How Was Your Week?
Despite not posting much around here, I’ve been a busy gal this week.
I’m a Squid!
I recently started posting some articles on Squidoo.com…I’m webscribbler over there. (Be sure to check out my cool articles on Hummingbirds, Dandelions and Carolina anoles – cute little green lizards that run around in the Carolinas.)
It’s a friendly community of writers and bloggers. I had looked into the site several years ago and was disappointed by the types of articles that I primarily saw. Unfortunately, there’s still too many “sales lenses” there but overall, they are getting better. And, here lately they have been making many changes to get writers to up their game. Time will tell if the changes matter to Google.
Part of what attracts me about the site is that I can write about anything without worrying whether or not it matches the topic of one of my sites. So, one day I can write about dandelions, the next day I can write about lizards and another day I can write about web stuff.
I started writing over there again to gain some quality backlinks to a few of my sites. After all, if I was doing the writing of that content, I could ensure it was something worth being linked from. Sigh, shortly after I started posting they made all of the links there ‘nofollow’ as opposed to Dofollow. I’ve seen with other nofollowed links that Google does indeed count them so hopefully all of my efforts as a Squid aren’t for naught.
Of course, the community vibe over there is anyone writing for backlinks is a dirty spammer. Shhh, don’t tell them that I’m one of those. The assumption is that anything written for backlinks must be poorly written. Obviously, that’s not always true but the long-term members of Squidoo do have a point. Of course, much of that poorly written content could easily be dealt with by simply removing it – something their terms of service does allow for.
Additionally, Squidoo is a revenue-sharing site. It provides authors of the top 85,000 or so articles a portion of the proceeds of the site. It also offers people like me, who live in idiotic tax Nexus states that drove out Amazon and other affiliate sales programs out of their borders, a backdoor back into earning money as an affiliate – of course, that also entails sharing a chunk of those sales with Squidoo. But, it would seem a portion of a sale, paid via PayPal, is better than no sales. Haven’t made any sales yet, so time will tell if I have any more success on their platform than I did on my own.
Crafty Tips
There’s a certain irony when it comes to the number of listings on Crafty Tips. I seem stuck on 957. Granted 957 great sites and crafting tips in one place is awesome. But, no matter how many new submissions I receive or sites I add myself, there almost always seems to be an equal number of sites no longer active that have to be removed. As I write this post, I’m at 954. When I’m done here, I’ll be off to hunt more great sites and tips to share with everyone.
Yesterday, I found several new Altered Art Tips & Websites, Making Miniatures Tips & Websites and Amigurumi Tips & Websites to share with everyone.
You can visit the area that interests you most or keep up with all of the latest listings by checking out the Great New Craft Websites area where each new listing is featured.
New Flower Patterns
It’s been a little over a week, but I also recently added a new free crochet flower pattern over on The Crafty Tipster. Please let me know what you think.
And of course, there was the embroidered dandelion flower I shared here with everyone a couple of weeks ago.
Hobby Lobby Disappointment
The Hobby Lobby stores closest to our house are about an hour away in South Carolina. We don’t get to go to them all that often. It’s a treat exploring their stores and there’s just so much inspiration and crafty goodness there that we spend hours in them whenever we get the chance.
Knowing they had tons of cute decorative things, I thought it would be the perfect place to scout out a few things for my little fairy garden. (Note to anyone listening…Scotch moss grows in a ball and unlike the carpet-like mosses does not take kindly to being divided. And, apparently aphids like it too. sigh)
Sadly, there was very little stuff to pick from. I had found some cute little fencing, which was sadly too big for my little garden, the last time we were there but there was nothing like that on this last visit.
I did pick up these cute little flower pots from the dollhouse section but was disappointed about the lack of small artificial flowers. There was a few things in the model train section but they were fairly pricey and I didn’t think they would hold up well to being accidentally watered.
I had bumped into one of the staff several times while wandering the aisles and she ended up being my cashier. She asked if I had found everything and I replied yes and no. She asked about the no and I told her that I was disappointed about the limited selection of ‘fairy garden’ type things. She admitted that yes that was popular right now and strangely enough they didn’t carry very much. Shoot, I couldn’t even find those little fabric roses and stamens that are usually near the wedding flowers. She agreed that it seemed strange that they didn’t have any of those. I got the distinct impression it was not the first time she had that discussion.
NOTE to the big box craft stores…FAIRY GARDENS ARE HOT RIGHT NOW….PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR THINGS…PLEASE SUPPLY THEM FOR US!!!
So, what’s your last week or two been like? Get any good crafting time in? Find more cool stuff to add to your Pin Boards. I sure have…check them out at my page BlogAboutCrafts on Pinterest and my newest board…Fairy Garden Ideas.
See you around the web this week.