What’s Good for the Goose Isn’t Always Good for the Gander

If you glance at the SquidU forums much, you’ll often find someone asking questions like whether building one lens a day is a reasonable goal, or how often you should update your lenses, or how concerned you should be about lensrank. Usually there are a lot of responses. What’s interesting is that there often many different answers to the same question.

Some lensmasters pay close attention to lensrank and despair if too many lenses fall below a certain rank. Other lensmasters ignore lensrank completely. Many fall somewhere between the two extremes.

Some lensmasters are busily creating as many back-links to their lenses as they can. Other lensmasters are less concerned about whether there are any links pointing to their lenses.

Some lensmasters set goals for themselves: They decide how many lenses they’ll build each week or how many lenses they’ll update each day. Other lensmasters will simply make a lens or add new content to an existing lens when the inspiration strikes.

With so many different philosophies on lens building, how do you know who’s right?

That’s a trick question. For the most part, none of them are wrong. As long as a lensmaster is doing what works for them, their philosophy is the correct one… for them. That doesn’t mean their strategy will work for someone else. What works splendidly for one lensmaster might be terrible for you. If you’re a square peg, you won’t fit in a round hole meant for someone else.

It’s a good idea to study other lensmasters and see what they’re doing. You might discover ideas you like, and it will help give shape to your own philosophy. But instead of copying someone else’s strategies or goals, it’s best to simply look for inspiration and come up with your own model for success.

Tags: goals, strategies