Here are the various stages of a lens... 

1. Inception - A good lens will originate with a bright idea - an eureka moment. You have thought of something new, and interesting and you want to tell everyone about it. It should have a clear focus. You should have some expertise on the topic and have some passion to promote it.
   Everyone is an expert on something.
2. Planning - Before you sit in front of your computer to create the lens, you need to come up with a general frame work. The reason is your lens must be presented in an orderly fashion. The order of modules and the the details that goes into each module should be sketched out. Sometimes, you may find it is better to re-order the information. This is better done before you create the lens.
   A) you will need a good unique title.
   B) you will need a unique URL name.
   C) you will need at least 3 good keywords or phrases.
   D) you will need a good image for a logo.
3. Creation - This is done by logging into your Squidoo account. Clock on the "make a lens" button and follow the 4 simple steps.
   Once the URL is created, your new lens will be assigned a rank number. This is usually a high number such as 145,000 as of today and will be increased over time as more lens are created. This rank number is just a place holder.
   Your next step will be to add the various modules that will be part of your lens. Not counting the introduction, a lens must have a minimum of 3 modules. A module could be a text module, a link module, a guestbook module or a poll module or an Amazon module or any of a host of modules to choose from.
   Once you have all the modules added, you have the option to reorder them in any order you wish.
   Once you are satisfied with the order, you can proceed to edit each module and fill in the details. The beauty of Squidoo is that you don't need to know any HTML coding.
4. Publish - Once all the pieces are created and checked for spelling errors and formats, it is time to publish your lens. By publishing, you are making all the content available to the outside world. This will happen within minutes. Once the lens is published, there is no way to un-publish. The only drastic method is to delete the whole lens. You can delete each module if you wish.
5. After one day, (usually after 8 or 9 AM EST), the rankings are updated by Squidoo. This lensrank number will be the first meaningful rank for your lens. You can see this along with some other stats on your dashboard.
   Here is a sample view of a typical dashboard:
   
   
   
   All your lens are presented in rank order with the highest rank lens on the top.
6. Publicize - Join a Squidoo group, email to your friends, link to the lens from your blog, add a posting to a related forum ...
   What you want to do is to drive web traffic to visit your lens.
7. After about two weeks, check your google search rank. You can do this by going to performing a google search using one of your tag words or phrases. If you done your job well and if you are lucky, your lens will show up very high on the ranking. If your lens shows up on the top 10 or first screen, you have hit the jackpot.
   Here is a sample screen shot of one of my lens showing up ranked #2.
   
   
8. Monitor - Squidoo provides a set of statistics and plots for every one of your lens. They appear on your dashboard and is updated once a day.
   Besides the basic lensrank, the traffic count, the average star rating, and the amount earned, there is a "stat" details.
   Here are a few sample screen shots of a typical lens -
   
   
   
   
   
   
   In addition, you may receive feedback from readers in the guestbook. If you select the option to "ask me first" before posting, you will get an email message anytime someone post a blurb. "hey you are famous..."
9. Maintenance - Finally, your lens will be in maintenance mode after a few weeks of updates and promotion. There are three general path a lens may take.
   (1) Your lens is a big hit and will experience many visitors and associated sales. It will rise steadily in ranking until reaching the top 100. At which time, it will be featured in the "Top 100 by lensrank". This is a great achievement.
   (2) Your lens will rise in ranking from the initial published rank of near 20,000 to some peak and then slowly decline and settle among the majority of lens in the top 40,000 lens or so. It all depends on traffic and earnings and a few other factors. Lensrank algorithm is a mystery in Squidoo. Check out my lens on this topic in the link below.
   (3) Your lens is of little interest to the public. It will start from the initial ranking of around 20,000 and drop steadily over time and drop off into obscurity - somewhere between 40,000 to 140,000.
10. Payday - On the 2nd week of every month, a payout screen will appear when you login. This is the total amount all your lenses have made in the preceeding 2 months. It is a monthly payout but delayed by one month.
    Here is a sample screen shot of my May 2007 earnings:
    
    

Conclusion 

New Featured Lenses 

How I became a Squidoo addict?

A few months ago, I was enjoying my early retirement from IBM and I happen to come across a site called Squidoo. It was different from other web sites that I've seen. For some reason, it was appealing to me and I thought I should register. Besides, i...

Making Money On Squidoo

I plan to talk here about the technicalities and legalities of making money by building Squidoo lenses. I will describe the rules and policies regarding that issue that are detailed in the Squidoo Terms Of Services (TOS), FAQ (Questions And Answers)...

I am: Jack C. Lee

I am new to Squidoo (8/25/2006) but find it to be very inspirational. Any revenue generated by these lens are contributed to the Soldiers' Angels fund. I commend the Squidoo team for creating a wonderful medium for me to express myself and to instill...

Some related links... 

My lens design guideline

A simple non-commerce lens design guide.

Trump State Park

One of my lens reached #2 on Google page rank out of 1,200,00 hits.

How to add large photo...

One of my most successful lens on Squidoo.

Lensrank

My assessment on Squidoo lensrank.

Squid Angel guidelines

My opinion on being a SquidAngel.

A lens on how money is made on Squidoo

A very good detail explanation from lensmaster - zuzanna.

Squidoo features wish list...

My lens on features that would improve Squidoo.

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