Squidoo?? Are they shutting down?

Tom Addams

9 years ago

This is what I heard. Think I read about it week before last on another forum.

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Bill_Lawrence

9 years ago

Yeah, I went to a squidoo group on facebook. It's closed down. Imagine all the hard work those people put into their lenses and now it's just about wiped out unless they're transferring over to hubpages.

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dana67 9 years ago

I agree. Only accounts that had featured lenses were transferred over to HubPages automatically. There was a big announcement about the Squidoo closure not too long ago.
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Tom Addams

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Bill_Lawrence

Yeah, I went to a squidoo group on facebook. It's closed down. Imagine all the hard work those people put into their lenses and now it's just about wiped out unless they're transferring over to hubpages.

That's right. If this is really happening, and as Dana mentions, they're only transferring featured lenses, this is a cruel move. It's not so much the hardcore marketer that gets hurt either, the churn and burn type, who either left Squidoo a long while back or makes them by pressing a button. It's the regular folk who had them as hobbies, or who had them as monetized hobbies but aren't really in the game. Pretty poor business move on Squidoo's part, imo.

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Azwan7

9 years ago

This is sad news by the way.
All the hard work / energy to create a lens from Squidoo just gone like that.
For me, it is a cruel move by them.

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Bill_Lawrence

9 years ago

I'm glad I kinda gave up on squidoo years ago when they removed one of lenses that I worked extremely hard on....smh I was pissed when they removed one lense...some of those people had thousands. That's why it's vital to create your own websites.

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Tom Addams 9 years ago

Originally Posted by Bill_Lawrence

That's why it's vital to create your own websites.

This.

I do use outside sites for SEO, but like Bill says, having your own money site is essential.
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- JohnnyPlan 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Shoppers
  
  Who's next? Maybe blogger.com
  
  Not likely as blogger.com is a blog platform (similar to a free website builder but for blogs), that lets you create your own blog, where as Squidoo was a place that you could submit your articles under stringent quality guidelines. The Squidoo staff micro managed the Lenses so it was tough to keep anything but highest quality content up there. Obviously, there are some restrictions on what type of blog you can have on Blogger, as many 'make money online' or spam blogs get shut down. But, many blogs stay up for years, even after abandoned by their owners. Also, Blogger is owned by deep-pockets Google, so no fears that Blogger is going away anytime soon.
  
  Originally Posted by Get Rich Methods
  
  This.
  
  I do use outside sites for SEO, but like Bill says, having your own money site is essential.
  
  This has always been true and will continue to be true and this situation proves it even more.
  
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Chris30K

9 years ago

Yeah, I always saw Squidoo as pointless, I thought this would happen eventually.

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Shoppers

9 years ago

Who's next? Maybe blogger.com

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aussiebrah 9 years ago

I'm glad my strong dislike of the name "squidoo" kept me away.

Seriously, who thought up the name "squidoo". Also, a "lens" seriously thats just lame.
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emigre

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Shoppers

Who's next? Maybe blogger.com

Hubpages is next.

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Bill_Lawrence

9 years ago

Originally Posted by emigre

Hubpages is next.

You're probably right. I can't imagine them being around much longer. They weren't any better than squidoo.

Wow, I'm just thinking, I'd be extremely pissed if I woke up to an announcement like that and I've worked years on creating residual income to have it all wiped away. That sucks.

I believe some of those people were making a killing each month with those lenses. There was a time when I made $1000/wk with my old account because the lenses would rank so high in google.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by Bill_Lawrence

I'd be extremely pissed if I woke up to an announcement like that and I've worked years on creating residual income to have it all wiped away.

Nobody who understands the importance of being in control of your own business should ever have been depending on Squidoo for "residual income". The writing has been on the wall for years: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8109462

Originally Posted by Bill_Lawrence

I believe some of those people were making a killing each month with those lenses.

This simply isn't so, Bill.

It was always very clear, both from the earnings information that Squidoo actually published, and from discussion in both official and unofficial Squido forums, that the numbers of people earning anything close to "a living" from Squidoo lenses, worldwide, were absolutely minuscule.

It simply isn't true that any appreciable numbers of people were making a killing there.

Very, very few people ever made much.

And not nearly as much as they'd have made doing on their own sites (where their pages would have ranked exactly the same as they did on Squidoo!) what they were doing at Squidoo, anyway. The reasons were always very apparent!

The whole myth that Squidoo was some kind of "authority site" and that pages would somehow, magically, rank there "just because they were on Squidoo" was never anything less than delusional. It came right out of the Urban Myth School of Internet Marketing.

Newly made Squidoo lenses were PR-0 pages just like any other newly made page on anyone else's website.

The fact that Squidoo had a high-ranking "own home page" signified a great big, round, fat zero.

Websites don't "have page ranks": only pages have page ranks.

Originally Posted by Bill_Lawrence

There was a time when I made $1000/wk with my old account because the lenses would rank so high in google.

Ok ...

.

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Steven Wagenheim 9 years ago

IM is dead. Long live IM.
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Bill_Lawrence

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Nobody who understands the importance of being in control of your own business should ever have been depending on Squidoo for "residual income". The writing has been on the wall for years: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8109462

This simply isn't so, Bill.

It was always very clear, both from the earnings information that Squidoo actually published, and from discussion in both official and unofficial Squido forums, that the numbers of people earning anything close to "a living" from Squidoo lenses, worldwide, were absolutely minuscule.

It simply isn't true that any appreciable numbers of people were making a killing there.

Very, very few people ever made much.

And not nearly as much as they'd have made doing on their own sites (where their pages would have ranked exactly the same as they did on Squidoo!) what they were doing at Squidoo, anyway. The reasons were always very apparent!

The whole myth that Squidoo was some kind of "authority site" and that pages would somehow, magically, rank there "just because they were on Squidoo" was never anything less than delusional. It came right out of the Urban Myth School of Internet Marketing.

Newly made Squidoo lenses were PR-0 pages just like any other newly made page on anyone else's website.

The fact that Squidoo had a high-ranking "own home page" signified a great big, round, fat zero.

Websites don't "have page ranks": only pages have page ranks.

Ok ...

.

I believe some were making a killing. You don't have to always base things on what a person is earning from squidoo directly. There's members who promoted their own products. I know first hand that there was good money to be made there because I did it about 3 years ago with very little effort.

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Bill_Lawrence

9 years ago

My claim of $1000 per week was not based on what squidoo paid me. It was for a product I imported and sold directly through squidoo. I'm just saying they were good for ranking high in the search engine for long tail keywords. I received a lot of organic traffic from the lenses I had.

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kindsvater

9 years ago

Newly made Squidoo lenses were PR-0 pages just like any other newly made page on anyone else's website.

The fact that Squidoo had a high-ranking "own home page" signified a great big, round, fat zero.

Websites don't "have page ranks": only pages have page ranks

This is misleading because it is incomplete. Take two identical web pages, everything else being equal, with one placed on a new domain and another on authority site. The one on the authority site will rank higher.

While "PageRank" may be a page-level ranking score, it's but one of many scores determining overall ranking. Another is domain authority.

That is why a page on Squidoo can rank higher than putting the page on a domain you are paying for.

Not that I disagree with the proposition of it being better to have content on "my domain" - which really means, so long as I am willing to pay for a domain and web hosting, but I think it foolish to ignore placements on major domains simply because the placement is on a new PR0 page.

.

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JeanneLynn

9 years ago

I read on another forum that Google took them out of the search. I'm not sure if that's true or not. I had a few lenses. It's just so much better to have your own website.

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pertinax

Banned 9 years ago

Before 1 year,Squidoo banned my account for nothing.I wasn`t even active on this site.
The Squidoo concept was nice,but it just isn`t worth it to invest efforts in adding 100 lenses and get banned for nothing.

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Tom Addams

9 years ago

I have to agree with Bill here. Sorry, Alexa.

When you've been doing this job a while (2 decades) and when you hang out with some of the best in the business (like some of the folks here on WF, on other forums, at conventions, and in day-to-day business life), you get a good feel for who's all talk (people who just go by what they read) and who's talking from experience. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Bill DID make $1,000 a week from Squidoo. Making him out to be a liar is unfair, bad manners, and - sorry to say - displays quite a lack of knowledge about Squidoo marketing.

He mentions 1 thing in particular that convinces me of this: long-tails. The rest is just intuition, but he's talking about figures that were common 3 years ago, among a number of marketers.

Anyway, that's all I'll say on the subject. I don't want to pick on anyone.

What I think we mustn't forget is this: money is not the biggest issue here. What I find wrong about the move is how it affects the regular people. You'd be surprised, I think, how regular folk put more of their heart and soul into online projects than many of us. They'll write thousands upon thousands of words, spend months and years adding content, and to have it all taken away - POOF - must have hurt a lot of people in more ways than financial.

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@tjr

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Get Rich Methods

He mentions 1 thing in particular that convinces me of this: long-tails. The rest is just intuition, but he's talking about figures that were common 3 years ago, among a number of marketers.

I'm going to hope for poor wording here, but did you really just try to say that the use of the term long-tail (which is a very basic IM term), along with your "intuition" is enough to say that no one can question his income claims?

Let's be real, until a bank statement is produced anything that anyone says should be taken with a grain of salt. Let's not try to say otherwise: there are total novices who don't need to hear that use of buzzwords = successful marketer.

/rant

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.X.

9 years ago

I'm sorry but it's not cruel. It's their business
which a lot of people exploited and ultimately
ruined. For those who did provide good content
they need to look at THOSE people, not Squidoo.

And I hope those good content providers were
wise enough to have kept copies of what they
created.

There are two lessons here -

1. Don't build your business on someone
else's platform whether that be Facebook,
Squidoo, Blogger - or relying on Google for
free traffic.

And if you do, enjoy the free ride while
it lasts because it won't last forever.

2. This comes about because of tactics
taught right here, among other places, that
did nothing but populate the site with trash
making it worthless.

Point 2 is what's sad. And the fact that
many consider that "Internet marketing".

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Alex Blades 9 years ago

People "worked hard" to spam the crap out of Squidoo, and now they are upset that they are shutting down

You can't get upset over something you don't own. Put some of that "hard work" into your own sites, and you will have nothing to worry about.
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JohnnyPlan

9 years ago

Originally Posted by .X.

I'm sorry but it's not cruel. It's their business
which a lot of people exploited and ultimately
ruined. For those who did provide good content
they need to look at THOSE people, not Squidoo.

And I hope those good content providers were
wise enough to have kept copies of what they
created.

There are two lessons here -

1. Don't build your business on someone
else's platform whether that be Facebook,
Squidoo, Blogger - or relying on Google for
free traffic.

And if you do, enjoy the free ride while
it lasts because it won't last forever.

2. This comes about because of tactics
taught right here, among other places, that
did nothing but populate the site with trash
making it worthless.

Point 2 is what's sad. And the fact that
many consider that "Internet marketing".

Although, I would never rely upon a free platform like Hubpages to publish content, some people do as they are writers, not website builders or even bloggers. There is a difference between a blogger and a writer and some bloggers actually know how to write. But, not every writer knows how to blog (that is write in a way as to engage the audience). To blog, you need to do more than publish the wikipedia articles you could easily find on Squidoo or Hubpages. So for that reason, it makes sense these people were actually using Squidoo/Hubpages as a platform as there is a built in social network so some possibility of traffic.

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Squidoo?? Are they shutting down?

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