RocketSquids Success!

Well, in less than a week my Summer Trips Driving as a Family lens has made it up the ladder to a little over 17,000 lens rank!  It really helps that RocketSquids publishes a lens with each week's submissions for the challenge (see screen shot taken of published featured lens with a few others from the challenge below).  I hope to see a lot of other future lenses with this group get such a good lens ranking!  I am not sure how they organize the lists, but to find mine it is placed at about 15 down on the the list and if my counting is correct I believe there were right around a total of 75 lenses featured for this challenge.  I know it not meant to be a competition among us, but it would be interesting to see where your article is ranked amongst others within the challenge.  I have been getting a lot of feedback from other lensmasters; some good and some bad.  I really appreciate it when someone has constructive criticism, but have a hard time when someone thinks they just need to tell me what I should be doing creatively.  I guess that is the price for putting your stuff out there, but most times it is good and I am learning a lot!  I would suggest to anyone that is currently in the group or considering joining that you change your comment settings to be notified to approve comments instead of just allowing any comment to be posted, as you will get a lot of critiquing.  Here is some of what I've learned so far:  people like a customized bio for each lens - include key words from title, it is better to break up writing into sections instead of "blocking", choose any featured products wisely, make sure your intro photo is a square photo at least 250pixels in size, always give credit to your pictures (that is a tough one, but worth it and I am currently trying to work on going back to other lenses and add this), and people really like personal experiences included in the lens - which is great because that is how I like to write a lot of my lenses.  All of these tips will help increase your lens rank.  I appreciate that I was sent the invitation to become a member of this group and am eager to see what other creativity and lessons come from this experience.  There are some other really great RocketSquids Summer Travel Lenses, so be sure to take a look at them!

iphone screen shot of RocketSquids Summer Travel Lenses

First RocketSquid Challenge Completed!

The challenge this week, my first one, from RocketSquids was to write a lens (article or web page) having to do with Summer Travel.  In the beginning I actually picked a vacation spot I have fond memories of, but I had a hard time remembering all that we did, as I was so young.  I started doing some research and found all these other great things that you can also do there.  My little one got sick soon after I accepted the quest and we are currently having a home built, which is behind on the estimated closing by at least two weeks.  I started to get overwhelmed and felt like I was treating this as an assignment rather than my usually enjoyable writing.  I really started to think about all the trips my family had taken and then realized my funnest memories were those of being in the car together as a family.  My mother is deathly afraid of heights and with how expensive it is for a family of five to take an airplane, we never flew for vacations.  Summer Trips Driving as a Family were always something I looked forward to because it was a special time that family used to bond.  I also found some great road trip products that I would even like to look at purchasing!  Although, we have been very blessed in my own family now that we are able to take most trips by plane, but ever time we do go on drive somewhere I like to do those things my parents did with us with my little one and will continue to do it with all our future children as well. Once I decided that was what I would write my lens about everything just fell into place. It just is more proof that I need to stick to writing about something that is interesting, personal, or important to me.