I originally created my Photos of Ancient Athens as an index to my Ancient Greece Odyssey travel diary on May 7, 2007.

What This Lens is About

It’s an index to all my photos of ancient Athens — monuments and Greek art — plus recommended books and links on ancient Greece.

Excerpt

Temple of Hephaistos in Athenian Agora. 1st May.

Why I Made This Lens

Originally, I was thinking of Ancient Greece Odyssey as if it were an online e-book. Books should have indexes! So I made this lens as an index to help people find every single photo, recommended link and bit of info across all my Ancient Greece Odyssey series of lenses.

Things I Learned Making This Lens

It is too hard to make an index of an online e-book as a Squidoo lens. It’s too much material on one webpage. Lenses need FOCUS. So I stopped keeping this lens updated.

Today I finally tackled this problem lens. I had three choices:

• I could delete it as a failure.
• I could turn this lens into a table of contents to all of Ancient Greece Odyssey, so that it became a lensography for my Greece lenses.
• I could reorganize the content I wrote on this lens to make it more focused.

Deleting a lens is almost never useful. There’s always the possibility it could get some traffic and earn a few pennies. In fact, according to the stats tab on the dashboard, this lens draws a lot of traffic — through image searches! People come to this lens for its photos.

I realized that if I deleted the long list of photos and turned this lens into a lensography, I’d lose all that image traffic. Instead, I reworked the lens to focus on the content that’s bringing traffic.

I added alt names to each image to help boost traffic/SEO. I put them in a more logical order. And I made them into clickable links — if someone clicks on them, they get full-sized versions of each photo. Why? Clicks boost lensrank! Plus the links include the filenames of the images, which means more SEO-boosting content.

I also made the decision to license my photos through Creative Commons for non-commercial purposes, on the condition that people link to the front page of Ancient Greece Odyssey if they use any photo. Why? Backlinks boost search engine standings. Offering images for Creative Commons is one way to get people to make backlinks to your site.

So what did I learn? Image-heavy lenses draw a HUGE amount of image traffic. If you have photos, exploit them. They’re original content, just as much as text!  NAME your photos with keywords, give them alt-tags, and you will get image search traffic! Need help? See my How to Upload Images on Squidoo tutorial for more info.

Related Lenses (Ancient Greece Odyssey)

• Part One: Arrival in Athens
• 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

Lens Stats and Milestones

As of today: Lensrank #28,695 2 ratings, 1 favorites, 4430 lifetime visitors.
Best lensrank achieved: #3063. Lifetime earnings: $7.81+ some sales of designs.

Link: Photos of Ancient Athens

OOPS! Now that I look, Yes, I Love My Hybrid Car may actually have been my first lens… I’d lost track! They were both started on May 4, 2007, but it looks like Greece Odyssey went “live” on May 5th.

This is not the most successful or fabulous lens, but I’ve decided that sharing less-successful lenses may help readers, too! It is third tier.

What This Lens is About

My ’04 Toyota Prius. I share details like honest-to-gosh mileage, how it feels to drive a hybrid car. (At the time, hybrid cars were still relatively rare.) I wrote a funny list: “You May Be a Hybrid Car Addict If…”

Excerpt

• Real honest-to-gosh mileage: About 40-42 mpg.
• Tank is about 10 gallons, and I usually go about 370-400 miles on it.
• Handling and pickup comparable to a well-maintained Corolla or Camry. Switch between electric and gas feels like changing gears in automatic transmission…

Why I Made This Lens

I think I started with this one to familiarize myself with Squidoo before launching my Squidoo magnum opus. Also, this is one of my few lenses that actually tries to sell something: a cute “Yes, I love my hybrid car” t-shirt / tote bag / bumper sticker design,  and another one I added later, “My Hybrid Kicks Gas.”

Things I Learned Making This Lens

• How to use Squidoo
• How to add a Cafepress module
• To promote a shop, write an article on a related topic
• Adding funny lists holds reader interest
• Use a catchy title that also includes a keyword
• I promoted the lens by joining some hybrid car enthusiast boards and adding the link in my sig.

Things I DIDN’T Learn Making This Lens

• Introduction should be brief and target keywords.
• Include graphics of any design you’re selling!
• Stay focused on topic (I’ve had to tighten it up a lot)
• Use keyword research and SEO to pick a search phrase (I just guessed what people might search for)
• Use keywords in the URL as well as the page title.

Related Lenses

Convert Your Prius to a Plug-in Hybrid

Lens Stats and Milestones

As of today: Lensrank #16,168, 34 ratings, 13 favorites, 1556 lifetime visitors.
Best lensrank achieved: #290. Lifetime earnings: $41.59 + some sales of designs.

Link: Yes, I Love My Hybrid Car