Fur In The Paint

I finally got around to gathering together my art fair posts as well as some new information into one handy location. I plan to add a segment on display units and zapplication yet, but that may not happen for awhile. At any rate hopefully it will be a handy resource for all you art fair goers out there.

An Art Fair Primer What You Need To Know.

Well I’ve been plugging along on some of my work in progress squidoo lenses and I finally felt they were ready to publish.

The first is a remake of my All Good Things Come From Art Fairs which may indeed need a new title for better search engine optimization. As with all my lenses which are scraped from my blog, it has been redone with new content and streamlined a bit. I did this one for a Giant Squid challenge in which we could only use 5 modules not counting intro and guest book.

The other new lens is my lenography (called curiously enough Wild Faces Gallery Art Lensography.) This is a combination of an all about me lens mixed with listings of all of my lenses by category. There’s some new photos of me plus a new story or two. I was fortunate enough to get a blessing on this and a couple of star ranking before squidoo even got it featured. So I guess even if I’m not raking in the dough I’m getting some recognition for my writing. It’s all good.

And just to prove my blog isn’t always just about me . . .
This is the funniest thing I’ve read in along time. Perhaps because I can relate to just about everything on it. (not hot flashes yet thank God) The Art Of Aging Ungracefully The YouTube vids are also particularly funny.

UPDATED:
Okay so within the last 24 hours my Lensography lens has been ranked 8 times and blessed by 4 Angels. It’s kinda weird that this lens is getting far more recognition in it’s first 24 hours of existence than any of my lenses have in their entire existence.

But it’s a good kinda weird. You know . . . kinda like Raisinettes.

But do I want to be a giant squid?
Okay, so a couple of my lenses were blessed recently and because of that (or so I’m assuming. Who knows maybe it’s because “I’m special”) I was invited to join in the Become A Giant Squid group which kinda mentors and helps writers along in reaching their goal of 50 lenses.

Perhaps I should explain the whole concept a little more clearly.
Squidoo is a place where you can write small webpages which they call lenses. Unlike many places the focus is providing quality information but also offering the writers to partake in earning money. This is done in a couple of ways.
1. Monetizing. This means including Amazon and other affiliate links. People click through you get paid. People buy you get paid more.
2. Squidoo Rankings. Squidoo pays out money depending where your lens ranks.

There are 3 payout level.
Tier three: Your lens needs to rank under 85,000
Tier Two: Under 10,000
Tier One: Under 2,000

Two of mine are Tier Two but close to Tier One and 15 are Tier Three. Two completely out of the money.

Currently there is like a million lenses (not kidding there) and so a person writes a lens and then waits for it to rise in the rankings so it can start earning it’s keep

In order for a lens to get ranked higher there are numerous ways.
1.Other squidoo members Star rank your lens.
2 Comments left by either members or non members
3.Clickouts. How often someone clicks through to affiliates
4. traffic. How many people visit your lens.
5. Becoming a Giant Squid Which is having at least 50 quality lenses.
6. Creating Over 100 lenses
7.Squid Angel Blessings. (which is the reason I wrote this post) Squidoo has a group of volunteers who go around looking for lenses that are well executed but may not be ranking highly. When they bless them which helps them temporarily raise in the rankings and so hopefully get more attention from the ranking systems and thus elevate the lens.

In theory you can get a high ranking lens with just any one of these ranking tools but it usually requires all of them working together to make it happen.

Okay so anyway back to the point of this post. Do I want to be a giant squid? Yes . . . someday. Frankly I thought shooting for 20 lenses this year was pushing it for me but I have already surpassed that (a couple are still in the building stage) and it’s only Feb. Can I really do 50 before the next deadline? Doubtful but possible.

We shall see.

Many of my Suidoo lens were created from gleanings off my blog. So I thought It high time for my blog to do a little gleaning of it’s own. And thus this post was born.

Robert Vavra is one of my art heroes and I have an extensive collection of his books. The biggest issue I have with them is NOT using his images as reference materials. Trust me, it is oh so tempting. His photos of horses buried in jewels and gold, or draped with chains or hundreds of ribbons are stunning. He also marvelously captures horses just being horses. LOVE the art of Vavra.

So okay enough waxing poetic. Here’s an excerpt from my Squidoo lense The Art Books Of Robert Vavra

When I was young girl (and that was a looong time ago) I begged my mom for this book. I had to beg because it was $40 and this was the early 80’s so it was a hefty price to pay for a picture book for a child. So the answer was no.

But I wasn’t about to accept that, so I set about getting the money myself. Eventually I earned enough through various odd jobs and working the fields in the summer to not only buy all my school clothes and such but also the book.

When it arrived in the mail it was truly the picture book to end all picture books. I spent endless hours flipping through the pages and reading all the passages. And still do on occasion.

I think in many ways Robert Vavra’s vision shaped my horse art from a very early age. His books aren’t just pretty pictures of pretty horses, they are indeed art. They are spectacular horses, in spectacular settings with choreographed movement.

From this very first book I was hooked on Vavra.

Squidoo Goal
So my goal for this year was to make a total of 20 lenses. I already had 7 so this was in effect doubling my numbers. It seemed like a rather big challenge but at this point I have 18 functioning lenses and two work in progress lenses. So yeah, shouldn’t be a problem to mark this goal off. Though one of the work in progress lenses is about my totem series so that may be awhile in coming. The other is a lensography which is kinda the mother of all MEMEs rolled together with compilation (or rather a directory) of all my lenses.

If any of you visit my lens I would really appreciate it if you took a moment to leave a comment. I think you have to be a member of squidoo to rank the lens but anyone can comment.

Do You Do Squidoo?
Early in 09 I worked like 35 hours to create seven squidoo lens. (See sidebar blogroll right) And then promptly ignored them and moved on with my life.

Fast forward a year (i.e. now) and I’m looking at my business goals going “oh yeah, squidoo.” I really should do a few more of those. So I pop over and low and behold there is actual coinage in my account. $3.33 to be exact. (I’m like whoohoo!) So that equals out to less than 10 cents per hour worked on the project.

So what was my very first thought?

I need to build more lenses. (Yeah I know right? like isn’t that the reaction everybody would have? ) And so I promptly did. I’ve nearly doubled my lenses, though 1 is still in the building stage.

Okay I’m kinda mocking squidoo or more correctly my feeble attempts at income earning through my lenses. But I know (or have heard tell at any rate) that really good money can be made from squidoo lenses. They just need to be networked a little bit more than “create and leave.” Plus if you become a big squid (make at least 50 lenses that rank well) your earning potential goes up.

Part of the problem (besides my lack of computer talents) is that I focus really hard on providing content (which is the original intention of creating them) and not at all on monetization. (i.e. including advertising links like amazon) So that too is on my To-Do list.

I think 43 new lenses to become a big squid (or is it giant squid?) is out of my grasp for this year. So let’s see . . . if I do an additional 7 lenses this year . . . oh heck lets shoot for 13 new lenses to bring me to the nice even number of 20, maybe I’ll earn $10 by the end of 2010.

Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she.

UPDATED:If anyone looks at my Squidoo lenses and finds them useful, I would really appreciate you ranking the lens. This helps with my overall ranking and listing placement as well as payout. You do not have to be a squidoo member to rank a lens.

Updated Again: SO it turns out that $3.33 was only for the month of October. From what I can tell that was the first month that generated any income at all. For some reason the lenses just sort of spontaneously started earning cash. Huh?