Updating and watching the stats

Last night I got my dealer's confirmation letter for Dragon*Con, which reminded me it was time to update my Dragon*Con page on Squidoo. I'd noticed it slowly creeping up in the rankings this month, which meant now that the holidays are past folks are starting to think and plan for this year's conventions again.

I had been disappointed the lens didn't even break into Tier 2 last year (it got close in August and September, as one might expect), so I'm hoping continued tweaks and updates, now that the lens is a bit "seasoned", will help this year. I think I still need to add some more click-outs perhaps to good convention reports from the past and the like. But I'm going to watch the search phrase traffic for a while and see what's really leading them in.

I also discovered one bone-headed mistake which was probably not helping - my primary tag had a spelling mistake! D'oh!!! This is why one can never just make a lens and forget about it - there's always SOMETHING you'll find a month (or more) down the line that needs to be fixed or improved upon...

Sigh...

You know, I do like heading to the Squidoo Critique Me board and trying to help out new lensmasters when I can. I got a lot of good advice there when I was starting out, not just on my own lenses but in reading the advice being given to others.

I'm just getting so, so frustrated that I feel like I just need a "script" to keep explaining to newbies that

- No, you CAN'T just copy and paste text from other websites such as wikipedia and
- No, just because you found an image on Facebook/Google search/any other website that it's free for you to use.

Yes, it makes building lenses harder because *GASP!* you might actually have to do some work! You know, like WRITE YOUR OWN TEXT. TAKE YOUR OWN PHOTOGRAPHS. Spend a few minutes LOOKING for images that ARE free for commercial use.

The kicker is really when someone link-drops into one of my guestbooks - with a lens that's completely full of stolen text and images. I'll give someone who posts to Critique Me! some time to learn and adjust their lenses before reporting to abuse. But if you're spamming me AND your lens is clearly violating the TOS in multiple ways? Then reporting I will do.

Because competition for Tier payment is stiff enough these days. Top tier payments should not be going to lazy thieves, I don't care how much you whine about how "other people are doing it".