March 22, 2012

Squidoo Hop: Lensrank

Hello, and welcome fellow Squido Lensmasters! For those who aren't travelling here by blog hop and don't know what Squidoo is, it's just a place where you can make nifty little web pages about any topic you choose, and maybe earn a little money for yourself or a charity in the process.

Last week Marsha asked about how our payday was going, and that gave me and idea for a topic.

I thought maybe I'd break down my earnings and look at them. 

They stayed at around $1-5 a month (jumping to up to $20 during Nov-Dec, the holiday months) for the longest time.  But since I joined this hop, it's started to improve...and I think I know why:
  1. Other hoppers have motivated me to make more lenses and improve the ones I have.  Thanks hoppers!  
  2. Hoppers also taught me things about Squidoo which made me care about my lens-rank a lot more and get serious about improving it.
Before joining up with this hop I thought
  • Lens-rank only affected your rankings in the Squidoo lens directory
  • Lenses earned ad revenue based on how many hits they got
But thanks to fellow hoppers I now know that...
  • Lensrank DOES affect your earnings!  Squidoo takes 45% off all Ad revenue and puts it in an Ad Pool.   Ad Pool earnings are divided among lensmasters through a four-tiered system based on lensrank. The higher tier you're lens is in, the more money you get from the ad pool.  The fourth tier, the lowest one, gets nothing.   
  • Your lensrank is affected by numerous factors (including traffic, click-outs, etc.). 
So, with the four tiers in mind, lets look at my last three month's Squidoo earnings (remembering I don't have any Tier 1 Lenses).  Remember, Nov - Dec are holiday earnings, which are unusually high due to commissions from sales.  (Really unusually high...I never made over $100 before this Nov!)

JANUARY 
TOTAL:  $12.01
FROM SALES COMMISSIONS:  $0.48
  • Rock Walls for Theater - $0.48 
FROM AD POOL:  $11.49
  • TIER 2 LENSES:  $6.22  (Top Blog Giveaway Linkies)
  • TIER 3 LENSES:  $5.27 (17 lenses)

DECEMBER
TOTAL:  $111.09
FROM SALES COMMISSIONS:  $97.53
  • Texas T-Shirts - $87.83 
  • Texas Christmas Ornaments and More - $6.25
  • Rock Walls for Theater - $3.45
FROM AD POOL:  $13.57
  • TIER 2 LENSES:  $7.72  (Top Blog Giveaway Linkies)
  • TIER 3 LENSES:  $5.85 (15 lenses)

NOVEMBER
TOTAL: $122.17
FROM SALES COMMISSIONS:  $109.95
  • Texas T-Shirts - $48.35
  • California T-Shirts -  $34.25
  • Texas Christmas Ornaments and More - $27.35
FROM AD POOL:  $12:22
  • TIER 2 LENSES:  $6.97  (Top Blog Giveaway Linkies)
  • TIER 3 LENSES:  $5.25 (15 lenses) 
 _____

A note about Tier 1 lenses - since I don't have any I did a little research and found out that for  these months, Tier 1 lenses were making the following (according to Squidoo Payday Questions and Answers):

JANUARY - $40.64
DECEMBER - $45.42
NOVEMBER - $36.58

    Wouldn't it be nice to be in THAT tier? Looking January results, Tier 1 got $40.64, Tier 1 got $6.22, Tier 3 got $0.31 cents, and Tier 4 got nothing (as always).  So, having one Tier 2 lens is worth about the same as having 20 tier three lenses.  Having one Tier I lens is worth about 6.5 Tier 2 lenses, or 132 tier three lenses.  And of course, having any lenses in the top three tiers is worth more than having an infinate number of Tier 4 lenses (unless those lenses made you a commission).

    Considering that, I'm going to work on improving the lensrank on lenses that are close to the next level up.

    How do you know what Tier your lens is in?  It's based on lensrank

    Lenses 1 - 2,000 = tier 1
    Lenses 2.001 - 10,000 = tier 2
    Lenses 10,001 - 85,000 = tier 3


    But THAT isn't on an EXACT basis, I've heard.  According to this forum post, when people in the higher tiers opt out of advertising, it makes more room in those tiers.  So, for example, in Feb 2010 lenses ranking 2,256 got into Tier 1, and lenses ranking 10,983 got bumped to Tier 2. 

    While we're talking about tiers, I want to mention a concern I have about them.  Tiers are based on hard ranking, not on percentage ranking.  Since only the top 85,000 lenses get a piece of the ad pool, that means that as more and more authors contribute to Squidoo, more and more lenses will not make that cut.  I'm not the only one concerned about this.  If you're concerned about this too I hope you'll write Squidoo about this, and also vote up this suggestion on the Squidoo Wishlish lens.

    Great Lenses on Lensrank


    Posted by at
    Labels:

    1 comment:

    1. Marsha CooperMarch 22, 2012 at 7:17 PM

      I doubt I ever see a tier one lens then! I had thought under 10,000 ranking was tier one.
      I often wonder how you even keep your lenses on the board with so many building and building!
      I don't like the tiers in effect of payment. I think that any lenses that gets hit should get an even share of the ad pool---period! That would still leave the higher ranking lenses making the most but still earn some for us little folk.

      ReplyDelete

    Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)