There’s a big debate going on over at wealthy affiliate, and it’s starting to hot up, Is Squidoo worth the hassel anymore?.
Vstar a long time member of WA…
Started the topic relating to squidoo‘s policy changes, and it’s relating war against what they are now calling bad topic lenses, it seems if you are not tight inside squidoo’s new rules when you try to update your lens you are more then likely to get your lens locked and lose all your content, so you had better take a copy of your content and keep it safe just in-case.
After several emails and two-ing and throwing this is squidoo’s final response.
Their final response…
We appreciate your efforts at disputing this lens locking.
But after 2 hand reviews from an official Squidoo employee, our decision
stands to keep the lens locked.
If you write in again about this case, we won’t be able to review and
respond a third time. We don’t want to waste your time or ours.
Please know that this decision isn’t personal, it’s just based on our
policies and our interest in keeping Squidoo a place full of great content
that lots of people can be proud of.
If that means Squidoo isn’t for you, you’re welcome to move on to another free service online.
Best of luck,
Seems to me that this is some what pointed towards getting rid of the competition for revenue. So long has your lens is not directed at any form of information at any other site and as no affiliate links you are ok to publish.
So is this the end for internet marketers on Squidoo?
Looks like the writing is on the wall.
My own take on this is, Squidoo in the early years where encouraging people to write about any topic they wanted to. This gave Squidoo exposure and made them a force to be reckoned with, and gave them a hefty revenue from advertising.
Now of cause placing affiliate links in one’s lens is taking away Squidoo’s revenue. That’s how they make their money from advertising banners and the trusty addsense blocks. So to counter this they are now targeting lenses that do not any longer benefit them in producing revenue for Squidoo.
Looks to me like Squidoo only wants people existing a lens vie addsense or banners that they make money from.
So linking out to more info on your own site or landing pages or trying to link direct from your lens to a vendors sales page is no longer going to be accepted.
Join in the debate yourself , join wealthy affiliate today and grab this bonus. Of cause the biggest bonus of all is you get to learn affiliate marketing from long time pro’s.
Has Squidoo lost the plot? Is this the end of the road for internet marketers at Squidoo? Is there no reasoning with them and is it right to lock peoples long time squidoo lenses?
You should check this out……
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I used to have 30 plus lenses on squidoo, all with great content. my lenses got locked and i recieved an email saying that my account will be evaluated. after a couple of days, all my lenses were gone! nada! zilch! I never made another lens nor an account to say the least with squidoo again. fuck squidoo, i now make my articles with hubpages.
Wow! Just what can you post on Squidoo? The list of what they won’t accept just about encompasses anything and everything I would ever write about! I understand they want to keep spam out but really! This is ridiculous. I tried for 30 minutes to get a lens published this morning and then gave up. they won’t accept anything. The bottom line is: SQUIDOO SUCKS! I think the people running it must be Quakers or something!
They are going to hurt themselves in the long run by adopting this stance. I know of people left and right cancelling their accounts or just not logging in anymore. My advice: Stick with Hub Pages, they’re great.
I know a lot of affiliates that relied on Squidoo for their business, and now have found themselves with no business at all, maybe this is a hard lesson learned.
Those that give for their own benefit can take away when it no longer suits them.
Squidoo is run by jackasses.
I am brand new to affiliate marketing. On 8/4/09 I signed up with Squidoo (on the advice of “PotPie Girl”) and created a lens that you can view in the website URL above. It was about how to create exponential moving averages in Excel or Gnumeric spreadsheets. It had 1 lame picture at the top of the lens. Squidoo gave it a “green light” and it was up on their site for 2 weeks.
Last night (8/17/09) I attempted to liven it up by uploading some screen shots on how to navigate the Gnumeric browser. When I tried to republish, the “Uh-Oh” screen came up, and implied that I was publishing “spambait” or possibly even pornography! I figured that only a machine could be this stupid as to disapprove a new site that it had already approved, so I complained and asked for a “human” to look over it.
After being told that it may take up to 10 days for them to get back to me, the answer came in my email the next day (today, 8/18/09) saying that because I had passively mentioned that my article on spreadsheet charting may be of interest to those who trade stocks, commodities, FOREX, or Options, I was told by the automated-human at Squidoo that my lens was now LOCKED because “FOREX” is a bad word now, and smacks of “profit schemes” or some such. To add insult to injury, they said ‘Do not reply to this email because there is no one to read it’ — i.e., I was being emailed by an autoresponder or else by a jackass who didn’t care to argue the matter with me.
So I have just now cancelled my account with Squidoo and will never deal with them again, PotPie Girl’s influence notwithstanding.
If you visit the URL I gave up above, you will see a brand-new website still heavily under construction; but I dare say that if you read my article “How to Calculate Moving Averages” you will not see anything worthy of my being treated the way Squidoo has done.
Screw them and the horse they rode in on, is my final analysis of the situation.