Another Batch of Deleted Lenses

Although I have never had any lens locked on Squidoo - not since the new policies introduction (and just one locked lens in the past for a "junk" word in it, lens deleted: I've never played that silly game and never agreed to cast my pride aside asking for HQ to unlock what they locked by mistake) - I started to delete the lenses that could be locked as I didn't want to waste time modifying them.

For a few weeks I don't delete lenses that might get locked, I decided to delete non seasonal zero traffic lenses. Last time I deleted a batch of such lenses, I was left with 152 of them. Today I deleted another batch but had to modify my overall lensography as I was about to delete an entire lensography and 50% of its matching lenses! 

It's the first time it happens since I joined Squidoo. This makes me realize how Squidoo's lost any kind of interest for readers. I've never had zero traffic lenses and never had to delete a lensography. But today, I was left with no other choice. 

In reality, when I went to check that lensography I noticed that a great part of it was already missing - my introduction texts were still there, but not the featured lenses. Yes, I deleted a great deal of these how-to and online business related lenses earlier.

With the deletion of 50% of the remaining featured lenses on this page, the lensography had become useless. So I moved the two remaining modules - featuring 5 lenses in total over my general lensography and deleted the other lensography AND the matching lenses.

So now my Squidoo portfolio displays the tragic number of 142 featured lenses and 2 work in progress ones plus a lens that I don't plan to make live and will move to my other sites.

The most surprising thing that happened when checking my lens list was that one Christmas lens fell into WIP! Yes! A Christmas lens! I've never had a holiday lens in WIP. NEVER! That means a lot to me, especially regarding Squidoo's health.

We're slowly getting to Christmas time, such lenses are supposed to rise... and one of mine sunk. If holiday season lenses don't get traffic, I don't think Squidoo is worth working on any more. 

It makes me sad to see my work go away. Oh it won't be lost, just moved but I designed those pages for Squidoo's specific lens layout ; not for my sites nor blogs. They were bespoke pages - all my lenses are bespoke, to say the truth. So I'll have to redesign all these pages in order for them to fit with my sites layout.

Some of the "how-to" lenses I deleted today will become posts here. They'll certainly help you, my readers and fellow lensmasters, build your own sites else where than on Squidoo. In addition, they'll help you monetize the sites while other split lenses will allow you to make money doing something you will enjoy.

So stay tuned for the next batch of deleted lenses. Hopefully I don't plan on deleting too many of them as I want to keep my Giant status but I can reduce my portfolio to 110 lenses if some others lose traffic.

Still, I'm considering splitting my Squidoo account into several ones: one by holiday for example. Or two separate accounts: one that would include all holiday related lenses and another that would be a more "personal" one would host all other lenses (recipes, history and of course my strawberry lenses).

This requires the lens transfer to be allowed for some time once again so as not having to rewrite the pages entirely. And I would do this for two reasons: finally having a Squidoo lensmaster name matching my portfolio that doesn't carry any business related lenses any more and being able to not have to suffer too much from the subdomain switch the day it'll happen. This way I'd lose my Giant status but it wouldn't matter too much since it would be for a good reason.

Oh, by the way, one strange thing happened after the previous lens deletion batch: my traffic increased by 15%. That's not a lot but still it was noticeable since with less lenses I got more traffic. I presume this is caused by the Halloween shopping season that's starting. 

Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66