Is Squidoo Worth The Time? I Discovered Them To Be Unreasonable and Not Congruent
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Are you asking the question I asked this weekend…”Is Squidoo Worth The Time?”
I have no idea what you’re story is, but here’s mine.
First, if you don’t know what Squidoo is, Google it. It’s a social media platform where you can create lenses (pages) and talk about what you’re interested in, know about and want to share. Well… at least it USED to be.
I created several Squidoo Lenses between 2009 and 2011 and ranked for them pretty well.
Then the Google Slap took Squidoo and put them to the bottom of the totem pole.
All but one of my Squidoo lenses were removed from “published and placed into unpublished” where I, along with thousands of other entrepreneurs, had to undergo all kinds of fixes according to new rules and guidelines.
I edited the lenses according to their new guidelines and resubmitted.
But guess what?
No go. They just sat there unpublished in a “work in progress” mode. (They are still there by the way).
Ok… I had to move on. I was OVER it. Squidoo was not worth my time and effort to fuss over and were definitely not the only fish in the sea… (Pun Positively Intended!)
Fast Forward December 2012….
Is Squidoo Worth The Time To Publish Articles To?
It’s been a few years now and I had been thinking about whether to try Squidoo marketing again. I found myself asking this question… “Is Squidoo worth the time and effort to promote my business?
Here’s what I did to investigate.
Thing One – Check Squidoo’s Page Rank
The first thing I did was check Squidoo’s page rank which I found it be 7. What this means is if I can write articles and link people to my other blogs, it would be nice juice link to my content. A page rank 7 backlink is great.
Thing Two – Visited Forums To See What Others’ Were Experiencing
I then spent an hour or so inside various forums to find out what others’ experiences were and if it’s time to come back to Squidoo. What I found was a 50/50 split of opinions.
These opinions ranged from “love it and it’s great” to “would not waste my time“.
Okay, so I had page rank and no real confirmation on whether Squidoo was worth the time to pursue or not.
Thing Three – Check Squidoo’s Do’s and Don’ts
I then headed over to the Squidoo Do’s and Don’ts and didn’t find anything out I already didn’t know. In terms of my industry, the don’t tell me ‘no affiliate programs‘.
Okay, I get that. But, if you browse Squidoo’s search engine, you’ll find boo coo amounts of content for affiliate products. So what I saw was this….
Incongruentcy in enforcing their rules and guidelines. Squidoo is saying no affiliate programs yet their site is riddled with them.
Thing Four – My Decision to Try It
Having no strong opinion one way or the other whether this was now a viable way to spend a little time marketing using their platform, I decided to create a Squidoo lens.
There was just too much division over whether this would be effective today so I though what the heck…
I would TEST it and come to my own conclusions.
1) I did a little keyword research
2) I choose my topic and created an outline.
3) I fixed a cup of English Breakfast tea and began to write.
I had created 5 modules, one module for each of the components to Empower Network making up the Empower Network System.
I included pictures, my RSS feed and it was a great Lens. There was only 1 backlink to my Empower Network blog and it was filled with great value and original content.
Nothing pitching, nothing promotional, nothing commercial.
In fact, at the end of the last module, I mentioned that I had written additional articles if they cared to read them and in that included the link for them to go read more.
Published… will it stand?
I published it, sent it through Social Monkee and Tweeted it. This was Saturday evening.
(I know, most people are out on the town on Saturday evenings but this one, I was home exploring the Squidoo possibilities).
The next day I chatted with my business partner about what I’d done and was actually getting more excited about creating dozens of Lenses. I went so far as to prepare to do a video training for my team to show them how fast and simple and attractive a Squidoo Lens can be. I actually enjoy making them, they’re fun!
I made a second lens…
I tossed up a another Lens about speed blogging based on what I’d been doing the last couple of weeks and published that as well. The only link that was embedded was one where I mentioned where I learned about speed blogging from.
Then it happened…..My Confirmation…
Squidoo Was NOT Worth My Time
Monday, December 3, 2012 12:51 am, I receive an email with a subject line:
Squidoo Lens Lock Notification for empower-network-system
I’m thinking they nailed me for writing about an Affiliate Program which I already knew they would poo poo but again, I found MANY others with published lenses on the subject so I was testing and coming to my own conclusions based on my true results. I was thinking perhaps they weren’t enforcing their policies and wanted to see for myself.
After reading WHY I was locked out… I WAS SHOCKED!
It had NOTHING to do with my content being about an affiliate program. They said I copied it, that I had committed plagerism!
Really? That was an outright lie, one in which I’ve seen more than a few times!
Their action was nothing short of amazing but a strong reminder to all of us that we have no control over platforms ran by biased people. I’ll be sharing the perfect solution with you tomorrow and it’s great news!
In the meantime… here’s the email they sent:
Dear Squidoo Lensmaster,
You published a new lens yesterday (which is great!) but we see that it contains a high degree of duplicate content. This is a notification that your lens has been unpublished from public view.
==WHY WAS THIS LENS UNPUBLISHED?==
This lens was unpublished due to high quantities of content that exactly match content and writing posted elsewhere on the web. We call this duplicate content. A lens needs to contain original content that carries your personal point of view and words written by you, which are exclusive to your Squidoo lens and can’t be found anywhere else on the web. For content that you quote on your lens from another source, you need to be sure you’re crediting the source and including a link back to it.
We run regular and periodic reviews of lenses to enforce our policies, and most recently we have increased our systematic intolerance of duplicated content and plagiarism. Even if your lens has been published and live previously, that doesn’t mean we endorsed it. We reserve the right to take down any lens if we discover a violation.
Squidoo is a place for original content. We don’t allow large portions of content that are also found elsewhere on the Internet. Copy and pasted or duplicated content is generally not supported.
Quoting short passages of content, with appropriate credits and links to longer articles is fine. Copying content from other articles, bloggers, Wikipedia, etc. verbatim in large amounts without linking to it and/or passing it as your own is not fine. That is plagiarism.
Recycling your own work en masse, verbatim, across multiple lenses or multiple sites is also not allowed.
The rule of thumb is actually pretty simple: Squidoo and our partners and our readers are looking for a balance in favor of original content. There needs to be a high amount of originality to your lens (content, reviews, opinions, stories written by you that can’t be found anywhere else on the web).
==WHAT NOW?==
Since your lens is being unpublished for having large amounts of duplicate content, or for plagiarizing, and since both are against our Terms of Service, your lens will remain locked from view and eventually deleted.
My Response
I emailed them back and said…
Really? This is amazing. I wrote it from the flow of my thought, it was ALL original. This was just bogus!
I received an “auto reply” with no human on the other end giving me the link to fight a locked lens.
I could respond and go through the proper channels to have my lens unlocked on the basis that I wrote it, all original, nothing copied, over my cup of tea and spent about an hour on it, but I know that I’d be fighting for a lens on the top of affiliate marketing which is not allowed.
So, on the affiliate program, they’d get me anyway.
I noticed last night they removed my second lens on speed blogging from published and put it in “work in progress”. Then this morning it was back in published. I don’t know WHAT they are doing!
I did a little more research
I did a little research on unlocking Squidoo Lenses and I was flabbergasted what I found. I can’t speak from first hand knowledge, but only share what I read in forums and on other blog posts from individuals who had dealt with the unlocking police at Squidoo.
What I found confirmed 100% that I want nothing to do with Squidoo.
Without getting into the down and dirty, I can give you a nutshell.
The nutshell is there’s no congruency to who is OK to publish and who is going to get deleted. People get their Lenses locked all the time for no apparent reason nor explanation. Squidoo receives income from their advertisers and favors the lenses where Amazon links are supported.
Is Squidoo Worth The Time? My Conclusion.
NO. Nada. No way Jose’.
If you’re writing about your favorite Aunt Gertrude’s cookie cake or how to grow organic tomatoes or how to decide on what shoes to wear with what pants, you’re gonna love Squidoo.
If you have any other message, especially one in which you share business principles, product reviews and such, forget it. Don’t waste your time.
I felt like over the weekend I stepped back into a junior high school where kids were bickering and little groups of “I like you, you can stay” and “I don’t like you, you can’t be a part” was prominent. No thanks…
I won’t go back to Squidoo for a “third time”. I’m done. That’s my final answer and it’s sticking to it.
If you like to make money blogging about all the stuff you enjoy doing, you want to check out this hot little video going around the world to show you how you can do that. It’s pretty darn cool.