Squidlog.net

Too Cold for the Beach

For many of us, including myself, winter is a tough time of year.  The incessant frigid cold weather is taxing on our bodies as well as on our psyches, making it even harder to just get out of bed.  Then we have to go and put on several layers of clothes, and a coat over that just to leave the house.

January, too, can be a depressing letdown after the huge buildup to the Christmas holiday season, especially if you earn money from sales during the holidays.  All of the energy that you expended leading up to the holidays, takes its toll in January.

And you are not the only one.  Many people take a few weeks to recover from the holidays, often making January a sluggish sales month.

However, if you are goal oriented and smart, January and February are a huge opportunity to build up your resources, lenses, blogs, and other online money earning accounts while you are inside next to the fireplace. (Make sure to stay far enough away to keep your laptop cool.)  If you spend the first few weeks of the year strategizing your year, and writing your articles, lenses, and blog posts 4 to 5 months before they need to produce, you will allow your work to percolate, and gain authority and backlinks in time for real money to be made.

Visualize yourself on the beach this summer, while your summer travel lenses are making you money while you are sunbathing.  Summer travel lenses that you wrote in February, I might add.  This is just an example of course, as you can come up with numerous topics to write about for every season of the year.

My point is really two points.  One–take advantage of the slow time to rev up your income earning potential by writing, backlinking, and writing some more.  Two–write your articles way ahead of the time they are apropos to allow them to mature so that the right people read them when they are ready to buy.  In other words, plan ahead.

I started as a Squidoo lensmaster in June of 2008, and it is only in the last six months or so that I realized the value of time in the online money making equation.  The longer you stick with it, the more you write, and the more good sites you write on (including your own blogs), the more you get noticed, followed, fanned, the more income you will make.  Each item you create adds to your repertoire or resume, just like any other type of work that you do.  Even more so, if you link the items together in a network.

So let your space heater run next to your feet, and the cold wind blow, while you create income for yourself that will pay off in the next few months.

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Chef Keem's Expresso Sea Salt Caramel Truffles

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?)

Making peach cobbler - another great recipe lens from Chef Keem

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.

Chef Keem's Tres Leches Coconut Macaroons

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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By now I hope you have polished off the last remnants of your holiday leftovers. If not, I strongly urge you to dispose of them safely before they turn into a bio hazard.

With the last slices of honeybaked ham out of the way I would like to direct your attention to a few happenings here at SquidLog.

The Squidoo Lens Directory Project

Squidoo Lens Directory

That’s right, another opportunity to submit your lenses and brag all you want about them. The Squidoo Lens Directory is still somewhat a work in progress as you will quickly see, but if you’re eager to grab a few backlinks it is now open to all self-respecting lensmasters. It is called a project because I was hoping to drum up some support from the SquidLog community for setting up a deep category structure, and also to review lens submissions for minimum standard compliance and then approve the goodies. So far the response has been, um, underwhelming, but okay, it was a busy time of year.

We all know what happens if anyone can submit anything to a link directory, so yes, every submission needs to be briefly reviewed and manually approved. Otherwise it won’t be of any value for any of us. If there are no takers for the position of co-editor it may take me as long as dmoz to actually publish those links to the directory.

Find A Link – Share A Link

Links Widget

We’re trying out a new way to share your groovy web finds with the rest of the SquidLog community through the new Link feature in your member profile. You can link to web pages, documents and even embed videos. Your shares will appear in the activity stream and will remain accessible through your profile, but there’s a lot more cool stuff to those links-on-steroids. For example…

• You can add an image and a description to each link.
• You decide who gets to see it: everybody, just your friends, or only you.
• We can all vote on that sucker (shared links only). If it gets too many thumbs down we might just vote it off the stage altogether.
• The link gets its own profile page where we can comment on it, send it fan mail, whatever. You get to keep the admin key for that link profile page.
• Links can be categorized and sorted by all kinds of criteria on the common link page. (No, this is different from the Squidoo Lens Directory mentioned above. This one is part of the main SquidLog site.)

The latest additions also get featured in a widget on the front page. Please do take that split second to give them a quick thumbs up or down. Won’t be much fun otherwise. If y’all like it we might move the link stream onto the main column on the left.

I thought that’s all pretty neat, at least in theory. We’ll see how it goes…

More Perks For Authors

In an effort to give more recognition to the awesome authors who continue to contribute to the main SquidLog blog we are trying out a simple revenue sharing model. Advertisements which we display on the individual post page will include the author’s affiliate ID 80% of the time, should the author choose to participate. We also now display an info box (again) about the author on every one of their posts. If you are an author, you can customize your bio in the dashboard of the main blog, under Users > Your Profile.

If you are not yet a member of the elite “SquidLog Authors Guild” but would like to be one then please come forward. Good authors are hard to come by these days, what with all the blogs and lenses we have to write and other business ventures we need to pursue. Fame and Fortune await those who care and dare to share! (results not typical – your mileage may vary)

Assisted Hosting Services

Last, and very least, I am pleased to announce that yours truly is now offering Assisted Blog Hosting to those who have been on the fence about getting their own website. If one of your New Year’s resolutions include “get my own domain and host my own blog” but are not quite sure how to go about it, help is near. For about the same cost of a hosting plan from “the big guys” you will also get my personal attention and assistance in setting everything up and ready for action. Contact me if you’d like to discuss this, or learn more at SEO Praxis. </shameless plug>

We know you have *many* choices for engaging in online distractions, and we thank your for investing some of your precious time so wisely here.

TS5R9AFV7QW9

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Montville, Queensland - Overlooking the Sunshine Coast

This is the time for great holiday pictures so why not start to think in terms of creating videos from your digital photos?

Content creation for social media marketing is becoming increasingly important and videos are a key element in content creation.  They are great for livening up your Squidoo lenses.

If you have any doubts about the power of video marketing, check out these January 2009 stats (yes one month only!) from ComScore:

Since August 2008, I have been using Animoto as a way of turning my digital photos into video.   It’s easy, fun and rewarding.  You can upload the resultant animated, music video to YouTube and then insert it into your lens via a YouTube module (my preferred way because of the PR9 backlink created).

I have created a Squidoo lens that displays my Animoto videos and explains the four basic steps involved in making videos from your digital photos.

The Squidoo lens includes the latest video that I developed from a recent weekend stay at the Montville mountain village on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.  Montville overlooks the beaches at Noosa, Maroochydore and Caloundra:

Promo videos: easy way to create promotional videos from photos

Animoto has a number of levels of membership. You can make as many short videos (less than 30 secs) as you want. Alternatively, you can get an All-Access Pass (discount link) which lets you make as many movies as you want of any length.

There are also business level memberships where the videos are being used for purely commercial purposes.

A cool feature of Animoto videos is that you can make a DVD quality version of your video for a small fee. Then you can burn it on a CD and send it to friends or family.

I have just listened to a webinar on video marketing by Pam Brossman which was superb.  You can access her website here for heaps of resources on video marketing:

http://www.profitablesocialmarketing.com/

Pam recommends Animoto and Camtasia (free version) for video production and highlights the value of the free (and superb) video distribution service, TubeMogul:

http://tubemogul.com/

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As many of you know, I have been dabbling with Hubpages in the last 6 months, and in that time period, I have learned some valuable lessons that I am going to apply to my Squidoo lenses going forward, and looking back on my older lenses as I refresh and revise them.

For those of you that do not have a Hubpages account, Hubpages is an article writing site, however, it is much more streamlined and pared down compared to Squidoo. Because Hubpages is more basic, however, the author is required to really hone their craft to do well.

Writing on Hubpages, reminded me that I had been sidetracked by all the bells and whistles on Squidoo, and had sometimes let that get in the way of writing a strong keyword rich, traffic stopping article that would look good to Google and other search engines.

So since I find myself in this position, I thought these lessons might apply to some of you as well, and I will share them with you.

1. An article gets better Google traffic if it is at least 800 words.
2. Pictures are great but they do not take the place of text.
3. Most readers come to your article in search of information. If there is too much other stuff in the way, they will not stay.
4. Items you sell on your article need to be directly related to the topic of the article for successful selling.
5. If you are selling an item, and that is your purpose, then take every opportunity to sell that item. Don’t beat around the bush.
6. There is nothing wrong with trying to make money. We all need to eat.

For those of us on Squidoo that have gotten excited about all the great new modules and features, but have forgotten to write enough text to attract readers and Google (and I include myself in this group), go back to your lenses and make sure that you have at least 800 words of keyword rich text to go with everything else.

Lenses that are all pictures are beautiful but they won’t attract Google, and they won’t attract a lot of readers. Also pictures need to have their alternative text filled in to get any attention on Google.

And there is no reason to feel ashamed that you want to earn money with your lenses. I am not against charities. As a matter of fact, I think giving to worthwhile charities is great. But in order for us to help others, we also need to make enough money to help ourselves. Wanting to earn a living wage online is not a bad thing, and it can be done. And I mean a living wage, one that we can actually live on.

Sometimes I think that some people in the Squidoo community do not realize that many of us are trying to earn a living online, to pay for basic needs like food. In my case, I am working to support a local gallery. And that is a worthwhile goal.

What I am suggesting is that we all go back to the basics in 2010. Don’t worry so much about the color of your text, and the look of your lens. Spend your time working on making a keyword rich, focused lens that will catch the eye of Google, and bring you the right kind of traffic, people who want to read what you are writing about, and buy what you are selling.

The rest is fluff, and will not earn you money. Even if you are doing it for your favorite charity.

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