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Squidoo Affiliate links: theirs vs. mine

by Sniderplanet
2 replies
I'm using Squidcrafter to change the links in my existing Squidoo lenses over from their Amazon modules with their affiliate links to text modules with my own affiliate links.

Now, I've been told that this is not against their TOS and have no indication that there's anything wrong with it.

Here's what's happening.

I take a lens that's rated at 100% and change all the links to mine. The lens drops to 95% with a suggestion that I add in an Amazon spotlight module or an mp3 module.

I add in an mp3 module and it goes right back to 100%

This tells me that Squidoo really does prefer that I used at least one module with their affiliate link in it. This is true even for lenses that have no affiliate link modules in them as I have some that are informational and didn't have Amazon or any other kind of affiliate links in them and they needed me to put in an Amazon module in order to have a 100% lens.

My question is, what do you think the importance is of that 100% rating?
Does it contribute to tier ranking? Does it hurt anything to leave a lens with a 95% rating?
#affiliate #links #mine #squidoo
  • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
    Squidoo uses the progress bar to require or encourage certain behaviors and recently they removed the requirement that you get a particular kind of Like on the lens to get to 100% and replaced it with the requirement that you add one of their Amazon modules to get that 100%. It's fairly obvious that doing so would be to their advantage so I understand the move. I'd still rather stick with the 95% and use my own links.

    The 100% has no bearing on how well your lens will do in search engines nor how well it will do with sales and conversions. It could potentially have a slight impact on your Monster points and lensrank as sales from those modules do add points to your overall total and may impact lensrank but at the cost of sharing commissions with Squidoo. If you make a decent commission rate on your own Amazon account, it makes sense to give up the slight benefit (which I would think is very slight) and stick with getting your higher commission rate from your own lenses.

    However, I know there are folks who who won't feel the lens is truly complete unless they hit the 100%. In that case, you can do so even by sticking an Amazon module towards the bottom of the lens or in the sidebar widget to satisfy the requirement.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sniderplanet
      Erica, Thanks so much for answering my question. I sometimes imagine there's a cloud of several thousand lensmasters who first joined in 2005 who share the first tier and they keep inventing little meaningless digital points and trophies to sucker the rest of us to hang on and feed their ingenius affiliate money machine.

      My lenses never seemed to take off back in 2007 when I first gave it a try. Now I'm giving it another try. Using my own affiliate links feels selfish in the social system that Squidoo is. I began using my own links before Squidcrafter made it easy, but had a niggling feeling that it might be frowned on by those in that number 1 tier; yet I could find nothing in their Terms that disallowed it. Squidcrafter implies that it's okay to do that. Then began the 95% game and the need to throw in one of their Amazon modules to get 100%. They sure know how to manipulate us squidlings at the bottom of the heap. Guess I shouldn't be writing about it here in an open forum. They might be watching and grinning to know how I squirm. I hate that I let them get to me like that. Their next move could be to red line a lens if it fails to show one of their Amazon modules. Then we would know without doubt what they want.

      It helps to forget about all those lenses in tiers "at the top" and the competition to "get there"....just look at keywords and content and traffic response. My "top" lens will be the one that makes me some pay for my work. Heck, I might have 50 Squidlikes on a page, but if it's only on page 10 of the Google results for the keyword, I got nada.
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