LakeMom's RocketMom Lenses

Our first assignment was to create an "About Me" lens. This lens would let our fellow RocketMoms more about ourselves. Our Mentor Bonnie, helped us by giving us 4 babysteps to get started: 1. Building a lens requires prep work-she suggested some modules to use (some I had never used before - Text with big picture!). 2. Getting help - she offered some lenses to look over for suggestions to improve our lens writing. 3. Select a topic - she gave us a list of different things, bucket list type of things or personal things (how clothes define you). And 4. Dig in - just do it!

I choose to write a lens focusing on the vacation places I would like our family to go over the next ten years. It was a lot of fun - a sparked a lot more ideas!

During the week we received "special" tutoring. We were asked to look over our profiles and give them some "tweaks". We were asked one day to "dream" and come up with 5 lenses we would like to make for RocketMoms. Here is my list (I had to go back to my original post, because I had forgotten - I really need to put them on my to-do list!): 1. State Fairs, 2. What Does Your Car Say About You? 3. Theatre Life as a Career 4. Top Colleges for Theatre Majors and 5. Film Industry Today. After reviewing this list, I really need to get started on some of them. The last tutoring session we had was to go visit SquidU. I had visited the forum when I first joined, but hadn't really visited it since then. I'm glad I was prompted to go back. I am going to make a habit of visiting there more often. We can find great advice there!

Our second assignment was to create a Niche lens. Bonnie gave us some examples of some niche lenses from Rubber Ducky to Unique Toilet Seats. These two lenses challenged me to try my hand at a new lens - so I researched and wrote a lens on light switch covers. Again, we were prompted to use some modules that we hadn't used before. I had never used the Amazon Spotlight or Poll module so I added them to my lens. I liked this assignment so much (and I wrote it so fast!) that I wrote a second niche lens!

Our tutoring lessons for this week focused on Time Management, HTML & CSS, and Len's Building Do's. I admit I got a little overwhelmed this week to focus much on the tutoring lessons. I do need help with Time Management, so I will review this soon! I love using HTML in lens building. Any help in this area is greatly appreciated. I haven't gotten a chance to look over all the great tips, but I will soon! And the Len's building do's - I breezed through them but I will review them more thoroughly soon!

So week #3 dawns with a new challenge - write a Recipe Lens. Doesn't Bonnie know that my smoke alarm is my timer to know when dinner is done?! (Don't get me wrong - I like to cook - I just get distracted!) So we were asked to write a lens and share a recipe. Again we were given some lenses to look over for inspiration. I choose to write on a tradition in our family - deviled eggs. For every holiday or potluck our family takes deviled eggs. (I have people at potlucks almost attack me when I bring in my deviled eggs!) This also has sparked some additional ideas for lenses - I will soon begin writing those - soon!

For tutoring this week I paid more attention! We covered co-branding, photos 101 and Squidoo Royalties. I had heard about SquidooWho and The Ever Project but wasn't really interested in either of those, however Bonnie introduced us to so many more - here is Bonnie's lens on all the Squidoo Co-Branding. The ones that intrigued me were SquidLit and SquidFlix. I wrote one SquidLit and 2 for SquidFlix. They were so fast and easy to do! I was also intrigued by SquidBoo - can't wait until Halloween!

There was also a photos tutorial - I love putting photos in lens. This showed us how to do it properly and where to get photos. I will be working over the next couple of weeks to ensure that the photos in my lenses have the proper credits.

Finally we received a lesson on Squidoo Royalities.

With rapidly approaching - Bonnie hit another home run! Create a travel lens! The lenses could be about your own hometown (free things to do locally!) My Girl Scout Troop is planning a trip to Washington DC at the end of summer so I decided to combine two areas that I have focused on - RocketMom assignment and my niche - Girl Scouts. Her suggestion was to use photos, lots of photos. Our family had visited Washington DC in May 2004 so I had plenty of photos to include in the lens. I will be updating the lens after my troop returns from their trip.

Our tutoring lessons this week covered making money with Squidoo, Twitter and Blogging. We learned some great tips on how to market our lenses on Squidoo. Bonnie also suggested that we use Twitter to begin creating our tribes and to let our followers to know when we have finished/published another lens. I am intrigued by the blogging lesson and will pursue this at a future point!

Week #5 dawned with a challenge to create a Holiday lens. Our RocketMoms are creative (check out World Vegetarian Day and Happy Fortune Cookie Day! I decided to go with an idea that had been brewing in my brain for a while now! I enjoyed finding unique gifts for Father's!

Tutoring lessons this week covered becoming a Giant Squid, Quality vs. Quantity and the new group of RocketMoms. Bonnie gave us an overview of what it takes to become a Giant Squid - 50 lenses - but these must be quality - which leads us into the next lesson- quality or quantity. Then Bonnie told us that is was time for the second class of RocketMoms to join us. She wants us to find 5 friends and issue invitations to them to join RocketMoms. I am struggling with this one a little. I haven't told too many people that I am writing on Squidoo, but I do have some friends/moms that I think have something to add to Squidoo. I think it would be something that could add something to their lives.

So here we are at the last week (wow that went fast!). Our assignment - write a lensography - a listing of all of our lenses or a grouping of your niche lenses. A few have written a lensography of their RocketMom lenses - that's what I decided to do. I liked being able to see all my RocketMom lenses in one place. If it wasn't for RocketMoms these lens would never have been written.

We haven't had our tutoring for the week yet (I got inspired to complete the assignment early!) - I will add the details as we get them!

At the end of week 2 Bonnie threw us a curve ball - extra credit! For the overachievers this was a no brainer - they would do it! For those that "need" the extra credit for a "buffer" they looked at it and tried to judge how "hard" the assignment was. Many RocketMoms took up the challenge for the extra credit. The first extra credit challenge was to write a top 10 lens. It could be the top 10 of anything from movies, cartoons, picnic recipes. I choose to write about the top 10 flowers/plants I would like in my garden.

Week #4 Bonnie hits us with our second Extra Credit assignment - write a lens focusing on a charity and use the donations module. We have some great charity lenses written, please check them out. I am still brewing this one in my brain. I think I came up with an idea yesterday so I will update this when I finish. I hope to complete my extra credit Charity assignment before "class" is dismissed for the summer!

I was excited to see the focus for Session 4 - holiday/gift shopping! However, I did not complete the session - I did complete 3 lenses!

I took a break from RocketMoms (all of 2010). I began looking back at my RocketMom lenses (35) and realized that they helped me gain Squidoo Giant status and they are the best money earners for me. I attempted to do another 6 weeks during the summer of 2011. I thought the short time frame would kick start me back to writing great lenses! However, I forgot to take into account, my other activities - family, vacation, etc! I got through a couple of assignments and then fell off the wagon.

Now, RocketMoms is one for the history books. It has motivated and created some great writers on Squidoo. I know they will find something else to help new and old writers become the best writers on the Internet!

So I took the plunge and have jumped into another RocketMom's session! So far so good! Our topics have been: "About Me", "Fall", and "Travel". They are all good subjects to help us write better lenses. We also got one challenge on the first week to create an "About Me" page.