Year End Review and Goals for 2013

Sunrise during anchor watchIt was another interesting year for Squidoo lensmasters.

The year’s events included the Flickr module fiasco; the front doors (SquidLit, etc) were retired; Kimberly left; Megan left; new magazines started (I cancelled my subscriptions to all magazines); the SquidU forum closed; a new official forum opened; the release of Squidoo Postcards (still don’t get the purpose of them); the ill timed and poorly communicated (but good for the long term) responsive redesign; and tier payments continued to grow (the tier 1 payout for December 2012 was nearly 50% higher than December 2011’s payout!).

How did I do on Squidoo this year? I missed every one of my goals for 2012.

New Lenses – Only 4 new lenses launched this year, including my 100th published lens. I used most of my Squidoo time for maintaining existing lenses, stats analysis, reading forum posts, a few blog posts and repairing lenses after the Flickr fiasco (still plenty of work to do there).

Revenue – My Squidoo payouts grew 18% over last year thanks to a mix of higher tier payouts and increased sales. Revenue growth was trending higher, but several lenses that normally get to tier 1 or 2 had weak lensranks in the last half of the year. In the last two months of 2012, only one of my lenses made tier 1. Other affiliate income from my lenses grew 4.5%.

Blog Activity – Only 9 (including this one) posts made this year.

So my goals for 2013 will be a repeat of 2012’s…but with a strategy for better execution.

1. Have at least 120 published lenses by end of the year.
Four new lenses in one year was inexcusable. New lenses will be a higher priority for my limited Squidoo time in 2013.

2. Grow Squidoo revenue by at least 50 percent over last year.
Relying on old lenses to repeat past lensrank and tier earnings performance isn’t a viable long term strategy. New lenses and sales performance are the key focus areas. I also want to increase other affiliate income by 50% but 25% may be more realistic.

3. Maintain a consistent posting schedule on Lens Harbor.
Two posts a month minimum, not counting lens launches. I’ve done this the last two months and need to continue.

My challenge across these goals will be focusing on a specific task each time I sit down at the computer. I tried that when working on my last lens with good results, now I have to make it a habit.

Have a fun and prosperous 2013!

Image Credit: sky#walker, used under Creative Commons

Impact of the NFL Lockout on Fantasy Football Lenses

When the NFL lockout started in March, one of my first thoughts was, “great, there goes traffic to my fantasy football lenses.”  Fantasy football advice and info is one of my lens niches.  No NFL season means no fantasy football season.  That means no one’s looking for fantasy draft advice or how to play fantasy football.

Thankfully, the lockout ended on July 25, and the football seasons (real and fantasy) can start on time. But what about the four months of uncertainty that kept fantasy players on the web search sidelines?  What was the real impact to my fantasy lenses?

To answer that, I compared this year’s lens stats with last year’s for April through July.  To make a fair comparison, I only looked at fantasy football lenses that were published before March, 2010, and had stats for the full sample periods.

Traffic Impact
Most of these lenses lost traffic compared to 2010 but the amount varied widely.  One lens was down 56% while another surprisingly almost doubled its traffic during the 4 months. Several lenses had single month traffic drops of 50-60%. The worst for a single month was a 76% drop. Ouch.

As a group, traffic was down 6% for April through July. That was less than I expected but does include the last week of July when traffic spiked for all of these lenses after the lockout ended.  Looking at only April through June, the total traffic was down 24%.

LensRank Impact
Nearly all of these lenses had worse monthly average lens ranks in at least 3 of the 4 months analyzed.  The one exception had improved lens rank all 4 months (but not enough to bump it into a higher tier).  Most lenses had worse lensrank in all months.

Pay Tier Impact
The impact on tiers wasn’t too bad.  Several lenses were in a worse tier than at the same time last year. That means a potential ad pool earnings loss.  None did better than last year.

It’s tough to say how much of the lensrank drain was directly due to traffic loss.  I looked at the data multiple ways and didn’t find a consistent correlation.  That’s not surprising since traffic’s only one input to Squidoo’s lensrank algorithm and there are more good lenses competing for rankings than a year ago.  I’m sure losing traffic didn’t help the lensranks.

So what’s the lesson here?
Recognize that events beyond your control could adversely impact demand for your niche topic and prepare accordingly.

The risk of this happening varies by subject.  Fantasy football is based on a real business that can have labor issues.  That makes it a riskier subject than something like Valentine’s Day.  I doubt there will be a Valentine’s Day lockout anytime soon so those lenses should be safe if you have them.

I dodged a bullet.  If the NFL owners and players had waited another week (or longer) to reach a deal, the July stats would have been worse and probably caused more lenses to end up in lower tiers than last year.