Yes, seriously, I am having fun. I haven’t been this motivated since a long while. All these new and upcoming Squidoo filters have been the kick in the behind I needed to do spring clean. I haven’t been hit yet (either on newly published lenses or on updated lenses) but it is coming sometime next week since I am a giant squid.

Another thing that makes me happy, is to see accounts and lenses many of us have been reporting for ages being locked up. I am not talking about thin shopping lenses (they were never, until now, against TOS), I am talking about utter crap (think TOS violation, stolen artwork, duplicate content) AND accounts that use automated script to update hundreds of lenses daily, to auto like hundreds of lenses daily and to bless any crap under the sun. A few angels have lost their wings (better late than never) but still some continues their highly dubious activities. I really wish to know how less than  35 visits a week can get and maintain tiers one ranking (we are talking LR around 1200 here)…..I hardly keep mine with regular sales and hundreds of visits.

So while some forums, IM and spammers are going on about the upcoming “end of squidoo”, I am  working on my lense before the filter hit. I have already salvage what I am sure would have been caught by the filter, but I have still a few more that are 100% “filter attractive” and I am working on them this weekend. Then after that, I’ll let the filter do its thing and see what needs to be done, and what it wants exactly.

I haven’t moved content yet, although I have a few little pieces of content here and there that didn’t fit the new Frankenstein lenses (see yesterdays post “What Are You Doing With Your Thin Squidoo Lenses“) that I have kept and will use elsewhere.

Here’s 2 new lenses made out of various thin lenses: Diamond Gifts and Tahitian Pearl Jewelry.These 2 are the result of combining 8 thin lenses.

Finally Squidoo has decided to clean the Augean stables. In a series of announcements, Squidoo let its members know that things that were tolerated are now no longer welcome. Among the most welcome changes is the new coloring page “squidDon’t” status and the removal of thin lenses and heavy affiliate lenses. The new Squidoo filters haven’t yet hit the giants, but I am tidying up my account anyway. Then when the filter hit, I’ll deal with what is problematic.

Right now I am doing three main things:

1-Delete lenses: I don’t plan on deleting much lenses, but I have trashed my 2 squidoo angel related lenses (time sink, useless and I haven’t paid attention to them since I made them over 2 years ago). I also trashed my photography lens, that was nothing more than a couple of pics and nothing else. Some of my photography can be see on Redgage anyway so this lens was pointless and uninteresting. I also deleted some lenses that I combined together (see point 2)

2- Combine thin lenses together: obviously, it’s not something that can be done with every single thin lenses but it’s a was to save your content and make a nice page. I did this Affordable US Silver Coins page combining 3 thin coin collecting lenses and I added the content of three lenses to this already existing lens: Jewelry With Cats

3- Regular update of top performing lenses: replace products if needed, add new interesting products, correct grammatical errors (this one is a never ending task for me since English is not my native language). While doing this I will also do two things: if I feel it’s “overly commercial” I will remove a few products to balance the content/product ration. I will be even more picky at selecting products as well. If it’s not a real 100%¨sale lens, I’ll still make sure to have description in both part of the amazon modules. Here’s my Greek Mythology Creatures Coloring Pages updated. If you want to know what type of coloring pages are acceptable, this one is. i contacted Bonnie and her response was “Hi Nathalie, Your page is fine. These are not the type of coloring pages that we’re locking. Thanks”

Other little adjustments I have been doing includes the removal of the buy/check price buttons on my own affiliate boxes and also I have changed some of my own Amazon affiliate links to Squidoo modules when I felt I had too many.

Obviously right now I am driving blind, but I don’t think I am wasting my time. The lenses that I removed or combined where a shame anyway and it the long run It will help me and squidoo.

Are you doing anything special while waiting for the filter to hit you?