Is Squidoo & Other Types of Hubs a Waste of Time?

I guess it all depends on what you're using Squidoo for Bryan. If you're trying to make money directly from your lens, then you'd have to come up with a good strategy to get traffic to the lens.

It seems you haven't had much luck ranking for long-tail keywords for your lenses... but I've had great success (see sig).

I use my lenses purely to get optins... I could care less about a front-end sale. I create lenses that rank well, and I also send traffic to them from EZA, Hubs, and Squidoo other lenses... all of those I link to my websites.

Alot of people don't see immediate results from Squidoo, and they simply give up. At first I was just like that because I'm a web designer, and I couldn't care less about lenses and hubs, but once I realized how well and FAST they could rank, then I dug a little deeper into it, and I've come to love creating them now.

One cool thing about Squidoo is that you can create a lens in a half-hour or so by populating it with PLR... and STILL rank high in searches.

So what are the benefits?

- Rank well in searches (gotta do good keyword research as with anything)
- backlinks for your site
- alot of people don't know that you can collect optins... I beg to differ (WSO coming soon )
- yes its possible to promote your affiliate products, and some have had great success

Squidoo is not for everyone... but I for one love them... you have to figure out exactly how its going to help your business.

Just my $0.02

DeShon

I think Droopy's right on the money. Your lenses should be part of your sales funnel. You need an overall strategy first. Plan your business, it has been said many times before and then put these free resources to work in the right places and then you'll see results.

TomG.

This is incorrect so far as Squidoo goes.

@ Droopy Dawg.

Thanks for your insights.

I haven't really concentrated on squidoo, and thought I might be better off
building links to website or blog. I could see that yours squidoo lenses would
get a higher ranking since you're getting back links from EA. Otherwise
EA usually out ranks squidoo for long tail keywords... it appears.

@ Tom G - I'm sorry, that all sounded kind of vague and I not seeing how
Squidoo can benefit the sales funnel -- I'm not necessary disagreeing, I'm
just not clear on that. Wouldn't branding your own site and and getting your
own pages ranked for specific keywords be a better plan?

@ bgmacaw - How's this incorrect with Squidoo? Check the source of pages yourself
and you'll see that outgoing links are NoFollow.

I'm just trying to decide if these type of hubs are worth the time to seriously implement
it into my business plan. I'm not trying to stir any thing up with Squidoo lovers.

Thanks for your comments,

Bryan

Squidoo lenses/hubpages are just part of your strategy, it is just a part of the whole, so you don't actually just blame one if a thing does not work out the way it should

Can I put an aweber optin form on my lens?

I've always had a tech guy to handle this kind fo stuff for me, but I'm "between" tech guys right now.

Like Droopy I'm most concerned with pumping up my list by having visitors opting in right then and there, no hesitation.

Is it possible???

Thanks, Melford

Hi

I am quite a newbie and as yet have not had much success but I have just started a niche affiliate marketing plan and have used squidoo. As someone just starting i found it quite easy to set up and have linked to my blog and product and although I have had little traffic has resulted in a sale.

It is too early to tell at the moment but I think there is a place for this type of marketing but you musn't spend too much time on it!

I am a newbie but there was a great article on the net on how spammers killed squidoo with google. Squidoo use to work for everyone and google fell love with it but soon everyone was creating 50 lens then google backed off and looks at them a lot more suspicious , like anything else when everyone starts to do it it loses value. Ezine article is a good example everyone is writing an article today but not everyone is a writer so now ezine is so very,very critical of every article submitted, so only the best wrters are going to benefit. Slapping up a SQUIDOO LEN is no longer a sure thing. It is hit or miss

The internet is constantly changing, and as something rises in volume the value often decreases. I still believe Squidoo is worth the effort, just the return usually isn't as great as it was. I've been relying much more on article directories for ranks as of late (in my whole 4 month career! ).

I think Spiritjoy is 'spot on'. You need to really think what you are going to write about that is of value - even on Squidoo lens - if you want to get anything from it.

With so many people climbing on the bandwagon of lens their value (usefulness) will drop. Google always seems to like something for a short while then changes its outlook and before you know, it becomes out of favour (favor).

Ian

One advantage of Squidoo or Squidoo-type platforms is that you can have a direct link from your lens to a publisher's page where the product is actually sold. eZineArticles does not let you put affiliate links into your resource box. Thus, to get a sale from an article, the reader must read your article, click to go to your review site, and then click to go to the publisher's sales page. You loose a lot of potential customers if they have to go through that funnel.

Someone asked about opt-in pages on Squidoo. Yes, you can do what others said above. An alternative is to create an opt-in image and have it link to an opt-in page where you can put the javascript for your aWeber form in. That accomplishes the same thing.

Yup.. Squidoo is completely useless... don't waste your time with it (leave it for the rest of us to milk ).

On a more serious note...

The mis-information in this thread is terrible, the good advice is almost lost with some of the other stuff posted, please.. if you are reading this thread, do your own research to find out if something will work for you..

Unless, of course, me or tommygadget told ya

Peace

Jay

Personally, I haven't found Squidoo helpful.

Good question. Although I have not spent a lot of time on hubpages and squidoo, I tend to get more leverage with my strategy from articles and free blogging platforms like wordpress and blogger.

Why squidoo is better than any article directory:

You can put any link you want anywhere on your squidoo lens, and as many outgoing links as you want (but don't overdo it, of course).

Squidoo also gets great search engine rankings. One squidoo lens I made is number one for a search term that gets hundreds of searches a day. I get around 2,800 visitors a week from that lens alone.

By now Google has decided not to rank backlinks from Squidoo as high as they used to.
When I started with Squidoo last year I put a lot of effort into them not completely aware then about how few backlinks you may include and how few keywords you actually may use to be in accordance with their rules. Then they killed my lens
I have about 14 Squidoo lenses now (bought quite a number of them when they came out and because they fit to my business fields). They were ranking very well and state of the art but I can only say boy you have put almost daily efforts into them to keep them well ranking if you hate seeing them drop like a piece of iron from a skyscraper. I personally do not have the time to do that. Personally I think they are not really worth it and the nice and funny motivational (automated) words from them won´t change my opinion either. Apart from that they don´t answer any inquiries or questions. 5 thumbs down !
Bernard

Think about this:

Create one lens promoting a Clickbank product with an average of $20 per sale. Maybe make one sale per month with each lens. I know there are some naysayers here, but with the proper research this is totally possible.

Make 1 lens per day for a month and you have the possibility to pull in $600 a month or more. Keep making lenses and do the math.

Squidoo can be a great way to pull in fast cash for a newbie. I know I'm still getting checks from my lenses