KilnGoddess has a passion for pottery like no other on Squidoo. Some might say it’s an obsession.
Glen: What other things interest you and what other hobbies do you have? Assuming you have time for these hobbies outside of pottery and lensmaking.
KilnGoddess: I actually have a few (too many) interests besides clay. Artwise I also do mosaics, metalwork, digital illustration and graphic design. I teach and I read alot. I am never more than an arms reach away from a book tho I mainly read sci-fi and fantasy. I love Mac computers, cats, and like to bake. I am into Vegetarianism and I grow my own herbs.
Glen: Have you made any of your other interests in lenses? (and are you using a seperate Lensmaster account to do this?)
KilnGoddess: Yes I have and yes I am. I have one account I use just for cat stuff, another to highlight my classes tho I am thinking of adding lenses of local interests to that one, and another account for miscellaneous stuff from baking to nonsense.
Glen: How do you schedule in Lensmaking? Do you allot a specific amount of time during a particular part of the day, or do you just do it on the fly or whenever inspiration hits?
KilnGoddess: I don’t schedule, I likely should as there are always half made lenses that aren’t published on my dashboard. I generally work on lenses at night, I am a night owl so the wee morning hours are a nice time to work on online stuff. Some nights will find me squidooing, others I will be cafepressing or working on illustrations for microstock sales. I usually work on my lenses when I have a fully formed idea of what I want to say or add.
Glen: Do you sit down and turn it on (the writing process)? Or do you take notes when the ideas hit and then type them all up later?
KilnGoddess: My computer screen is full of digital stickies with notes and links and ideas. But I don’t like to start a lens til I have a good mental picture of where i want it to go tho I very rarely sit down and write a lens from beginning to end. My lenses seem to grow beyond where I planned them to end. And suddenly I have another lens that I am more excited about, the first one flounders a bit til the muse hits me again.
Glen: Where did you first hear about Squidoo?
KilnGoddess: WetCanvas.com’s Art Business Forum, I was actually trying to write a resource page for my upcoming pottery classes using yahoo groups for interaction. I surfed over to squidoo and took a gander, two months later after not having much success at getting my class to use the yahoo group I moved it here.
Glen: Is there an ideal number of modules you like to include and why?
KilnGoddess: No, some of my lenses are long and some are short, it depends how broad my focus is. My rule is a nice mix of text, links, and commercial mods so as to keep the viewers interest
Glen: What success secret can you divulge (that is not currently being discussed in the forums)?
KilnGoddess: Secrets? The only thing I can think of is the narrow focus i use for this identity. It is almost all clay related with a few related art lenses. I think having this focus makes my expertise more believable, so my visitors trust my words and trust the links I take them too. I am truly a Clay Geek at heart, my focus makes this very clear. I also try to keep some similarities in my lenses… I refer to my clay lenses as ‘Clay Pits’ and try to have the lens end with a guestbook and a cafepress mod tho sometimes it might be a amazon mod.
Glen: What are you doing to generate traffic to your lenses?
KilnGoddess: Very little. I have Google Juice working for me. I have good content and related tags. Google likes me. Other than that I post to wetcanvas with my lens in my sig. I answer questions related to clay and art, if the answer is within my lenses I direct the asker to the lens and specific module that they can find that info. I joined lensroll.com but I really haven’t worked that to its fullest potential. I just started twittering on twitter.com. I have written a couple of tutorials elsewhere and link them to squidoo and squidoo to them and do see some modest cross traffic between those sites and squidoo.
Glen: What is something that is working for you (as in promotion or a lensmaking process) that you don’t think would work for anyone else?
KilnGoddess: I wouldn’t say it wouldn’t work for anyone else but I know I have a lot of clay teachers and clay students visiting my lenses, I notice a significant drop in traffic Christmas break and the summer months. So I try to write so a beginner can understand. I use my lenses as a online classroom. Actually my real life classroom cross pollinates, if a certain demo worked well in class it will likely end up on a lens and while making lenses I am often just writing out the lesson that I will be giving to my real life students, getting my thoughts together and putting them in a logical order.
Glen: How often are you updating your lenses?
KilnGoddess: I used to have a rule of once every two weeks but I have become a bit more busy in real life so now hopefully every two weeks for my better trafficked lenses and once a month for most other but if I miss updating I don’t sweat it.
Glen: Do you have a schedule or management tip for managing multiple lenses?
KilnGoddess: LOL, I don’t think I am the best LM to ask that. Sadly I sometimes need to read my own lenses to remember what I have already included. My lenses grow like my garden…free and rampant…’management’ is an alien term.
Glen: Do you have any tricks for encouraging your lenses viewers participation through any of the interaction modules?
KilnGoddess: I have some poll mods and of course guestbooks but really no. The polls help me target what info the viewers are looking for so I can give them the info that they want. I was hoping for more interaction with the lenses by way of the guestbooks, hoping to use them more of a discussion tool but instead they are used more as well… guestbooks… for leaving a calling card and best wishes etc.
Glen: What non-Squidoo book or other resource have you found that helps you with your lenses?
KilnGoddess: Would you think I am a horrible LM if I say other than Squidu and the WetCanvas business forum I really know nothing about SEOs, marketing, or Seth. I took an introduction to advertising class in college, there are a few lessons that seem to have stuck in my head about target marketing and and demographics. I seem to come back to those lessons often.
Glen: What common mistake do you see even experienced lensmasters make (that you think you have a solution to)?
KilnGoddess: I guess writing about stuff they only have a passing knowledge of.
Glen: What mistakes have you corrected as you’ve built up your Squidoo expertise?
KilnGoddess: Gosh, my first lens became a runaway train. Too much info, I truly thought I could present all the info I had in my head about working with clay in one lens. I learned I have way more info in my head than I thought and I can talk on a subject an awful lot. Now I am more careful about what info I want to present on one lens. If I see a topic starting to take over a multi-topic lens I start to split it up, as I recently did with my www.squidoo.com/kilns lens. My info on electric kilns was starting to overwhelm the lens so I broke off and made www.squidoo.com/electrickilns Neither lens is completely finished and I can see me eventually breaking it up even farther.
Glen: What are your three favorite things about Squidoo?
KilnGoddess: #1 I love the part in the TOS that makes no claim on my writing, so many sites I’ve visited and look so nice only to have a huge rights grab in the TOS. If any site has the words ‘perpetual royalty-free right’ I hit the back button.
#2 I like the ease of use… yes i could get all fancy using html but I don’t have to.
#3 Love that Google juice that squidoo generates, I know I couldn’t rate so well in google on my own
Glen: How do you choose when to make several lenses on different angles of the same topic, or when to just make one very long lens?
KilnGoddess: I had many people suggest to break up my www.squidoo.com/handbuilding lens up into the 4 distinct methods that it covers but I love the flow from one method to another that the lens has. It is basically a condensed version of my real life handbuilding class. So when do I decide? When it feels right. I am actually thinking of a handbuilding 2 lens covering more than just the basics, a lens talking about combining the methods to make vessels than just presenting them separately.
Glen: What is it about squidoo – be it a person, feature, reason – that has caused you to stick around?
KilnGoddess: When I first started here at squidoo I loved the clean layout and the’content is king’ theory, content was the star of the show. Sadly those days seem behind us. I’ll be very blunt…its the google juice that keeps me here.
Glen: What is your own favorite lens and why?
KilnGoddess: I think it is www.squidoo.com/handbuilding it seems to flow better than the others, strangely I spend more time with clay wheelthrowing in the studio but my handbuilding lens seemed to come together better.
Glen: If you were given a day in the squidoo hq office what would you do?
KilnGoddess: Likely leave clay dust on the keyboards and walk around sockfooted all day but if asked for input I’d put the ’search box back on the dashboard’ on the high priority list (I very rarely search squidoo anymore, no search box in easy reach). Put the max/unmax click box back on the dashboard, I sometimes forget to click unmax when it is hidden in the side of the edit page. Push down the google ads on unmaxed lens in the side column to under LM provided bio and make the side column skinnier so it doesn’t push my content. Make maxed lenses fit on small monitors so I don’t have to horizontal scroll. Add a photo mod that doesn’t rely on flicker or an outside host.(the photos don’t have to be huge but it would be fabulous if we could make them clickable links that could take the viewer to say a portfolio of larger images that is hosted on a LM’s own webpage). I think that is the major drawback on squidoo for artists is the inability to have squidoo hosted images.
Glen: You wake up in the middle of the night if a fantastic lens idea,do you: a) hope you remember it in the morning, b) get up and fire up the computer, c) grab the pda or notepad and pen thats ready and waiting next to the bed for times like these, d) rouse your partner from their blissful slumber and put the responsibility on him/her to remember your grand idea.
KilnGoddess: Sorry, I dream in pots not lenses besides i am up most the night anyway. Most of my ideas come to me when I am driving or in the shower, during neither is a good time to take notes. I likely have forgotten more good ideas than have made it onto screen, paper, or clay. I hate it when I think of the perfect words to use to explain something and then they fly right out of my head.
Glen: What’s your favorite module and why?
KilnGoddess: Text- They are kinda the main dish of most my lenses where I can say what I want to express. I do wish the picture could be a bit bigger and I would like to have the ability to align the text or image easily.
Glen: If you could spend the day with a fellow lensmaster, who would it be and why?
There is a LM named MSchindel that works in PMC (precious metal clay) whose lens series are to pmc as mine are to earth based clays. I’d love to learn to work with pmc. Tho any LM in Peru too would be great too, I would love to be able to hear, in person, the sound a precolumbian double chambered peruvian whistling vessel makes. See I told ya I was a Clay Geek.
Glen: Despite it being overwhelmingly obvious, I must ask, how did you get your username?
KilnGoddess: In an upcoming lens I’ll be presenting clay and kiln myths, stories and yes even gods. In the potshop you always feed the kiln god so he will watch over your pots and protect them during the firing. I’m not exactly sure how that relates to my name but feed me and we’ll find out. 
Glen: What three words best describes your fondness for Squidoo?
KilnGoddess: Whatever the next 3 woot words that pop up when I submit my next round of bugs will likely describe my fondness more than any 3 I could think of… 
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