostly used to create hyperlinks (they are the "live links" to other sites). Though there are also other uses for HTML. If you find yourself in need of quick tutorial on how to do it, her...
Links and Blogs That I've Learned From
- Business Ideas
- A goldmine of tips that can be applied to what I'm doing with Squidool
- Seth Godin
- An interview clip that will help get you in the right mind-set.
- Firestorm Forum
- This a great, free forum that allows you to promote yourself on and Squidoo lenses are welcome. Plus, some of the members know A LOT more than I do about promoting blogs and sites so they've been schooling me!
Time Management
The ugly stuff. I've got 4 kids, all under 13. I've got a house to take care of. I've got a job. I've got horses, and goats, and a dog, and cats, and a ferret, and laundry to do, and a mother-in-law. I'm busy. All the flippin' time.I've had to learn how to manage my time to get the most out of what I do. I usually read or watch TV at night for an hour or so after everyone else is asleep, so I've started devoting that time to Squidoo. Nothing formal or scheduled though. Some nights I add a bit to each of my WIP lenses, or just read other people's lenses, or start a new one.
I keep a notebook around all the time. If I think of something that one of my lenses could use (a cool new link, another tip, a new pic, whatever) I jot myself down a note. Then I don't worry about it until the evening. I take my notebook and go add the things on my list. This goes really fast. I open 3 windows and just edit, publish, ping, edit, publish, ping. Until they're done. I end up with just a few each night to take care of.
I also usually have around 15 or so lenses in my WIP section. If I get a great idea for a lens, I get it started right away, but I don't obsess about publishing it QUICK. I've got one still there from a month ago, but for the most part, my WIP get published within about 2 weeks. If I lose interest in a WIP, or I can't decide what to do with it, I delete it. If the idea was THAT great to begin with, I'll think of it again later.
Tip #4 Manage Your Time. You'll be more efficient and you won't burn yourself out.
Lensography
Once you establish yourself on Squidoo - you really need a good lensography. Or 2.
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My Health Lenses
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To keep my main lensography neat and tidy, I've moved all of my health-specific lenses to here. This should make it much easier to find the health topics that you're interested in without wading through all of the other stuff.
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A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That
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I'm a little bit of a hippie, a little bit Goth, a little bit cowgirl, and a little bit pseudo-intellectual art snob (well, maybe not that last part).
Spread the Word
It will give you a stroke if you obsess about it too much. I've got a little bit of a groove down at the moment with how I handle these.
-I always do the lens health check on SquidUtils
-I also use the ping tool there every time I update a lens
-I use This Lens. Fefe's got some great tips on there and it was the first really useful lens that I found. I submit my lenses using the Yahoo submit, MSN submit, gigablast, and scrub the web ones. I also submit to lensroll, squoogle, bumpzee, and zimbio. That gets some good traffic.
-I don't obsess about utilizing EVERY SINGLE promotion tool available. For me, it goes along with time management. I can't devote huge blocks of time to submitting my stuff to every single search engine, or participate in dozens of social bookmarking sites, or submit lenses to every directory on the net, or read seventy billion related blogs each day to comment on and drop my link in to.
-I found ones that I'm comfortable with and stick with them. StumbleUpon works rather well BUT you need to participate, make friends, stumble different things, comment on a lot of stuff, etc. Just Stumbling you own stuff won't work. The same goes for Digg. Those are the only 2 social bookmarking sevices I use.
-Forums - I was already an active member of 3 online forums, so advertising my lenses there was easy cheesy. PLUS, I've gotten some great ideas from the forums for new lenses. You get by with a little help from your friends!
Tip #5 Spread the word. Shout it out. Adverise yourself. But don't try to personally tell everyone in the universe or you'll just go insane.
Update - September 16, 2008
As of today I have 135 published lenses and 14 WIP. I've slowed WAY down on making new lenses and am focusing on spiffing up and promoting my existing ones. I have 1 lens in the top 100 overall with a lensrank of 56 and 26 total lenses in the top tier.
The Advertising Thing
Lenses that showed me how to do it!-
Submit URL: Squidoo Lens Promotion
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On this page, you'll find some links to places you can submit your Squidoo lenses to so that you can get more web traffic to your lens. Google is usually the main source of traffic to my lenses, but to rank well in Google takes other websites linkin...
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Squidoo Traffic
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Over time, squidoo has changed their algorithm on how they rank lenses. My lenses have seen dramatic lens rankings increases just by sending more traffic to them. Now I don't want you to go and join one of those traffic swap network things. Those su...
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Squid-Stats
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Squidoo provides lensmasters with a great deal of information about people who visit your lenses. This information includes where visitors are coming from, where they go, and what they purchase. This information can be used to increase the traff...
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Lensmaster Tools and Utilities
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SQUIDUtils.com Utilities and Tools for the Expert Lensmaster SquidUtils is the place to find complementry utilities and tools for your Lenses on Squidoo. Here you can see all of your lenses and groups, with shortcuts to some of the most vital funct...
Friendly Inspiration
These lenses were inspired by and made specifically to serve, forums of which I am a member of (and was for a long time before I met Squidoo)-
Wax Tarts, Burners, Melts, and More
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Tarts, also called wax melts, candle melts, soy melts, wax potpourri, or fragrance melts, are a perfect way to scent your home without chemical sprays or a lot of smoke. With burner choices available to match any decor and any scent that you love eas...
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Vintage Fashion on Etsy
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If you want to add a little something out of the ordinary to your wardrobe look no further than Etsy for a great selection of Vintage and Retro clothing and accessories stores!
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The Hygiene Hypothesis
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The hygiene hypothesis holds that a lack of exposure to germs, allergens, and parasites increases susceptibility to allergic diseases and weakens the human immune system. This explains the sharply rising rate of allergies and asthma in the western wo...
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SNS on Etsy
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SNS is a weekly gathering of Etsy shops featuring special sales, discounts, and bonuses. Discover unique hand-made gifts, chic vintage clothing, art, jewelry, crafts supplies, ACEOs, pottery, bath and beauty products, candies, candles and more from t...
Be A Good Squid
Take some time to look around and explore
I've made a few lenses just showing off some of my favorite lenses by other people. Internal networking is a great way to find inspiration, friends, and information.-
My Favorite Lenses
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Just another coal on the fire of awesomeness that is Squidoo - hundreds and hundreds of amazing lenses to just sit and pass some time reading. There are just so many amazing lenses waiting for you to discover!
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Squidoo Gets Personal
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We have so many amazing, insightful, and inspiring lenses written about incredible people here but I have found the first-person accounts to be the most moving. I've collected personal stories of lensmasters from all walks of life who have had the co...
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Squidoo Around the World
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Squidoo may have originally been an American concoction, but Seth Godin's baby has always been a global community! We have lensmasters from all over the world here and they have some fascinating stories to tell and bring a unique viewpoint in to the...
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Social Issues On Squidoo
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One of the brilliant things about Squidoo is the ability for caring people to draw attention to issues that they are passionate about. As part of the Squidoo Activist's Group, I felt compelled to take some time to promote some of these truly deservin...
A Family Affair
Once I started making more lenses, my kids got interested. Not only did they come up with some awesome ideas for me, they even started helping me with them! -
Igor the Movie
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A twist on the classic depiction of Dr. Frankenstein's faithful, if a bit odd, servant. The movie features the voices of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Jeremy Piven, Molly Shannon, and Jay Leno.
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My Max and Ruby Party Notes
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Max and Ruby is my 3-year-old's absolute favorite book and television series. She's obsessed with them. Of course, that's the kind of birthday party she wanted. The problem is, there are no licensed Max and Ruby party supplies available so we had to...
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Lenses I've Built With My Children
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With gas prices as high as they are and us stuck out in the boonies, we're finding ways to entertain ourselves without "going anywhere" this summer. We've made mud baths outside, taken long bike rides, worked in the garden, done puzzles, played with...
Give Back
Making lenses for a non-profit is a wonderful way to spend some time. I contacted my two favorite charities and had them apply to be part of Squidoo! Not only did it feel good to do, but the lenses pretty much write themselves since I could go on and on for hours about them! Plus, with non-profits, you can make a group, recruit more supporters, and network!Tip #6 Give Back.
My Charities
I give a minimum of 20% of the Squidoo revenue from EVERY ONE OF MY LENSES to a Squidoo non-profit (several of them, in fact).-
The Wild Animal Sanctuary
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Saving One Animal May Not Change The World But Surely, For That One Animal... The World Will Change Forever! The Wild Animal Sanctuary provides a safe haven for wild animals rescued from private owners, abusive situations, and others who would other...
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My Squidoo Charity Stats
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One of the biggest perks of being a Squidoo lensmaster is the ability for our lenses to contribute to worthy organizations. I joined Squidoo on May 8, 2008 and this lens is a record of all of my "payday" donations to Squidoo non-profit partners. Not...
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Farm Aid - My Squidoo Virtual Concert
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The first Farm Aid concert took place in 1985 to raise awareness about the loss of family farms and to raise funds to keep farm families on their land. Farm Aid was the brain child of John Mellencamp with help from Willie Nelson and Neil Young. Dave...
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All-Purpose, Handy-Dandy, Calorie-Free, Bake Sale
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No calories if you just look? We all love a good bake sale, so grab your glass of milk, sit back, and indulge in some virtual goodies (allergy-free too!). This page supports Longhopes Donkey Shelter and The Wild Animal Sanctuary - pretending to have...
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Longhopes Donkey Rescue
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Our mission is to rescue, shelter, rehabilitate and find permanent homes for donkeys that would otherwise be destroyed for meat consumption overseas. These animals are often shipped in horrific conditions to processors outside of the US - many die fr...
You CAN'T Go It Alone
Be Social!
- Zimbio
- My Zimbio profile.
- Mixx
- Mixx-ing it up - my profile on Mixx.
- Digg
- I can Digg it - can you?
- StumbleUpon
- I love Stumbling!
Ganging Up
Join a group to get together with like-minded lensmasters. None that fit? Start your own!!
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All About Colorado Headquarters
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All About Colorado - The Centennial State The group for all lenses pertaining to the great state of Colorado. From the Western Slope, down to the San Juans, up the Platte, cruising Denver, the Springs, Boudler, Greeley, or anywhere in between. Add...
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Rural Lifestyles Headquarters
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Rural Lifestyles A group for lenses on topics pertaining to living a rural lifestyle.
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Lensmasters for Longhopes Headquarters
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Lensmasters for The Wildlife Sanctuary Headquarters
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SquidEtsians Headquarters
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SquidEtsians A group of lensmakers who are members of the Squidoo Street Team on Etsy. This group nurtures a sense of community and offers a support system for each other. Please make sure that you have contacted PurrPrints on Etsy to let her know...
My First Payday!!
Happy payday, darling. Here's the scoop on your Squidoo earnings (and donations) from 05/01/2008 to 05/31/2008.P.S. Have you seen The Squidoo Answer Deck yet? Hundreds of pages of useful tips and Squidoo how-to's, run by your fellow lensmasters. Check it out: www.squidoo.com/theanswerdeck/hq
YOUR ROYALTIES (05/01/2008 to 05/31/2008)
Your previous balance + previous Refer-A-Friend bonuses = $0.00
Your new lens earnings this period = $54.88
Total earnings = $54.88!
So, here's how you're spending your $54.88...
$41.31 will be sent to you via PayPal (you reached your Cash Payout Threshold, congrats!).
$9.23 has been donated in your name (you kind soul) to Ferrets Unlimited Ferret Shelter.
$4.34 has been donated in your name (you kind soul) to Long Hopes.
My Favorite Affiliate Program
I use and recommend the Share-A-Sale network.
Monetization
How to turn your Squidoo lenses in to cash!
I'm with several affiliate networks but so far the most lucrative has been Share-A-Sale. Here's my lens discussing why I like it and how I'm doing with it.-
The Share-A-Sale Network
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There are currently over 2,000 Merchants in the ShareASale Network. Each of these merchants has a different type of product that they are selling - and each is ready to pay you commission on that sale if you bring a customer to them. It's really sim...
My Friends
Places with friendly folks to help you out!
- SquidU
- The Squidoo members' forum. Anything you need you can find there with the friendliest group I've ever had the pleasure to run across on the net.
- The Squidetsian Street Team
- A great Etsy team to join if you're a buyer or seller on Etsy and a Squidoo lensmaster. Lots of friendly help and support.
- Firestorm Forum
- These forum members have helped me out a lot.
- StumbleUpon
- I've found some great folks on StumbleUpon to help me out too.
Please Say Hello To Me.
I've sequestered myself in my office to finish this lens and I'm lonely.
JaguarJulie wrote...
You what??? 4 kids under 13 -- OMG, calgon seriously take me away -- pleeeze! I can't imagine ... but delegate would be key for me. 40 days -- that's pretty remarkable as an achievement. Oh, I can't wait for that 'new' badge you're talkin' about. ;)
Posted October 27, 2008
AndyPo wrote...
Excellent lens (5*) I've been doing this for a few months now and I'm still not a Giant Squid, but maybe in a month or so.
Posted October 23, 2008
MrMarmalade wrote...
I have become a fan today. What an enormous goal you have set us to follow.
Your energy is boundless.
Not that you need it you have become one of my treasured resources and so stop five.
Posted October 22, 2008
ElizabethJeanAllen wrote...
I often wondered how others did it. I became a Giant in July as well but I started in March, not May. I am currently working on a lens called The Squidoo Learning Curve. I would like to reference your lens.
Lizzy
Posted October 19, 2008
by The_Homeopath
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