Squidoo at 9m

It's been a busy 3 months since I wrote my previous Squidoo diary lens. At the end of September I qualified for the 100 Club of Giant Squids with 100 great lenses. Then a couple of weeks later, I was privileged to have my application as a Squidoo Angel accepted.

When I made Giant Squid at the end of June, I'd thought it would be take me another 6 months, maybe 9, before I had enough great lenses to apply for the 100 Club. I'd got a few spare when I went for Giant - but then I also needed twice that number spare for the next stage. I prefer to have a 20% safety margin - some lenses just aren't as great as others because the subject matter is small, or because they are just tentancles in a Squidoo lens funnel, so I was 60 lenses short. But they just kept dropping out and in the end I applied a couple of weeks before the deadline. Getting my wings as an Angel was a big bonus.

If you are interested in my thoughts about life as an Angel, then please visit my special Angelic lens.

It's also been a quarter which has seen significant steps forwards in terms of my lenses and my Squidoo earnings, including my first Amazon commissions. Many of my lenses which were seeing only limited traffic are now doing quite well, and their lens rank has perked up accordingly. I still have a problem that many of my lenses are on subjects which don't attract ratings within Squidoo; my first ever lens about X Factor starlet Ruth Lorenzo is solidly Tier 2 but has never been rated!

My lenses about Ancient Egypt are starting to do better with several, including my lens on Tutankhamun's wife Ankhesenemun joined in Tier 2 by my lenses on Tutankhamun in English (which flirts in and out of Tier 1) and in French, and my lens about the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Perhaps the strangest success was my Clarence Clemons lens. The Big Man has an autobiography out and his promotion team added a detailed review to the Guestbook. That significantly boosted traffic and has done the trick with purchases now being made through the lens. Thanks to the Big Man's team. In general, my sax solos series is my second most successful group of lenses.

The third series of lenses whose progress has pleased me is my genetic lenses which I wrote as supporting material for my lens about the South African athlete Caster Semenya, although those supporting lenses on things topics the Female XX Karyotype are now doing better than the "main" lens.

I keep promising to write more lenses about California. My lens about Tomales is a long standing lens and has largely been an orphan in my lensography. I mentioned one prominent building, Not a Bank, and the owner got in touch and sent me some better photos which I used to create a child lens about that building. I must write some more Californian lenses though as I think the Tomales lens could easily make Tier 2.

Finally, thank you to the developers whose icons I feature on my Squidoo lenses: Please refer to "Icons I Love" for full details and links to the developers' own sites. I also appreciate the section dividers collected by Stargazer00. I will receive commission via Squidoo if you buy through to any Amazon or eBay products I have featured, on any purchase from AllPosters I feature or from Theban Moon, my Zazzle store.