Too Much Advertising on Squidoo??

They've got to earn money to provide their free service somehow.

If you want control over the pages, you'll need your own site.

If you want pages that often respond well in the search results, provide traffic, etc then Squidoo often fits the bill. You can then also get two (or more) bites at the cherry - a Squidoo lens and your own site.

Use your Squidoo lens to drive traffic to your own pages. In the long run it will work out better since you will have better control over your own site than on a lens. Moreover, you can also flip your own website for a large sum of money once you have some regular profits coming in.

They do have a LOT of ads, but you know what, they still do great. I mostly promote physical products with my lenses and I sell tons.

many people live by the ads.it's acceptable.

You can choose to disable some of the ads if you want, but you need to change your options for the money to go to Squidoo or to a charity in the global settings, and then disable some ads manually. I think then only Adsense will show, nothing else. I might be wrong there, but that's what I remember from a while back.

I agree with you, Tom, but to me it's a very small point.

Like many experienced, successful Warriors who stopped using Squidoo a year or two ago, I feel my reasons for not touching it (not even as part of a backlinking strategy) are far more compelling and significant ones than that.

It took me time, but eventually I learned that Squidoo gave me nothing I couldn't get (also without paying) elsewhere, where I was in control, rather than Squidoo being in control.

I see the same thing, time and time again, in "Squidoo" threads, here. Experienced, successful Warriors are explaining why they don't use it, and a few people promoting "Squidoo stuff" in their sig-files and/or in WSO's are recommending it. They're tricky conversations, because people tend to mention the "advantages" they think they get from Squidoo and don't tell you that they could have done exactly the same, or better, without Squidoo imposing restrictions on them and owning and controlling "their" site. (Maybe some of them don't even realise that?!) But as so often, in internet marketing, the voice of reason is easily drowned by the voice of commercial interest.

Whatever you want from Squidoo you can get for yourself elsewhere. You can even get completely free, reliable, well-established, professional, advertising-free hosting for the purpose, in many different places, these days. Squidoo can give you nothing that you can't get for yourself, if you want to own and control your site and your business. Don't imagine that you'll get any significant "traffic advantage" or "SEO advantage" by using it: those days have long gone! Its own home page may still have a high page-rank, but that isn't going to help your pages there, much.

These threads, which contain plenty of factual information as well as some opinion, will be helpful to anyone interested in the subject who's willing to read them ...

Squidoo/Blogger as primary website

Is Squidoo still okay to post article to?

How to subtly advertise on Squidoo and Hubpages?

How do I Use Squidoo Effectively?

Advice on Squidoo

And with all the threads like this last one, and Google apparently being on something of a de-indexing rampage at the moment, by all accounts, there's not much point (and maybe rather a high risk!) in trying to use these "Web 2.0 sites" for backlinks, either: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6000312

Squidoo are NoIndexing lenses on a lot of accounts that don't have high enough standing there, cover your pages with ads, and delete pages that have been 'spammed' with too many backlinks. There are way better Web 2.0s to parasite from in my opinion.

I know what you mean, O.P. When I first considered Squidoo I thought it looked like a jumbled mess with all the ads competing with the content. Now, I'm used to it and just mentally block out all the ads. I have put up a few lenses but I really hate it when their ads are very similar to products that I am selling.

I don't really mind squidoo having those stuff. I'm already happy with their services and I can get it for free.

"but I can put a new lens up on squidoo and have significant Google traffic to it in *hours*. That doesn't happen at my own sites."

Prove it. Should be pretty easy

Best way to deal with this is to start your own site and promote your own product or an affiliate product.

Squidoo is completely spammed out with ads!!! annoying!