ArtByLinda – Combining Art with Squidoo

Have you tried the new SquidQuiz lenses?

Oh my gosh, they are a lot of fun. I have been visiting a lot of different ones and really enjoy taking the quizzes and testing my knowledge.

I decided to create one and had so much fun with it.

How well do you know your Dog Breeds?

So you think you know your dog breeds pretty well do you?

This test will challenge even the best of you!

Do not get too confident, it gets a bit harder as you continue on!

Can you tell a Dalmatian
from a Shih tzu?

Test your dog breed knowledge, or your multiple choice skills.

See if you are a “Hot Dog”!

Take my Dog Breed Quiz and test your skills, Best of luck, and have fun.

Have you noticed how quiet it has been in here lately?

LOL, yes I have been so busy with this awesome new website that I finally decided was just too good not to share it with my friends here on Squidtop!

It is called RedGage.

It is Viral, and I created a website called RedGage Rocks on Squidoo that has some great information on just why it is becoming more and more popular everyday.

I will tell you a secret, so far in a little over a month I have made over $463.00. I got lucky and won the $400.00 montly raffle for July, but the other money has come just from the content I have uploaded. 4 of my photographs have been chose to be featured, which pays almost $5.00 everytime they choose to feature one of your uploads.

Worth checking out? You be the judge!

When the ghosts and goblins come out to play, these adorable dog costumes will brings smiles and laughter to many.

These are our favorite dog costumes, for you to view.

Please always be sure that your dog is a willing participant any time you choose to put a costume on. Some dogs love it, some may not!

Be Safe and Happy Halloween!

I discovered a great new website, I have been checking out Redgage tonight, and find it really user friendly. They have a unique concept. They give you points for everything you do. You earn points for adding content, photographs, videos and links. But you earn even more points…for rating and commenting on other peoples stuff.

They have a contest for July…

” For the month of July there will be a daily raffle, a weekly raffle and an end of the month raffle.

* Every day one winner will receive a $50 prize.
* Every week (Sunday night) one winner will receive a $150 a prize.
* At the end of the month one winner will receive a $400 prize.

Throughout the day you can earn points that will convert into “raffle tickets” based on your RedGage activity. At the end of the day, a computer will randomly select a raffle ticket declaring that day’s winner. ”

If any of this sounds intriguing to you check out Redgage, I’ve earned $7.34 in just four days!

You can link all your Squidoo pages there too!

This Grand Canyon photo was featured there and earned $5.34. How cool is that?

I have a secret!

Actually I am sharing my secret with the world with this lens. It is called My Secret Love.

It is a story about my first memories of seeing the Ocean for the first time. The feelings it provoked, the senses it aroused. My love of the Ocean run deep, strong and true.

Yes, you heard me right. I have been bitten by a Squid Bug! I’m not even sure why I started…

Well actually in thinking about it. I was creating some lenses to help others at Squidoo. I had made How to Find Free Photos for your lens.

Then I had been just looking around on the Giant blog and saw something about twttrlist, a new lens. I tried it and was having some trouble, tried it again the next day and could not get it to work. So I tried to find the link again, and could not remember where I saw it at. It wasn’t at the bottom of the dashboard. After a very long search I decided we need one place to go to and find all those Specialty Lenses You Can Choose From and that lens was born.

So while I was working on that lens, (which I put on the Squidoo Answer Deck so we could find it later), I wanted a special “squid” for the ebay lens. So I created one.

That is what lit my fire for making Squids!

I created a whole bunch of different character Squids, in different colors and designs. I wanted to share them with Squidoo, and this lens was born: Free Squid Images for Squidoo .

My creativity did not stop there, I became thrilled with my little Squid characters and decided to make some Squid banners:
Free Squid Banners and Dividers.

So that is how my week went, one idea inspiring another. It really had a snowball affect. Now I need to go back to work so I can get some rest! LOL

My lens My Bucket List received the famous “Purple Star” at Squidoo! I was so thrilled to see it, and then thought….

Honestly I wasn’t sure what it meant. Because it seems like forever, I have seen a purple star on the left and clicked on it and it kept telling me they were not active yet. I wasn’t sure.

So what does a Purple Star mean at Squidoo?

I clicked on the purple star and it said “Purple Star
Lucky you! You’ve landed on a certified purple star lens. This page was handpicked by Squidoo’s editors as one of the most remarkable pages on the entire site. So if you like it, “remark” on it: blog it, share it with a friend, and know you’re spreading the word about something really exceptional on the web. “

How cool it that?

Read more about Purple Stars here.

See mine and other Purple Star lenses here.

African Skies

Poster

Buy at AllPosters.com

The Dance

Think of your lens as a beautiful dance between you, the writer and creator of the content and your audience, the reader and end user. A dance should be done with a certain grace and ease. There should never be any awkwardness felt by either party. Both dancers should feel the excitement as they move together, and leave them breathless with hearts beating, a feeling of being alive at the end of the dance. Always grateful to have danced together, and hoping to someday dance again.

So how do you build a lens or website that will excite your passion, as well as your readers?

Read on and we will begin the journey my friend…

The rest of the story…

Hidden Depths

Poster

Buy at AllPosters.com

You’ve heard the old proverb “Don’t judge a book by its cover” many times I’m sure. But do you ever find yourself surprised at the hidden depths you find within others.

There have been many occasions when I thought I knew someone, and find myself pleasantly surprised when I find that hidden “treasure” within them.

Someone that may seem hardened and cynical or shallow. Then you find out that they volunteer to help children to read in their spare time away from work.

Maybe you are talking with someone who is normally quiet and reserved, socially very shy and suddenly the subject touches on their passion, art, gardening, cars, their children…their eyes light up and they become almost another person as their passion for something they love. You learn so much about who they are as talk with them.

Always amazed at those moments, how they touch you and change the way you see someone else.

My final thought to leave with you is to look for that hidden treasure in others that you meet, even those people you think you may know. They may truly surprise you, and enhance your life in taking the time to get to know them for who they are.

If your not sure what I mean by this, watch the youtube video of Susan Boyle on Britain’s got talent and you will have no doubts.

Someone  had asked me on my Shih tzu Gift Store lens how successful the monetizing was on some of my gift lenses.  My answer, extremely successful, most all of my sales have been from those type of “gift lenses”. 

When I thought about creating them, my thought was…when I am shopping online, what kind of website do I want to visit?

My honest answer was, I just want to go look at the gifts, all in one place with big pictures of the items without having to click through pages and pages of items.  I don’t want to read through a bunch of information, and be “surprised” into buying something.  So I created them to be “visually appealing” with lots of Posters and Photo’s of the dogs, colorful backgrounds.  I made them so that the people visiting have no surprises, they know that it is a “gift store” and hopefully they are there to shop. 

It is a lot of work creating those type of gift lenses.  I may not enjoy making them as much as I do the informational lenses, like the five Grand Canyon Series of lenses I just created after our trip there.  But I sure do enjoy the affiliate marketing paycheck at the end of each month.  They have helped me to be able to help support my adult children who have run on some tough times in this economy.