Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveler’s Journal  (May 5, 2007) was my first lens, created the day I joined. It’s my baby, and I’m so proud of it!

What This Lens Is About

The beginning of my Greece travelogue, this lens covers my first night and day puttering around Athens. Between Orthodox Easter and an encounter with a very surprising group of musicians, I was pretty busy!

Excerpt

“At the floor-length window of a tiny room, I sit late in the night in the glow of the Acropolis. The fireworks that sprinkled the city are over. Gunfire and the sound of Greek Orthodox hymns have died away. The city is very quiet, although I still hear a few glad voices, the swish of a car below, and the soft squeak of bats.”

Why I Made This Lens

This lens is why I came to Squidoo: to find a place to share my Greece travel diary, and to promote items from my It’s All Greek to Me! Cafepress shop using my Greece photos. I had tried doing it as a blog, but the tools Squidoo offered made it easier to integrate photos, links, and book recommendations.

Related Lenses:

This is a whole series of lenses. To date, there’s:

• Part One: Arrival
• Part Two: The Acropolis of Athens
• Part Two B: Museums of Athens
• Part Three: Eleusis, Demeter and Persephone
• Part Four: The Temple of Apollo at Delphi
• Part Five: The Citadel of Mycenae
• Part Six: The Palace of Tiryns
• Part Seven: The Sanctuary of Epidaurus
• Ancient Greece Odyssey Updates Blog

What I Learned Making This Lens

• On long articles, mix in images, link lists and other kinds of modules so it’s not Wall o’ Text
• Host pictures on your own website, then use HTML and CSS to place them
• How to start a paragraph with a big fancy capital letter
• Edit, edit, edit. Long articles must be very well-written to hold readers’ attention.
• Promoting the lens on travel blog related websites and forums.

What I Didn’t Learn Making This Lens

• Keyword research and search engine optimization. I’ve had to do it retroactively.
• Include a text description of each image as an alt tag to drive web traffic.
• Brevity. I crammed a LOT into this lens. I’ve actually trimmed out many modules, and it’s still long.
• Be sparing with merchant modules. I’ve taken out a lot of them, and/or focused on a few products instead of 5 per module. They made the lens too long.

Squidoo Stats and Milestones

As of today: Lensrank #155, 202 ratings, 54 favorites, 19361 lifetime visitors
Best lensrank achieved: #3  Earnings May ’07-Oct ’09: $135.45

Reviews and Awards

Ancient Greece Odyssey was nominated by Gabi for Lens of the Day on May 17, less than two weeks after it went live. It’s also won 5th place runner-up for Lens of the Year 2007, and Best Travel Lens of 2008. Seth Godin mentioned Ancient Greece Odyssey in the SquidBlog as an example of a good lens.

Link: Ancient Greece Odyssey