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What Squidoo has done for me

Ranked #5,343 in Squidoo Community, #344,271 overall

My personal testimonial for Squidoo

This is my 50th Squidoo lens. What an adventure!

On this lens, I'm looking back at what Squidooing has added to my life. I'm having a great time and growing a lot, and I expect to grow even more as I go forward.

Since the time I made this lens, I have been approved as a Giant Squid! I'm so excited!

(photo from Wikimedia Commons)

If you've been here before, be sure to check out my new page!

I've added a second page to this lens, describing the new chapter in my Squidoo adventure.

Now I'm a Squidoo Giant!

How I started with Squidoo

On June 4th, 2009, I was minding my own business, looking at igoogle Showcase. One of the people profiled there was someone I had never heard of, Seth Godin. The profile mentioned that Seth was the founder of Squidoo.com, a site I had never heard of either. They mentioned free web hosting, so I decided to check it out.

I started nosing around Squidoo, and I was intrigued by their motto: "Everyone's an expert (on something)". I thought for a minute, "Do I believe that? Am I an expert on something?" And it struck me that I was. I don't want to sound full of myself, but I'm something of an expert on choir directing. I've been doing it for a long time, and I know a lot about it. I would never have considered putting up a whole web domain called JoansChoirKnowledge.com, but just one little page as a part of a big community where everybody is writing about their favorite stuff? And it's free?

Anything that you've always wanted to say to the world, Squidoo is the place where you can say it.I looked at a few lenses to get an idea of what lenses were like, and I took the plunge. Within a couple hours of first seeing Seth's face, I was hard at work on my first lens: Directing a Gospel Choir. Since that day, I think it has always been among my top five ranked lenses.

After doing that first lens, I got ideas to do more. Anything that you've always wanted to say to the world, Squidoo is the place where you can say it. Next was a little "About me" page, then my first homeschooling lens, then Cinderella.

Squidoo has given me the perfect platform for expressing myself.

OK, maybe I shouldn't say perfect; nothing's perfect. But the way Squidoo is set up is an excellent fit for me.

With Squidoo I can talk about as many subjects as I want and each one has its own piece of real estate.I love being able to have a limitless number of lenses on a limitless number of topics. That's one advantage Squidoo has over a blog. With Squidoo I can talk about as many subjects as I want and each one has its own piece of real estate. If someone wants to read my thoughts about the Consistent Life Ethic, they don't have to sit through my gushings about the cute thing my kid did yesterday. Or if they do want to share in my homeschooling adventure, they don't have to get hit over the head with my political beliefs.

I love being able to combine static and dynamic information on one page. On a blog, people get turned off if the top post they see is six months old. But on a lens, if I say something that I think is timeless, it can stay there on the page forever. At the same time, I can add and delete other modules or use RSS feeds to keep fresh information coming in.

Squidoo has spurred me to work on my writing.

Writing is always something I've enjoyed, and Squidoo has given me the opportunity to practice at it. For years I'd had ideas running around in the back of my mind for a rewrite of "Cinderella". But I had never taken the time to sit down and do it. Squidoo inspired me to finally get Cinderella out of my head and onto the page.

I had about five lenses under my belt when Mimi invited me to be on her team for the next Giant Squid Challenge. Writing 50 lenses seemed like an enormous endeavor, but I figured that Mimi knew a lot more about Squidoo than I did, so if she thought I could do it I would trust her judgment. Again, I took the plunge.

Writing is an exercise. As you do more reps, your writing style gets leaner and stronger.The way to get better at something is to do a lot of it, and once I signed up for the Giant Squid Challenge, I was writing A LOT. I started noticing some things about my writing -- words and phrases that I overused, an over-reliance on italics. Those things start jumping out at you when you're seeing them for the tenth or twentieth time. Then you can work on improving them. Writing is an exercise. As you do more reps, your writing style gets leaner and stronger.

The Giant Challenge has forced me to dig into the recesses of my brain looking for lens ideas. I've had to pull out things that have been floating around back there with no direction, and shape them into something that other people would want to read.

Being on a Challenge team also gave me opportunities to write about topics that I never would have considered on my own. Weekly challenges and other ideas that were floated around at team headquarters had me writing things I never would have expected. And, lo and behold, I ended up with lenses that I really liked.


Mimi, my Team Captain.

Squidoo has made me learn more about the things I already knew.

In teaching, we learn.When I started writing lenses, I found myself studying things in more depth than ever. I was scouring YouTube for examples to illustrate choir directing concepts, researching websites that teach music theory, looking at gospel music blogs and forums. All of this was for the purpose of expressing things clearly to readers I would never meet, but some of what I found gave me ideas for new ways to teach music concepts to my own choir at home. In teaching, we learn.

We Squids are not only exhorted to write about the things we're experts on, we're also encouraged to write about things we have a passion for, even if we're not experts. This has led me into studying things that may not have directly improved my work productivity, but they have been personally enriching.

Squidoo has taught me about things I'd never thought about (or heard of) before.

Along with being such a great setting for writing, Squidoo is also a smorgasbord of good reading. I had never heard of Vedic math, or fiddlehead ferns, or National Apple Dumpling Day before. There's always something new to pick up here.

Squidoo has taught me a bunch about HTML.

A big THANK YOU to all the folks out there who share their HTML/CSS knowledge with us newbies.

I couldn't do half of this stuff before!

Squidoo gave me an idea to start my own business!

One of the things I was envying at Squidoo was how so many people had their own little stores, selling their artwork or photography. I'm not visually artistic, so I was feeling left out.

One night I was pondering this as I bounced back and forth between making Squidoo lenses and working on some practice CDs for my choir when I realized that my business niche was obvious! The next thing I knew I was developing . . .

ChoirParts.com

Squidoo is the reason that ChoirParts.com happened! I'm very excited about my online store, and I'm ready to get to work developing and promoting it.

I've made a lens about it now, where I explain the service in detail.
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Squidoo has introduced me to some wonderful people.

First, I want to give some love to my Team One teammates. You guys are the greatest!

Thanks to Mimi for being such a devoted and supportive team captain, and to our wonderful coaches, Melissa and Bev. I appreciate your taking on the responsibility to share your knowledge with us Baby Squids and give us feedback and encouragement.

And to my rank-and-file teammates: You all are fantastic lensmakers as well as awesome friends! Thank you for taking the time to review my lenses even when I've been to busy at times to get to all of yours (but I promise you, I will visit every last one of them).

I also appreciate the Angels who have visited me and sprinkled me with their special fairy dust. You've made me feel so welcome, and your lensmaking work has been an inspiration to me.

And to everybody who's dropped by my lenses. Thank you for your comments, ideas, backlinks, favoriting a lens or becoming a fan. I hope you've gotten some value from visiting my pages, because I certainly have benefited from seeing yours.

Much love to everybody! You will be seeing more of me!


The Team One coaches!

This lens is dedicated to the Team One posse

Onward and upward!

To see the next chapter in my Squidoo adventure, see my next page: Now I'm a Squidoo Giant!

Glad to see you!

This lens has been blessed by Katinka, Brenda, Paul, kiwisoutback, Spook, Stargazer, javrsmith, and ajgodinho.

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Now I'm a Squidoo Giant!

This is me wearing my Squidoo Meetup 2010 T-ShirtThis is a continuation of my Squidoo testimonial: What Squidoo has done for me.

So here's the next page in my Squidoo journey. The adventures and growth that I've experienced since I first became a giant.

People really do think of me as an expert!

This is the show that my friend played for in February 2010 -- Call Mr. RobesonNow that I have so many lenses about choir directing, people ask me for advice and referrals. For example:

  • People leave comments asking if I can help them find a song. They usually remember some of the lyrics, but not the title. Sometimes I know the song, sometimes not.

  • People leave comments describing problems they are having in their choir directing pursuits. I offer my opinions and also refer them to an excellent choir directors forum that I'm a member of. Some of these questions have also provided useful fodder for my new choir blog: The Church Choir (at Crabbysbeach).

  • One person left a comment asking for a recommendation for what church he should attend! He lives near me (Pasadena) and wanted to go to a church with a good choir. I referred him to the church in Pasadena that my grandfather used to pastor.

  • This one was very exciting! A playwright and actor contacted me to ask if I could recommend a piano player to accompany him when his one-man show came to Los Angeles! I have a good friend who plays piano and I hooked them up. My friend played for one night of his show and then was nice enough to give me a kickback out of the pay he received!

I've started making a little bit of money.

Squidoo is actually improving my bottom line!

I'm not a top money-maker on Squidoo by any means, but for the second quarter of 2010, I'm averaging around $50 a month.

Most of that is through lensrank. I have one lens that stays pretty consistently in the top tier now -- "Best one-rehearsal songs for gospel choir". And I usually have between 5 and 10 lenses in the second tier, mostly choir lenses but also one edible weeds lens, "Clover".

I also get some sales, mostly music that I've recommended on my choir lenses. The music sales are typically 99-cent MP3 downloads, so that's not a lot of commission, but sometimes someone will buy an album or will buy some nice unrelated items after coming through my lens. That helps.

More exciting than those, however, is the money that I'm making from my online business!

I'm starting to understand this search engine optimization stuff

Sometimes fun, sometimes tedious, but I'm getting better at it. I have a basic understanding of how to do tagging and how to research and use keywords. And I know how to do backlinking even though I don't do as much of it as I should (one of these days I need to start writing some articles).

There are many lensmasters who have taught me and helped me with this stuff. Here are a few that have been most significant in what I've learned.

I've been embraced by the Squidoo community

In so many ways

Even before I became a Giant, I found Squidoo to be a wonderful, supportive community of people. Since that time, I've had even more experiences as a part of the family.

Getting purple stars is pretty cool.

My first purple star came very soon after I achieved Giant status. It was for one of my favorite edible weeds lenses, "Stinging nettle". I was ecstatic when it happened (here's the blog post I wrote at the time).

Currently, I have eight purple stars. It always feels good when someone recognizes your work with a blessing or a purple star nomination.

This reminds me that I need to go nominate a few lenses. It's important to me to pay it forward when I recognitions.
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I'm a RocketMom (a little bit, anyway).

I joined RocketMoms soon after become a Giant Squid (I was invited by the dearly beloved Sylvestermouse). I participated in a few activities, but not that many. I seem to do a little better picking my own writing topics.

You know how some people say that they follow a particular religion but they almost never go to church? That sort of how it is with me and RocketMoms. But they are a wonderfully supportive group that provides a valuable service for a lot of people.

I've only made about three lenses on the RocketMoms template, but guess what? This first RocketMoms lens I ever did got picked as a Lens of the Day!!!! I was trying to think of something family-oriented and this is what resulted:
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I've been featured on some cool blogs!

These are lensmaster blogs that have mentioned my lenses.
Another squidoo Joan (Hall)
Featured by Katinka on her "Squidoo friends" blog. A sweet tribute where she talks about my work in general, including the lensographies I've made that feature other lensmasters' work. She really likes it when community members support each other.
This is what a music lens should be like: James Taylor's non-hits
My James Taylor lens was featured on the mighty Squidoo Music Blog. Jane (ChapelHillFiddler) was really impressed with it.
Doctor Strangelove Movie Review: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Brenda featured me as a guest blogger to promote my Dr. Strangelove review.

I've met some Squids in real life!

I had the privilege of attending the Southern California Squidoo Meetup. We had a great time and I got a t-shirt!
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I have over 100 lenses now!

Since I finished my Giant Squid Challenge in September 2009, I never officially signed on to any "Going for 100" challenges. But I have kept on making lenses, and on September 30, 2010, I applied for Giant 100 status and I was approved!
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. . . and I can fly!

In September of 2010 I was tapped to serve as a SquidAngel for a month. It was hard work, but lots of fun and a great way to give back after everything that Squidoo has done for me.
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Glad to see you AGAIN!

Feel free to leave a comment.

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  • Reply
    Serenia Feb 5, 2011 @ 9:29 am | delete
    Now you have given me hope. You didnt get your first purple star until after you became a giant squid. So now I have something to aim for - becoming a giant squid AND getting that first purple star. Thanks.
  • Reply
    DallasNicole Dec 24, 2010 @ 7:55 pm | delete
    This is awesome! I look to make money here and I hope my lenses will do well in future! Very encouraging to the Newbies! Thanks again!
  • Reply
    jptanabe Aug 18, 2010 @ 4:21 pm | delete
    Joan, that's so inspiring! Glad your Choir Parts business is doing well. It's amazing what comes out of being a Squid!
  • Reply
    vallain Aug 18, 2010 @ 3:39 pm | delete
    Really nice to see how Squidoo is progressing for you. I think we may be around the same stage of the journey. I'm getting better at the tagging and using keywords so that's helping push my lensrank up. I'm being lax about retrofitting my earlier lenses with what I now know.
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