Has the IM Community fallen out of love with Squidoo?

[digileaf]

Hi

For a number of personal reasons I have been unable to log on to Warrior Forum for about 4 months.

When I was last on this forum, Squidoo was all the rage. There were lots of posts on the general forum about Squidoo lenses. Now there is not a single mention of Squidoo in any of the posts on the first 5 pages of the main IM Discussion Forum.

Have we fallen out of love with Squidoo so soon? If so why? Or is everyone just getting along successfully using it as a part of their IM toolkit to the extent that it is no longer worthy of discussion?

Just curious as I was keen to get back on track with Squidoo, now that I am online again and able to restart my IM career.

Many thanks

Kate

[steve39]

I gave up on them after half my lenses were locked. Didn't bother trying to fight it. I'm hoping that the 6 remaining are ok as they still make me money. I don't even update them anymore for fear of them getting locked automatically.

[thmgoodw]

For me, a combination of:

(1) locking of lens and/or cutting down on the topics that can be discussed;

(2) "clickability" -- there is just so much happening on the pages in terms of ads and what not I find that many article directories are much better; and

(3) it takes significantly longer to do a "lens" than submit an article to Ezines, Articles Base, GoArticles, USFreeads, etc.

I just don't find it cost-effective.

Originally Posted by digileaf

Hi

For a number of personal reasons I have been unable to log on to Warrior Forum for about 4 months.

When I was last on this forum, Squidoo was all the rage. There were lots of posts on the general forum about Squidoo lenses. Now there is not a single mention of Squidoo in any of the posts on the first 5 pages of the main IM Discussion Forum.

Have we fallen out of love with Squidoo so soon? If so why? Or is everyone just getting along successfully using it as a part of their IM toolkit to the extent that it is no longer worthy of discussion?

Just curious as I was keen to get back on track with Squidoo, now that I am online again and able to restart my IM career.

Many thanks

Kate

[mikeyman120]

They locked all my lenses so I fell out of love with them fast. I email and they say they will check into my lenses and then they never respond. That happened several times so I'm done with them.

Mike

[Wham]

compared to other ways squidoo sucks in my opinion, I guess it doesn't hurt to use squidoo but never by itself.

[Marty S]

I never did really use Squidoo and instead stuck with Blogger. Although not the most flexible designs (even with using Artisteer now), Blogger still provides a lot of control, really easy to set up, lightning fast indexing, and accepts posts directly from SideWiki comments now.

[RebeccaL]

No... only those who can't see beyond promoting Clickbank products

[Michael Taylor]

Still a good place to drop a link. I wouldn't use them to get real traffic, but as a back link resource, it's fine.

[CLcrax23]

Squid is great for link wheels, but other than that, its a waste.

I agree with THMgoodw...Ezinearticles is quicker, much more effective and from my experience, has a much better chance of ranking.

[digileaf]

Thanks everyone. I guess I will put it lower on my list of priorities than I was first planning, but as I want to get some backlinks going I won't ignore it altogether. I'll definitely get back to article writing tho.

Cheers

Kate

[LegitBlogger]

Squidoo, I think, got too tough on IMers,

[Colin Palfrey]

They have only locked a few of my lens's but what irritates me and I suspect others is their random locking. It doesn't seem to always be the spammy one's they are after.

I have lens's with aff links all over them and they love them, others that had no links at all and were written just to help others were locked very fast.

[sbucciarel]

I deleted all mine and said adios Squidoo ... with their new TOS, they just aren't worth the effort.

[robinincarolina]

I made a decent amount of money with Squidoo, but I too had some lenses locked. It was my fault though, I should have read the terms of servcie more closely.

[webdiva]

Well, I for one have not fallen out of love with Squidoo. I've never yet had a lens locked - not even in this last major lock-down event. I've built ~ 200 lenses by now - for my clients, to include with sites/networks I sell, and of course for myself. I have ~50 lenses of my own currently.

Call me lucky, or call me smart.

But I ...

1. Never use Squidoo (or ANY web 2.0 site) as a MAIN site or page. I use Squidoo strictly as a TOOL. ;-)

I use these sites to spread my content around for off-page SEO, and to direct traffic to where I want it to go. Generating income directly from Squidoo lenses is not my focus or main intent. Although I do have lenses that regularly generate sales (read item #3 below).

2. I have always set up my lenses in such a way as to remove all the Squidoo-induced distractions possible.

Did you know that by changing your lens SETTINGS to donate 100% to charity you can then UNcheck the ads and banners, and they disappear from your lens?

3. I take a little extra time to create or retrieve my OWN RSS feeds to publish on my lenses - Getting feed code directly from my affiliate area at Amazon, eBay, et al. And I always use my own blog feeds, static site feeds, web 2.0 pages, feed mashups, etc...

This way I get 100% of any commissions of sales generated from those feeds, or I get revved up SEO and backlink juice by using my own sites' and blogs' feeds.

4. I also use content that's on average about 35% unique or MORE. Depending on the purpose, I either go completely 100% unique, or rewrite to be 35% unique.

5. And I take care NOT to pepper my lenses with a bunch of promotional copy, links, or images. A little goes a long way here - especially when placed strategically within the flow of the lens.

6. Oh, and here's a big one. I try to pick natural looking names (the part that becomes the lens url) for my lenses - Titles that are as keyword relevant as I can get without being obviously IM-ish. Sometimes it's just not possible to get a really keyword rich title for a lens url without it either looking way out there, or spammy. I would rather err on the side of 'natural' rather than being extremely keyword targeted if being keyword targeted results in an OBVIOUSLY Promotional-looking lens title/url.

I am definitely NOT a Squidoo-aholic. It is just another tool in my toolbox that I continue to use, when it's applicable, because it continues to work.