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02/08/2013

New Amazon Link Limit Filter In Action!

Squidoo has rolled the new Amazon link limit filter out! I woke up yesterday with 30 flagged lenses! On a general number of 166 lenses, it didn't look too scary.

I thus started modifying my lenses to comply the new Amazon link limit policy. To say the truth it's hard to remove most of my Amazon links since these lenses were series of product focused. Keeping your links to 1 or 2 is easy if your lens relates to ONE product. Keeping your links to 1 or 2 is easy if your lens is a personal one. But keeping your links to less than 20 when you list the most beautiful Christmas ornaments for a tree or the best gifts to get a wine lover, is harder. Then when you made a top 100 products it's definitely impossible !


Still, I tried to remove my Amazon links. At first sight I'd say that now most of these lenses are pure content lenses, nothing to really show my reader a difference between this and that, no way to show them that there are different types of products nor how they look. Are they going to clik on the just one featured product per section? Not sure. To say the truth I'm convinced they're NOT going to click on them.

So my sales are going to decrease - if it's doable since they already dramatically dropped these past months - and my Squidoo revenues are going to drop accordingly. Then I'll be able to state that I worked for peanuts, for nothing. That my wages for the job I did there is the one I wouldn't accept if an offline business owner would offer me the job! Who would want to work for $1/day? 

Hey after all, I worked hard to make the lenses, worked hard to update them and work hard making them comply to the new policy. The latter keeping me away from getting deserved money! 

The first lenses modified, I refreshed my dash and... oh my, another batch of flagged lenses ! Few hours later, bam ! Another batch of flagged lenses ! The way things are handled, I'll never see the end of this mess! 

Does HQ really think that I don't have anything else to do in my life than updating and modifying lenses? If they, the Squidoo staff, are paid for this on a monthly basis, I am NOT ! I have an outside life ! 

So please, try to get your filters to flag lenses all in one shot !

But that is not all!

While making the changes and although those lenses were flagged for the Amazon link limit, once the change done, the flag moved from Amazon link to... "low content quality" - the low quality content message Squidoo sends to their lensmasters about their own quality content. 

So by removing those excessive Amazon modules or products, I removed the descriptions... and, therefore, the keyword density increased or the amount of written content decreased! Making me having to work even more to make these lenses pass filters with flying colors (for how many hours?)

The other thing that makes things worse is that on many of my lenses, removing those excess links doesn't work. Because the lenses are made to showcase more than 20 products - readers MUST be provided with more products. 

These lenses need to be split into different ones. This means that I should create more lenses. And I don't want to. Now I'm really done with Squidoo. I just want to get the money I deserve for the hard work and let the lenses earn me money on autopilot. But I don't want to invest - understand WASTE - an additional minute working for nothing, making new lenses to please the new policy and, in one week or two having to face another new rule requiring from my even more wasted time.

No, no, no! HQ doesn't manage the changes the right way! They should implement changes all at once, not every other day or week. That is NOT the way one runs a business as huge as Squidoo. HQ should definitely hire a specialist, someone whose job is to handle such problems in a professional way.

Am I negative ? Indeed, I am ! How do you want to be positive when all HQ seem to want these days, is get rid of their oldest lensmasters, those who made Squidoo what is had become and just seem to want to ruin your work ? They treat us like their employees, just as if we were actually paid for doing that job. We are not! We are because we use those famous Amazon modules, otherwise, we wouldn't get a penny out of our work!

Shooting us out of Squidoo and ruining our hard work isn't probably their goal but it really looks like! And yes, I post my deep thoughts here mostly because inside of Squidoo we aren't allowed to tell the truth, to say how much we are disappointed, how much all they're doing since March isn't getting us more traffic, instead, traffic is still decreasing, earnings are still dropping.

It's time to see the plain truth: you haven't reached your goal - if you ever had one - and you do it the wrong way. That is a fact! If you did it like it should be done, traffic and sales would have come back already.


6 comments:

  1. I'll post anonymously as even on blogs it isn't safe to criticize Squidoo headquarters these days.

    There have been a few lensmasters with locked accounts after they said things on blogs and forums that HQ didn't like. On the other hand, lensmasters who are cheerleaders for Squidoo have been rewarded with Lens of the Day (in one case, twice in a few weeks).

    Thank you for saying what many of us old-timers are thinking, but are afraid to say publicly.

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    1. My account has never been locked for what I said, and as you can see I don't refrain myself from expressing my thoughts. Now I sometimes admit that Squidoo shouldn't be taken as responsible for the whole mess - after all, google have their fair share of the responsibilities.

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  2. I thoroughly agree. It's as though Squidoo were a dictatorship and changed the laws every week! Disagree or try to point out problems and you disappear...

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  4. Well, thousands and thousands writing about shit that no one really needs. I've seen writers(?) with a hundred lenses making 5 dollars a week !. They still continue this nonsense of writing these lenses with the ridiculous belief they are HELPING the world. Who cares about xmas decoration ideas... good God ... Junk . Squidoo-ites should consider creating real affiliate marketing models and spend the time where are reasonable income is at least possible. Squidoo enthusiasts have been bitten just like Google penalizes many web sites with their many changes... the only difference is that one can at least make some real money with Google tools like Adsense . Squidoo ia a joke for 90 percent of the writers... one can make more doing surveys on line

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    1. I've also seen lensmasters making thousands of dollars with that "junk" as you say. Xmas decoration ideas worked pretty will until the beginning of this year. Providing a wide array of different items was extremely productive. Once we had to limit ourselves to 20 Amazon links, sales dropped and it was the end of the prolific days.

      Now with those product review lenses that generate next to nothing in terms of traffic and sales, I'd agree with what you write, they're supposed to "help" the world but who cares personal stuff these days unless it relates to serious matters like diseases, homelessness and other things?

      I mean, your personal story with a knife to cut vegetables doesn't interest me a second.Your uncle Sam's red sneakers and why he loves them either.

      But each of us have their own thinking about who Squidoo's helping - these days I feel it helps no one.

      And you're absolutely right when you say that 90% of Squidoo's writers don't make money.

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