Every winning lens from the Squidoo Thanksgiving Cookoff for Charity won $1000 for the charity it supports, along with Lens of the Day fame.

Of those, only one could snag the $5000 Grand Prize that we offered in a Thanksgiving Day vote-off. PJWuebker’s lens ‘From the Garden Pumpkin Pie’ ran way with the popular majority, scoring $5000 for Wildlife Forever. Congratulations!

Voting is closed (new votes don’t count toward anything but fun) but you can see how well your favorite charity did in the poll.

The real win here is this: Contests aside, every single day, lensmasters are making great lenses (about everything and anything) that are raising money for charity. It’s free. It works. It’s simple. It’s fundamentally game-changing for nonprofit organizations.

If there’s a charity you care about, send them this link now, today, and make sure they know that. Make sure they know how many people out there are ready, willing, and enthusiastic about making free online recommendation pages that will raise money for their organization for free, forever. More people than are willing to dig into their own pockets and write a check, for sure.

We’re grateful to the people who get it. That means you.

And congratulations again to Wildlife Forever.

The FTC has finally flown into action and is echoing what we’ve been saying all along: tell the truth.

The FTC rules are here and they are serious. If you violate them, you may be liable to penalties from the government and you will certainly discover you have violated the Squidoo terms of service.

We’ve already indicated on the bottom of every page that you, our mighty lensmasters, earn income (for you or for charity) from the pages you build, but you should absolutely feel free to go farther than that. The bottom line is this:

Truth is valuable. The more you tell, the better you do.

But you already knew that, which is why you’re such good lensmasters.

• Tomorrow is the last day to vote for your favorite Charity Cookoff lens (and decide who gets $5000). Vote now or forever hold your peace.
• The 2009 Giant Squid Awards are in full swing. Decide what the best lens in each category is. Bragging rights sold separately.
• How cool is this. Over Thanksgiving, the Rocketmoms did a Quiz-A-Thon. Have you tried making your SquidQuiz lens yet?
• The Featured Lenses module got a few small tweaks and is now a lot easier and more fun to use. Works great for spotlighting your related lenses and sharing the love.
• Did you know that every morning, your official Community Organizer Kimberly posts a roundup in SquidU of that day’s goingson? Kimberly Coffee is a great way to stay in touch and know what’s shaking on Squidoo.
• The Poll module now has a “Tweet this / Facebook this” element. Someone votes in your poll, they can post an update right away. Polls a go go.

Happy Monday. Have fun.

There you go. You can stop reading and go do it. Have fun.

For those of you with 30 more seconds on your hands, here are the 3 steps (and a bonus!) for making your own success with SquidQuiz.

1. Use SquidQuiz to quickbuild your own 10 question multiple choice quiz. Throw in some tricky questions, some funny ones, something to make people enjoy the brainteaser.

2. Keep your Quiz focused on a single topic. Like a quiz about your hometown, be it a small horsetown in California or Edinburgh or even beautiful Brussels. Or make a quick quiz about yourself and see how well your friends know you, or help your Twitter followers learn more about you. Get focused, and then get wildly inventive.

3. Spring your quiz on your friends, coworkers, family, followers, forumdwellers — people who know you or know your topic. Challenge them to post their scores and see how they do. Plenty of ways to get the word out, of course: Twitter, Facebook, email, you know how it goes.

Bonus: Better yet, set your Quiz royalties to support one of your favorite charities. For example, you could say: “Take my quiz about Sarah Palin’s new book Going Rogue and you’re helping raise money for charity, for free.”

(Well, the topic is up to you.)

Just the recipe for beating the lazy brain holidays? I’ll take that bet.

The good news is it takes some work. Why is that good news? Because that means the lazies, the spammers, the shortcutters won’t win. And you, the creatives, the writers, the good guys, you will.

But the better news is that while it takes some work, there’s also a really reliable formula, so to speak, that has worked time and time and time again for our top lensmasters.

This is it. It’s a short formula, but a long blog post. If you’re interested in getting more readers, making a bigger impact, or raising more money for you or for charity, it’s worth a read.

1. Anticipate and invest.

During October, Halloween lenses were hot. Everyone knew the date: October 31st.

If you were out to get creative and make money, you could have looked at hot trends on Amazon, eBay, Google Zeitgeist, trending topics on Twitter, and picked 20 targeted Halloween topics that you were interested in and made lenses about them. LadyGaga Costume for Under $20. How to dress like Edward Cullen for Halloween. Cheapest Vampire Fangs on Sale. How to make your own fake blood at home. Preparing your dog to wear his Halloween costume. Top 10 places to trick or treat in Dover, Mass. Like that.

Not all of them would have ‘worked’ in terms of massive traffic or lots of royalties — but if 2 out of the 20 got over 20,000 visits, or sold 20 items that month, or got into the Top 1000 on Squidoo, would that have been worth your while? Probably so. Not a bad return on your investment. Plus, it keeps paying back, every month, forever.

Another example: Any calendar could have told you when Daylight Savings begins. Did you know this lens got over 50,000 visits in under a week, right before November? Because she was ready at the right time with a helpful signpost page, and she took a chance on building it. And look! She’s ready for the next big spike too.

How about the holidays? Yes, lead with your interests and your passions, always. But why not do a little calendar and topic research too? Make sure you’re there with the best Fantastic Mister Fox movie lens possible, the best Stay At Home New Years Ideas For Newlyweds ideas, an interactive Fantasy Football Funny Team Names lens, the best March Madness Dictionary For Non-Jocks Quiz lens, and on and on and on.

If you invest in a topic that you’re interested in, and that you have a compelling hunch (or even evidence) that a bunch of OTHER people are interested in too, chances are good that lens will pay you back for your time, in spades.

2. Focus. Spotlight. Highlight.

A lot of people ask me “How can I make a lens that appeals to as MANY people as possible.”

My answer: Don’t.

You’ll notice my fictitious lens examples above are very specific. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘niche lenses.’ A lens about Christmas Decorations can be really really hard to differentiate in search, and more often than not gets lumped in with a broad and saturated market that usually won’t deliver any visitors.

But if you make a lens called “How to decorate your tree with 1950’s candy” — that’s a wonderfully specific lens that I can guarantee will earn you visitors — at least, from the people out there looking for nostalgic tree theme ideas. And that’s who you want to get: people who are already interested in what you have to offer, and ready to take action when they read what you have to say and recommend.

3. Less is more.

Sure, we talk a lot about making masterpiece lenses, lenses full of unique, useful, updated content, lenses that are stuffed full of goodness. But the truth is, overstuffed lenses hurt, not help.

Think about what a hurry you’re in when you’re online. If someone sends you an email, you want to know right away what you need to do. If you read a blog post, you stop reading after the third paragraph (unless it’s really really good, like this blog post ;). If you Google something, you hunt and peck until something is so clearly matched to your expectations that you actually stay and act.

If your lens has more than 20 modules on it, consider taking a hard look at removing the bloat. If your lens is trying to cover too many topics at once, break them up. If a lens doesn’t say, succinctly and sweetly up top, what someone is going to get or learn from landing here, why should they stay?

Write tight, focus, and help point your readers exactly where you hope they’ll go.

4. Share with friends. 3 minutes a day.

This is the last tip for now. And the most reliably (and regretfully) overlooked. With so many creative writers and educators and thinkers on our site, a lot of you delight in the idea stage, in the researching and the building and the creative flow that happens when you put together a really good lens. Which is great.

Maybe you show your new lens to a dozen friends, maybe you tweet it, maybe if you’re lucky you know people who will blog it for you. But then many of us stop. We wait for search traffic to come in, and then wonder why it does’t.

Spending 3 minutes a day on your top, most relevant, most timely lenses will change your traffic woes. Update your lens and make sure your followers know. Moderate your Guestbook and answer the people who post. Add a new Duel or Poll or Quiz and get people interacting. Change up the items you spotlight at the top. Feature other people’s related lenses and let them know you’re doing it. Send your lens to someone on Twitter who talks about the same topic. Email it to a group of 5 friends and ask them for feedback.

There you have it. Your formula for the next two months. Try it out and report back. We’ll be looking for your success stories!

We’re aware, and we’re working to upgrade to the new API. Smarter brains than mine (ie, Gil!) says the module will be back in action by the end of the week.

Thanks for sending in your bug reports and for your patience as we fix the module.

If you’re stuck at work late on this Friday night, or looking for some trivia (some trivial) pursuits, try your hand at a few of these top quizzes.

Some favorites so far:

The British Slang Quiz
Are You Gross?
Do you know your Baldwin brothers?
How well do you know Elvis Presley?
The 19 Century Women Writers Quiz
How well do you know Ben 10?

Better yet, try making one of your own. It’s more fun than you might expect. Get lots of people to take your quiz, and you earn eternal fame (some royalties, too).

Here’s what comes bundled with the upgrade.

• An option for Squidoo lensmaster-only commenting (with inline login). Not new, but improved.
• Commenting login via Twitter and FacebookConnect. Even if your readers aren’t logged in Squidoo lensmasters, they can still comment easily in your Guestbook module, with credibility and non-anonymity, via Twitter and Facebook connect.
• Threaded comments and improved design.
• An option for readers to follow new Guestbook comments by email. Have you ever commented on a really great lens, or in an especially heated or interesting Guestbook, and wished you could easily know when someone replied there? Now you can, if you choose to follow a Guestbook by email. You can easily unsubscribe from the module when you’ve had enough. (NB: The person who owns the Guestbook and the lens can choose to approve comments first, so no bad comments get emailed to those following).
• An option for a reader to Tweet, Facebook or email his comment. This means if you get people talking on your lens, and if they in turn share their comments outward, you get new, relevant people visiting your lens and joining the conversation.

What you need to do to get the upgrade.

Nothing. If you have Guestbooks on your lenses, the modules will automatically upgrade with the new features. Should happen in a few hours.

But! Please do take a second to play with the new settings, especially on your most active lenses. With so many new options for your readers to participate in a Guestbook, we want to make sure you’re getting the comments you want, with the right approval settings, and so on.

Oh, and thanks!

This module upgrade has a ton of moving pieces, and the Guestbook is a very popular module. So we’re hoping for your eagerness to help us kick the tires, and for your forbearance as we fine tune things live over the next 24 hours, depending on what you find and report.

Once the module upgrade has happened, please feel free to play around with the module and send us any problems or bugs.

Last, a reminder about moderating Guestbooks

As more and more social commenting happens on lenses, the more important it becomes for lensmasters, you owners and chiefs and authors and creators of your lenses, to moderate the conversations that take place. It’s up to you to host good discussions, keep things interesting, decide the rules of your own Guestbooks, review comments, delete comments you don’t think fit, ignore the trolls and report egregious spammers to us at HQ.

The highlights? Dead simple quiz creation. For free. With easy Twitter and Facebook sharing. And you can even earn a royalty from good quizzes.

A few fun examples:

• Name That Monkey
• What do you know about Mistletoe?
• Top 10 Spelling Pet Peeves
• The Thanksgiving Food Safety Quiz
• Are You A Vampire?
• How well do you know BDKZ?
• Is The “Old World” Still New To You?

Start your own Quiz. After all, everyone’s a know-it-all about something.

Little by little over the last few months, we’ve implemented and released system filters to support our updated policies.

Tomorrow we’ll be scanning the whole site for X-rated lenses and will be locking them from view, after a lengthy heads-up period and several friendly advance notices.

We’re not excited about removing anyone’s lenses, but practically, supporting X rated lenses no longer makes good sense for us or for our community. X rated content is unfortunately more attractive to spammers than to participatory readers and good content creators.

Of course, lensmasters who think their lenses got flagged by accident will be able to request another review, but based on our last few scans and tests, we expect there be very few real false positives.