Home > Lensmaster Spotlight > SuccessfulSquids > Interview with Pastiche

What does it take to be successful on Squidoo? Don’t take our word for it, find out from your peers. We’ve asked our most prolific lensmasters how they do it and they’re sharing it all.

Learn how Pastiche has used Squidoo to enhance her web presence and attract new eyeballs to her projects.

Kimberly: Which of your “real life” passions are you most excited about sharing on Squidoo?
Pastiche: I love to draw pictures and make free printables. I really love working with my computer to create original graphics and papercrafts for parents and educators. Squidoo offers me a great platform for sharing my work, promoting my web sites and blogs, anf testing out marketing ideas or new designs.

K: How do you commit to maintaining lenses long term?
P: My goals for maintaining lenses haven’t really changed much since I first started at Squidoo althought the time it takes to keep all my lenses updated takes more time now each week than it did in 2007. With close to 200 published lenses I need to devote more than a day a week to keep all my lenses updated – my lenses get traffic partly because the content isn’t stagnant or static. I try to edit each lens at least once a month and when I do I’m not just changing a word or two, or adding the latest edit date , I’m finding and adding new content or implementing ideas for improvement. Many of my lenses are set up to feature seasonal content that needs to be updated to reflect current holidays or events. Because many of my lenses are seasonal, they require edits more frequently in the month before, during after their peak activity periods. I promote all my seasonal or date-linked lenses using social tools for two or three weeks before their peak event date and for at least one week afterward.

K: Which three modules would you write a love story about?
P: I love the Text with Big Image, Link List module, and the Featured Lenses module.

I love the Text with Big Image module because I like to create blocks of written content that open with an arresting image chosen to reinforces the copy or grab a reader’s attention. Well-chosen large images work well for many of my coloring page and clip art lenses because they provide a visual break and they give me an opportunity to place downloadable linked images from my web site in the lens. In several lenses I use this module to present a seasonal feature with a download option, and I change the feature according to the month/season/holiday that’s current. This keeps a lens fresh and adds a seasonal component.

I use the link list module quite a bit because many of my lenses are built off curated content resources from blogs and web sites. I sometimes use a link listing to include a lens but more often I use the Featured Lenses module to showcase other lenses in topical groups that work well with my lens.

I like the Featured Lenses module because I can showcase hand-picked lenses (my own or lenses by other great lensmasters) with topics that extend and supplement my lens’s content.

K: I’m a brand new lensmaster. What is the ONE thing I really need to know today?
P: Always respect copyright and credit/link anyone else’s work that you do use. It’s the right thing to do and it helps everyone, including you. Taking time to make sure the content you create and publish is legally available to you is very important, as is citing the owner. Whenever possible I try to use my own images – photos or graphics – or I use images that have been offered by their copyright owners for use via Creative Commons licensing or are clearly in the public domain. I strive to link/credit any work I use that’s not my own, jsut as I would do if I were writing a term paper or article for a print publication.

K: Why is original content important to you?
P: My life evolves around original content; it’s how I earn my living. I create graphics and printables and tutorials that I offer free for personal use and sell under license or imprinted on Zazzle products. I write about my favorite crafts and green living topics. As a consumer I don’t want to see or offer the same old stuff and I don’t want to violate copyright or have my rights violated. I don’t want to read the same article or viewpoint I’ve found on other sites but I enjoy learning a new viewpoint or fresh twist on a topic that’s familiar to me. I want to read about a topic through fresh eyes – even if I know something about that topic. It’s interesting to me that I find popular blog posts sharing how-tos for things I’ve done my whole life, or skills and crafts I do and take for granted. It’s been eye-opening to me to learn that not everyone knows how to sew on a button, make bread, plant a garden, recycle or toilet train a 2 year old. I’ve found that I can appreciate the unique viewpoints on tried and true topics if they’re coming from original content. It comes back to a piece of advice my graphic design professor shared decades ago: there are no new ideas, only new ways of presenting them.

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Thanks Pastiche!

Which tip do you love most? What can you apply to your lenses?

Say thanks and tell us which of her lenses is YOUR fav.