My seventh lens, Easy Kitemaking: How to Build a Pyramid Kite, was published 5/22/07. It’s one of my favorite and most successful lenses! And it may well be the OLDEST webpage on Squidoo — see below!

Note: My sixth lens, War in the 21st Century: A New (and costly) Paradigm was about the cost of the War on Terror. (I wrote it on 5/10/07. I was even more right than I knew, but it’s not a fun lens to recap.)

What This Lens is About

Easy instructions on how to build a tetrahendron-shaped kite using plastic drinking straws, kitchen twine and mylar or wrapping paper. (Wrapping tissue works great).

Why I Made This Lens

How to Build a Pyramid Kite is actually one of my oldest webpages! I first uploaded it in early 1994, when the web was a place to share free resources, research, and information– commercial use of the internet was actually illegal in the early years!  I didn’t have much to offer, but I knew how to make a kite, so I made this page. The lens still has my old graphics from my Mac LC.

I’ve added an introduction, Amazon and video modules, but the how-to part of the lens may be oldest webpage to be re-hosted on Squidoo.

Things I Learned Making This Lens

Monitor traffic stats and adjust your content to fit popular searches!

I quickly noticed a lot of students coming to my lens searching for “how to build a pyramid.”  So I added a note in the introduction telling students how to adapt my kitemaking instructions to build an Egyptian pyramid, and made them a stone-wall texture they could print out and use to wrap their “pyramid”. (Bonus — the graphic gave me more clickthroughs.)

Targeted Amazon Module

This lens seemed like one I could monetize. I am a kite connoisseur, so I gave a sincere recommendation for my favorite commercial kite, a little pocket kite that I’ve flown for years. Few of my lenses get sales, but this module does, because it’s clearly a personal recommendation of a product that the author has honest-to-gosh used.

Outdoor Products Are Seasonal

The longterm traffic stats graph for this lens is fun. There’s a Squidoo bug making my traffic stats not display properly, but you can really tell when kite-flying season is:

You’d see similar trends on beach toys and snow toys.

Things I DIDN’T Learn Making This Lens

The introduction module is a bit long. I give a little education about Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of this design) before getting to the how-to part.  I ponder deleting this, but his name attracts keyword searches. I started with a catchy phrase … “it’s a bird, it’s a plane…” which is not the most effective way to “bait” search engine results.

Also, I forgot that a pyramid isn’t really a tetrahedron. Whoops.

Lens Stats and Milestones

PURPLE STAR!

As of today: Lensrank #2,508, 15 ratings, 1 favorite, 20217 lifetime visitors.
Best lensrank achieved: #191. Lifetime earnings: $90.59

Link:

Basic Kitemaking: How to Build a Pyramid Kite