Squidlog.net

An email exchange with a Squidpal has AJ thinking about doing too much learning and not enough doing

Last week I posted that I am spreading my wings (finally) beyond Squidoo and today, during the course of a regular email exchange with Alex (Lensmaster Drifter0658), I found my self climbing on my soap box. I thought you might be interested in the gist of what I said as the realisation of what I was thinking hit me like a sledgehammer. Yep, I had one of those “lightbulb” moments!

The last few months have seen a huge metamorphosis as I have evolved from that newby who joined Squidoo in the Summer of 2008 (on Seth Godin’s birthday!) who wanted just to write from the heart and hope that it would earn her some money.

I will be totally honest, but from before Christmas until a couple of weeks ago I was utterly lost as far as my internet activities were concerned. Not just lost, but feeling I was swimming in a sea of treacle AND against the tide. My demons of self doubt were kicking in BIG time and I was in despair, just not knowing what direction to take and yes, I came very close to hitting the delete button on my Squidoo account. When you are depressed, or lacking in self confidence, self harm exists in many forms…..

I had a feeling I was on a threshold of something. BUT there were too many doors to choose from. Too many people I could learn from. And it seemed like some of them were saying: “Open my door, the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold might be here”!

Then, as I realised I just did not know which way to turn,  or who to listen to, I had an exchange of views with Alex and he made an offer that I could not refuse. He offered to teach me about Link Wheels. We would set up a niche blog from scratch and use it as a hands on teaching exercise, that we could share with other people in our networks.

Within just a couple of days, the demons were nuked!

I now have my motivation, optimism and AJ vitality back. I think my husband is silently thanking Alex – hubby is a Sagittarius, so articulating what he is feeling comes hard, but I know him well enough to sense what he is thinking

Because of how I was feeling I did a huuuuge amount of thinking and I have come to realise that in our quest to learn and absorb as much as we can about Squidoo and online marketing, we end up listening to too many teachers and self-labelled experts. We click on so many links to free advice and we end up confused, bewildered and achieving diddly squat – a phrase I use instead of “sweet f a”!

We spend more time reading and creating “to do” and “step by step” lists and less time actually doing. Our outputs reduce as our reading increases. We constantly think

I must just look at this and then I will make a start tomorrow……

Do you identify with the feeling of sometimes being totally terrified?

Scared that if we pass up on the opportunity to subscribe to the latest “must read” blog, or download the latest “must apply these methods” free e-book, we are in danger of  missing out discovering the one magic ingredient that we need add to our internet recipe – the one that will make the difference betwen failure and our success? We are so frightened of failing and yet it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because we are constantly planning and never actually taking action.

So what happens?

We lose so much time, that we end up sticking to the things we know we can do quickly and that will have some positive, even if it is miniscule, effect – we publish a Squidoo lens, or a Hubpages hub or an E-Zine article. Less than half a day, it is easy peasy and we can be happy knowing we have produced an output!

And THAT is what so many of us do – we stick with an activity that we know inside out. We crouch behind the protective fences of our Comfort Zone, too scared to leave.

(Am climbing down off my soapbox now, before I have a dizzy spell and fall off it!)

Last week I left  my Comfort Zone!

Last week I did something I have not done before on Squidoo – I made a lens for the sole purpose of promoting a new niche blog. The lens Year of the Tiger Tattoos is in the rim of a Link Wheel and the hub of the wheel is the new blog, called errrr . . . .  Year of the Tiger Tattoos.

The thinking behind the Link Wheel is set out in a series of posts in Blogging for Profit on my Always Juggling blog. However the principles can be applied to any micro-niche blog, no matter where it is hosted, including here on Squidlog. I will also be applying what I have learned as I develop my websites, which are hosted by Squidster on SEO Praxis.

I am just wondering who is up for trying out establishing some Link Wheels on here, with your own Squidlog micro-niche blog at the center?

On Tuesday 02 March I will be on Giant Squid Open Mike with Drifter0658 and we will be discussing Link Wheels and taking questions from the GSOM Chat Room. Show is for 30 minutes and starts at 5pm EST, which is 10pm AJT – which is also GMT

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AJ is musing about thinking “outside the lens”. My post is late this week because I accepted an offer I just could not refuse but it got me thinking…..

Yep, I do a lot of thinking, alone here in my ivory tower, across the water from a lot of my on-line friends, in a very lovely part of England. And this week my brain is buzzing. Eighteen months on Squidoo and still learning all the time about this online stuff and still hoping to turn my writing into an income. Which I am doing, oh ever so slowly but the way forward is becoming more clear!

The offer I could not refuse came from one of my online buddies, Drifter, but it is not the offer I am going to talk about as I do that on my blog Always Juggling. And Alex and I will be discussing what we are doing live on Giant Squid Open Mike on 02 March, 5pm EST, in a program called “Blogging for Profit”.

What I AM going to do on here is get you thinking about something that I have been pondering these past few weeks.

All over Squidooland there’s blogs, forums, Nings and networks that provide help for Squidoo Lensmasters. People share information, they post links to their lenses and it seems to me that supporting each other is frequently focussed on increasing lensrank. The networks start out as sharing and teaching communities but how many people join them because of what the network might do for them, rather than what they can contribute to helping their fellow members?

If I asked you what ONE thing would help you in your online endeavours, what would your immediate answer be?

• Would it be increased traffic to your lenses?
• More Blessings from Squidoo Angels?
• Would it be to always have someone instantly available to answer your questions about Lenscrafting?
• Anything else to do with Squidoo?

But are we in danger of focussing too much on Lensrank? What about all the other pieces of the Internet Marketing puzzle that our lenses are only a small part of?

Currently I am seeing many threads on the SquidU Forum devoted to Lens promotion to the extent that folks are in danger of obsessing over Lensrank and are perhaps missing a crucial point. Which is that 2,000 lenses fighting for the Tier 1 payouts on a site that has over 1,000,000 lenses means that the amount of work it can take to keep a lens in the Top Tier can be hugely disproportionate to the financial benefits.

Getting back to my original question……

Do you believe that the best help you can get is something that focuses on helping you with Lensrank? Perhaps you should be thinking more “outside the box” – or in this case “outside the lens”?

So I guess the point of this post is to try to get you thinking outside the Comfort Zone of Squidoo. Don’t focus exclusively on your lenses. Think about how they should be just a small part of your online activities.

Is it time to spread your wings? I am spreading mine

In the last three weeks I have set up two websites (hosted by Squidster’s SEO Praxis) and a micro-niche blog plus I have finally published my first hub on Hubpages! More micro-niche blogs will follow. I will still be publishing lenses on Squidoo but they are just a small part of my planned Internet Mix.

I am not flying yet, but I am flexing those flight muscles. I’ll keep you posted!

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AJ is Musing about how we can lose friends fast if we embark on a campaign of Self Adulation when we thought what we were doing was Self Promotion

OK I admit it, I was struggling for a topic for this week’s article and then my daily feed from Copyblogger dropped into my in box. Thanks to a recommendation from Drifter, Copyblogger is one of the very few blogs that I try to keep up with on a daily basis and it is one that I would recommend to anyone. But I digress….

Today’s Copyblogger post is The Art of Shameless Self Promotion and it helps us distinguish between a perfectly acceptable behaviour on the net and one that will earn the disdain of our intended audience very quickly.

Nathan Hagan defines Self Promotion as:

the art of spreading ideas, concepts, and a greater vision

Self-adulation is

just the promotion of accomplishments, deeds that have already been done

By promoting ideas, especially if they are something that will benefit people in general and not necessarily just yourself, you are giving others something to cheer for. It is ideas that inspire not achievements.

There is a great comment on the blog:

Self-promotion vs. self-adulation is like self-belief vs. arrogance. The former is about your positive place in the world, and the latter is simply about you

Yep, that sums it up very succinctly!

So when trying to promote a new concept or idea in some of the great debates and discussions about Squidoo, no one needs to try to establish their credentials by highlighting their own achievements on Squidoo – we can check out their Bios if we want the details! All it will do is turn people off to the message, because they may just assume that the message is actually all about building the “Kingdom of Me”!

The Art of Shameless Self Promotion also gives tips on how to create a Self Promotion Platform – go check it out. It makes for very interesting and thought provoking reading.

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This week AJ is taking a short break from musing about Squidoo Etiquette and Netiquette to say a very personal thankyou to the person who keeps Squidlog running for the benefit of so many people.

Last week, following the publication of Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin” and a related Squidoo Co-brand template, Bonnie (Lensmaster bdkz) suggested to RocketMoms on Squidoo that we make a Linchpin lens to acknowledge some very important people in our lives. I can think of many Linchpins on Squidoo – Megan Casey and of course Seth Godin himself are ones who come immediately to mind and I am sure we all have others we could nominate.

For me they include several well known Lensmasters, such as MiMi who was the driving force behind Squidoo Step by Step and Joan Adams who is very good at keeping me sane, with her wonderful “wicked” sense of humour and her down to earth advice. I would love to make a Linchpin lens about my husband, but my need to remain anonymous means that I cannot at this point in time.

However, in the end I chose to make my very first Linchpin lens about the one person without whom Squidlog could not exist: Squidster. The timing is also appropriate coming up to Squidlog’s first anniversary and Squidster’s birthday, which is 1st March.

I am so happy and proud that Squidster is one of my Squidpals. She epitomises everything I love about the Squidoo Family. Squid Giant, former Squidoo Angel and Purple Star winner, Squidster gives so much to help people and make Squidoo and Squidlog the great community that they are.

Squidster and I don’t exchange emails on a frequent basis, but we do stay in touch and although we are very different personalities, we do have a lot in common. Squidster has a great sense of humour and I know we make each other laugh from time to time.

My lens: Linchpin Squidster needs more work on it and I will add to it, but it is just my way of acknowledging the huge (and indispensible) role Squidster plays on Squidlog and I hope you will join with me in saying thank you, either here in the Guestbook below or on the lens.

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Visit the Squidoo Top 100 and you will always see some recipe lenses. Do a search for a specific recipe on Squidoo and I bet you will nearly always find it. Recipes are popular on Squidoo but are they always what they seem?

There seems to be some confusion among Squidoo Lensmasters about what does and not constitute plagiarism and copyright violations as far as recipes are concerned. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I am sure that “someone” told me once that there is no copyright on a list of ingredients but you cannot legally copy a method on to a website or Squidoo lens and it is best to write it all in your own words.

Clearly, not all Lensmasters re-write the methods, as I have seen many a recipe lens where I have copied and pasted content  into a Google search box and the ingredients and method appear all over the internet. This may lead some Lensmasters to believe that because a recipe IS all over the internet, then no one owns the rights to it and they can reproduce it word for word on a lens.

Hmmm….I would be VERY careful if the sites owned by Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver are listing those recipes!

So what DOES the law say?

In an attempt to clarify the situation, I did what I always do when some serious Squidoo research is required and I posted a question at the SquidU forum. I asked what people thought and had some very interesting responses.

Leanne Chesser did some digging around (thanks Leanne) at the US  Copyright Office Website (on recipes), where she found:

“Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds, or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, when a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection.

Protection under the copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code, section 102) extends only to ‘original works of authorship’ that are fixed in a tangible form (a copy). ‘Original’ means merely that the author produced the work by his own intellectual effort, as distinguished from copying an existing work. Copyright protection may extend to a description, explanation, or illustration, assuming that the requirements of the copyright law are met.”

So we are taking that to mean that what I said earlier is the case. Re-write “the substantial literary expression” (the method) in your own words.

BUT…

I think what upsets people more than anything is if no acknowledgment of the source is cited on the Lens. By not acknowledging the source, the impression is given that it is your own original recipe and that is where accusations of deceit and *gasp* even plagiarism could be made.

As far as the Squidoo TOS are concerned, breaches of copyright remain the responsibility of the individual Lensmasters as they retain ownership of the content of their lenses. However, Plagiarism is a clear Squidoo TOS violation, can be reported and can result in your lens being locked. (For a great lens about Plagiarism, visit Susanna Duffy’s lens: What is Plagiarism?)

And what about those recipes that are handed down through the generations?

My Bread Sauce recipe, is a very old traditional recipe, which my Father uses and which my Grandmother taught him. I think the first time it was written down was when I made the lens on which it is featured.

My Dad also taught me the art of making perfect gravy but it was Delia Smith, a well known English TV Chef, who gave me the idea to add red wine to it. (Dad hates red wine, so he would never have thought of that!) So I make sure that Delia is credited on the Lens and of course that provides me with some material for an Amazon module!

Lensmaster Lou16 makes a very interesting contribution to the discussion, when she says:

“Some people who publish recipes don’t even realize that they were originally in printed form……I have a recipe that I was going to publish, but hadn’t got around to. It was written down on a piece of paper by my hubby’s great aunt and she was ‘famous’ in his hometown for it, I had planned to put in a little anecdote about her and include the recipe – lucky I didn’t because earlier this year I was looking through an old recipe book and there it was – word for word! Who knows if someone else took Loma’s recipe or if she copied it off of them?”

I am thinking though that Lou can still make the lens. She should scan the ingredients list from the recipe and use it as an illustration on the lens and tell the story she told us. Lou should link to or credit the original recipe book and make sure she describes the method differently.

For me the best recipe lenses are ones that tell a personal story. They say who taught the cook to make the dish. Was it passed down from Grandmothers and Mothers or Dads like mine was? We really do want to know!

Kate Phizackerly makes a cautionary comment:

“People might wish to reflect on the fact that copyright works both ways. If recipes cannot be copyrighted, then recipes in a lens aren’t copyright either so it’s OK for people to lift those recipes for their own lens. It means the success of recipe lenses comes down very much to the SEO ability of lensmasters.”

Kate has a good point, but I actually think it is not just good SEO that makes Squidoo recipe lenses successful. The difference between the best Squidoo recipe lenses and the ones you find on sites all over the internet, is that many tell a story. There’s also some very active Squidoo Recipe Groups and Blogs, that help promote high standards of recipe lenses on Squidoo. Giant Squid Organiser Robin (Lensmaster rms) runs Cabaret Squidoo, Correen (Lensamster Clouda9) has started up a Squidlog Blog:  Squidoo Chefmasters and of course the most well known Chef of all on Squidoo is Chef Keem who invented the famous Sea Salt Caramel Truffles.

Good recipe lens etiquette

Recipe lenses can contribute to your family history, like many lenses you publish, you are leaving what could turn out to be quite a legacy. So surely it is far better to be honest rather than create the impression that you are coming up with original recipes?

And do remember, just a quick “ctrl + C” (copy) and a quick “ctrl + V” (paste) into a Google search box could return thousands of websites with that very exact same recipe featured and you are rumbled!

If the recipe was handed down, then say so. If you don’t know the original source, then say that as well. It seems to me that in the interests of openness and transparency, it makes sense to cite your sources on all recipe lenses.

Or should that be cite your sauces

Featured image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

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