Lensmaster Mosaic Interview

Squidoo Lens Reviews: What makes you passionate about Squidoo.com?

Mosaic: It's just so easy to use. I love that I can make a lens as simple or as long as I want and I know it'll be easy to do. It literally only took me minutes to start building. Also, the community is awesome. The forums are busy all the time and typically always filled with helpful people. The community is great. Also, I think the staff (and all the volunteer Squid Citizens and such) are very accessible. It's great!

Squidoo Lens Reviews: Is Squidoo perfect already or what could make it better

Mosaic: Gosh, I have some minor wishes when it comes to doing HTML. First, I'm not a fan of the TOC module, and I often want to do internal navigation links to other parts of my lens. Right now, I have put in a dummy TOC, copy the correct link location and modify it, then put the link where I want it to go. I would like to have an easier way to grab the anchor link to each module. Also, tables! I currently use fluff's script (it's fluff's right?) [Yes] for tables but if we could code tables ourselves, I would use them more often. I know tables are a no-no in CSS, I know, I know. But still!

Squidoo Lens Reviews: What inspires you to make a new lens?

Mosaic: I get inspiration from lots of places. Mostly, though, from randomly surfing the web, watching TV, and chatting with my friends. Sometimes, making a lens is like making a mental note to myself. Oh yeah, I was thinking about that the other day....

Squidoo Lens Reviews: How many lenses do you have?

Mosaic: I currently have mid 50s I think. I have a bunch of WIPs that I'll eventually get to....

Squidoo Lens Reviews: What is your most popular lens?

Mosaic: My Plant Tycoon Strategies lens is my post popular. Wow. It constantly gets traffic and a bajillion clickouts. Part of the success comes from backlinks. I posted a link to this lens on many video game forums so a good chunk of my traffic comes from referrals. And with all those backlinks, Google likes it a lot. It also helps that lots of people love this game. Not only that, lots of people who are playing the game are lazy and are looking for shortcuts.... :P

Squidoo Lens Reviews: What one sentence or one word describes your success?

Mosaic: Found stuff that works by trying lots of stuff. Keep trying!

Squidoo Lens Reviews: What should a newbie do first?

Mosaic: Make a lens. On anything. Then make another lens on something else. Then make another lens on something else. Try lots of different topics and different layouts and different ways of saying things. Then go back and update, tweak, change your old lenses. Then make another lens on something else. Then make a lens related to a lens you've already made. You won't know what works for you until you try!

Squidoo Lens Reviews: Which of your lenses do you want to make sure the whole world knows about?

Mosaic: My favorite lens is my RubikCubism lens. I just think the topic is great fun and really inspiring. I've featured some of my own small artworks on this lens. During the life of this lens, I've gotten the original RubikCubist to link to my lens! That was a great honor. Also, I've met a new artist who actually does very large RubikCubism commissioned pieces! This lens really gave me a lot of encouragement to make strange, niche-y lenses on Squidoo. Lots of surprises!

Jennifer aka Mosaic