Squidoo Bought Out By Hubpages - A Few Questions For Hubpage Users

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It's happened, Squidoo has been taken over by Hubpages and will soon transfer all lensmasters to the Hubpages platform. I got the announcement when I logged into my account this morning. Before I decide to transfer my lenses to Hubpages I'd like to ask a few questions about Hubpages. Can you promote amazon products? What is their filter like compared to Squidoo's? Am I better off just taking the content to my own site?
#main internet marketing discussion forum #bought #hubpage #hubpages #questions #squidoo #users
  • Banned
    Yes, yes, yes, yes and . In that order.

    You have nothing to gain by using HubPages instead of your own site (and nothing to gain by using both compared with using two of your own sites). Learn "the lessons of Squidoo" and stop letting other people own and control "your" pages.
    • [ 6 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Except for

      - A second site to promote whatever you are doing. Do you like putting all of your eggs in one basket?

      - A backlink to your site.

      - Money from HubPages advertising and promotions.

      - Free advertising. Compare that to paying to promote your site in a signature graphic on the Warrior Forum. Why do that when you already have your own site?

      The point being having a HubPage and having a website are not mutually exclusive. Use both to maximum advantage. Even if using your own website is better than a HubPage, that doesn't mean you just ignore and trash a free resource that can only benefit you.

      .
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  • I just don' really know what I could do with a bunch of amazon reviews and random lenses. They don't really fit in with any of my current sites.
    • [3] replies
    • Transfer all your content on Squidoo to Hubpages. To answer your question, yes, Hubpages allows Amazon affiliate links and you can add Amazon products to your hub with your associates tag embedded, although they do take a cut of your earnings by displaying your tag and theirs randomly according to a certain percentage.
    • Banned
      Up to you. For me, this would be a no-brainer: it's surely better to earn all the commissions arising from them, and not to be subject to a completely unnecessary third party's ever-changeable terms of service, than to have HubPages "sharing" my own income with me. Just my perspective.
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    • Put them all on one new site then. Doesn't matter if the lens topics aren't related to each other. At least they won't be at the mercy of anyone else. Hubpages has their own set of restrictions and rules and you're likely to have to make changes to the content one way or another.

      While the lenses are still accessible:
      • Open the lens in public view and use your browser to File/Save Page As/Web Page, Complete - then you'll always be able to access what it looked like even after it's been moved or removed from Squidoo. (The tool to save a lens inside of Squidoo is a nightmare to use in recreating the content.)
      • Copy the content module by module into a post on a new domain (if you go that route) or on an existing domain if you're unsure what you're going to do with them. You can always save them as Drafts in one of your existing sites until you decide.
      • When you're ready to make the lens public as a post in a site of your own delete the lens from Squidoo, publish the lens on your new/existing site and then use the Google Fetch tool inside Google Webmaster Tools to submit each new URL for indexing. The new post should be indexed in minutes. (Just keep up to date on what Squidoo/Hubpages intends to do about payouts that are pending. If you delete a lens with money owed you may lose that money. Watch your timing on these steps.)
      Then add new content to the site to which you move the lenses - make it your personal blog and add any content you want. Add more reviews, add more monetized posts, and share links to your content through social media.

      You'll have fewer headaches and the start of your own site where you can write about random topics without worrying about whether or not you already have a site around that specific niche.
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  • This is a shame as it will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Internet Marketers who use Squidoo strictly as a promotion platform. Squidoo was much more lenient in the content they would allow as well as what they would allow you to link to.

    HubPages used to be an amazing source of traffic for me back in 2008-2009 when I was new to IM and producing lots of quality content. You used to be able to promote both Clickbank & Amazon, as well as link to your blogs, squeeze pages, etc.

    If I remember correctly it was back in early 2010 that they changed their policies. I remember I had over 100 lenses published and many of them were earning me Amazon, Clickbank, and Adsense commissions. I logged in one day to find that all but 3 of them had been taken offline "awaiting corrections". Basically they wanted me to remove all Clickbank links, squeeze page links, and even links to blogs that linked to Clickbank products!

    Actually it worked out for the best because it was that day that I set up my first WordPress niche blog and started publishing all of the content they had taken down to it. Within a couple of months that 1 blog was making more than all of those lenses did combined! I don't think I ever published another piece of content to a website that I didn't own after that. It was actually a blessing in disguise!

    IMO, however, HubPages is not going to be good for Squidoo and it's users. I hope I'm wrong though.
    • [1] reply
    • That's the silver lining! When something like this happens it pushes you to explore outside your comfort zone. Sounds like you benefited nicely!

      (Now, stop hogging the rain on the east side of town. We on the west side need some, too! But you can keep the wind...)

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  • Ok, a little clarification please...

    Hubpages bought Squidoo so does this mean that the Squidoo.com domain is going to be shut down? I have SEVERAL lenses ranked on page one for different niches promoting clickbank products.

    These lenses have brought me a solid income each month for the past 5 years. Will this effect my lenses on the first page of Google?
    • [1] reply
    • Hard to say - Squidoo says they'll put in a 301 redirect from the old URL for your lens (IF your lens makes the cut and gets transferred) to the new URL on HubPages. How that's going to play out in Google rankings is an open question.

      I recall reading that a 301 redirect *can* lead to recovering the rankings held by the original URL but I have no idea if that still holds, if that always applies, or if there's an interim period of time where neither URL shows up where you'd expect. A good question for the SEO subsection and experts.

      I suspect that it won't be too long before squidoo.com simply redirects to HubPages and there's no squidoo.com site at all. I don't know that for sure but that's how I've interpreted their announcements. They have a full post and a FAQ post available through their hq.squidoo page.
  • I stopped using squidoo and hubpages more than a year ago and those articles supposedly posted to them are now ranking very high on my own authority sites. The best thing to do is always creating your own site where you have full control of everything.
  • On a side note, I have been using Weebly the past year or so and they will let you put whatever you want on their site. They rank really easily too. So I guess I will continue to use them.
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    Squidoo Bought Out By Hubpages - A Few Questions For Hubpage Users

    It's happened, Squidoo has been taken over by Hubpages and will soon transfer all lensmasters to the Hubpages platform. I got the announcement when I logged into my account this morning. Before I decide to transfer my lenses to Hubpages I'd like to ask a few questions about Hubpages. Can you promote amazon products? What is their filter like compared to Squidoo's? Am I better off just taking the content to my own site?