I've been a SquidAngel for many years and never thought that, one day, I'd have to fold my wings for ever... Sad? Not at all... Surprisingly, I'm happy to see the Angel programme retired for good as it's been a while that I wanted to resign.
When I first started Squidoo-ing, 6+ years ago, I used it mainly to promote my personal websites, whether marketing or holiday related.
I didn't know that it would become an addictive game and that, one day, I'd join the Giant Challenge and would become a Giant 50, proudly showcasing my classy badge nor did I know I'd become a Giant 100 or end up with an account filled with 192 lenses especially designed to drive traffic to... themselves and not to my personal websites.
One thing I wasn't aware of is that I'd become a SquidAngel and would keep my wings for so many years.
Angeling was something I really enjoyed on Squidoo. These wings I was provided with allowed me to give outstanding lenses an accollade while I could also DING a bad lens.
See, I haven't said "amazing content lenses" (I don't know how to create amazing content, though) as I consider the overall look as important as the content of the lens itself: making a beautiful lens implies that you work really hard on them and should be rewarded as much as your UNIQUE content.
Angeling was also delightful because I could browse lenses I was interested in, read them entirely without culpabilisation - reading a lens is time consuming and while I read a lens I don't work on my own lenses or sites. Angeling was part of my job... so it allowed me to procrastinate as much as I wanted to - and believe me, I'm the procrastination queen ;)
Dinging BAD lenses was a real pleasure. TOS violations shouldn't be rewarded, therefore clicking on that red thumb down button was something I regularly did. However, dinged lenses didn't stay long in the low ranks, of course. Actually I thought many dings would send HQ an alert on the low quality or policies violation but I've never seen dinged lenses locked nor deleted from the huge Squidoo library.
Never mind. I loved angeling but am very happy that this programme was retired and my wings folded. I've seen so many things during my angel time.
One thing that made me angry was the time they implemented the neighbourhood angel programme. Each angel was assigned a "neighbourhood" --> I was given a holiday category (summer fun) along with the history category.
Then all the angels from the category gathered on Ning as it was suggested by community organizers. At first this gathering was nothing more than providing each others with suggestions on how to cope with our duties, which exact category would this angel cover today and things like that.
However, my group included a majority of RocketMoms (no, not RocketSquids, RocketMoms --> they called themselves the smartest women on the Web). And the group quickly recommended lenses to bless; mostly lenses built by their fellow RMs.
I thus quickly left that Ning group and did my angeling duties on my own. I think they were reported by someone as community organizers sent out an email stating that such behaviours were prohibited and put angels at the risk of getting banned for good.
But these were behaviours that have inclined me to keep away from such groups and learned to be wary of these people.
Apart from this, I and many other honest SquidAngels were aware of angel squads blessing each others' lenses, people asking for blessings, blessings given in the hope of a like or blessing, so many people relied only on internal traffic to push their lenses in the top tier and benefit from this huge tier payout... I'm honest and integrity is my motto : getting paid from my colleague's efforts and not mine isn't fair.
We've also seen cheaters selling blessings on some websites, they were found but never punished. Angel groups coming from some card selling website pushing their fellows in the top tier was also something we were aware of. But HQ never took serious and strict measures to put an end to the blessing market.
I think that brand new lensmasters just can't believe this would happen, they just don't understand the importance of cheating for some lensmasters. They just don't know that some absolutely need to get internal traffic because they want to make a living on Squidoo and don't understand that in reality Squidoo isn't meant to make a living. It is meant to add that small additional money to your own monthly or weekly wages while sharing things you love.
When such a game is allowed, when such a gift is exploited for someone's sole profit, it MUST be cancelled. Then was the angel programme. So from now on, I won't be writing here as a former SquidAngel. Just see my as an average old time lensmaster who's trying to find a solution in that Squidoo mess that we, all Squids, are trying to fight.
Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66
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