Tier numbers have been posted in the official forums. Squidoo's payout for the month of August have dramatically dropped, once again. Is it the beginning of the end for the site? Is Halloween cancelled on Squidoo? Are we going to see an end of year season as miserable as the poor people in Victor Hugo's novel?
Despite the stats for the site as a whole that are increasing a little bit, traffic numbers on an individual basis are still very low. Given the season: Halloween marketing season has set in two months ago, such low traffic numbers aren't a good sign for the whole site.
I really fear the Halloween payout (October) to be as miserable as the entire year. Not to mention Christmas that might even be cancelled if tier numbers don't increase by the end of the month.
So some might argue that traffic stats are getting a little better. But they don't seem to recall that the new lens format was made available for Giants this week and that beta-testers built those "lenslets" (that is Paul Ward's word) by the dozens in the past weeks. So with an increase in the number of lenses, there's a logic increase in traffic.
Still HubPages is placed high above Squidoo in terms of traffic !
Now we'll see next month stats as it seems that HQ has done it again and locked entire accounts - especially old, very old timers' accounts. Those that were beta testers in the early days of Squidoo. Those that made the site what it had become. Those that allowed Squidoo to earn a lot of money.
Sales have dropped compared with previous years as well. Although someone not long ago pretended that we all benefited from the huge traffic peak last year, I can say that I did NOT. Absolutely not !
I haven't got more traffic last year than previous years. Instead, last year, when doing a comparison for the same period (second part of the year), I can see a clear traffic loss - around 10% on my whole account - I had 200 lenses at the time.
Now I'm left with 138 lenses, out of them 15% don't get any traffic at all - they are seasonal lenses and always had some traffic but this year, seasonal lenses' traffic is generally zero. This also clearly shows that Google doesn't love Squidoo any more.
Now while we can look at the stats as a whole we must also check the stats on an individual basis. While browsing forums, I noticed that many lensmasters experience a huge loss of traffic on their own accounts. So where do that "good" traffic stats come from? Internal traffic to Rocket Squid and other quest lenses? That also could inflate the stats.
Some lensmasters see an increase in their traffic numbers but they're so few of them. When looking at the official forum posts, I notice that some more recent lensmasters seem to be satisfied with 50 weekly visits that they find a "good number". Hm... They surely never see a lens that would generate 30,000 visits/week. Or as it happened one year, a single lens that brought its owner 1 MILLION visitors/week!
We only old timers know what Squidoo is experiencing nowadays. And to say the truth, while there was once in one forum a thread that would ask some of us if we feared the end of year on Squidoo and while I answered "no"... I say now that I really fear Halloween and Christmas cancellation.
Is there a future for Squidoo?
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
Despite the stats for the site as a whole that are increasing a little bit, traffic numbers on an individual basis are still very low. Given the season: Halloween marketing season has set in two months ago, such low traffic numbers aren't a good sign for the whole site.
I really fear the Halloween payout (October) to be as miserable as the entire year. Not to mention Christmas that might even be cancelled if tier numbers don't increase by the end of the month.
So some might argue that traffic stats are getting a little better. But they don't seem to recall that the new lens format was made available for Giants this week and that beta-testers built those "lenslets" (that is Paul Ward's word) by the dozens in the past weeks. So with an increase in the number of lenses, there's a logic increase in traffic.
Still HubPages is placed high above Squidoo in terms of traffic !
Now we'll see next month stats as it seems that HQ has done it again and locked entire accounts - especially old, very old timers' accounts. Those that were beta testers in the early days of Squidoo. Those that made the site what it had become. Those that allowed Squidoo to earn a lot of money.
Sales have dropped compared with previous years as well. Although someone not long ago pretended that we all benefited from the huge traffic peak last year, I can say that I did NOT. Absolutely not !
I haven't got more traffic last year than previous years. Instead, last year, when doing a comparison for the same period (second part of the year), I can see a clear traffic loss - around 10% on my whole account - I had 200 lenses at the time.
Now I'm left with 138 lenses, out of them 15% don't get any traffic at all - they are seasonal lenses and always had some traffic but this year, seasonal lenses' traffic is generally zero. This also clearly shows that Google doesn't love Squidoo any more.
Now while we can look at the stats as a whole we must also check the stats on an individual basis. While browsing forums, I noticed that many lensmasters experience a huge loss of traffic on their own accounts. So where do that "good" traffic stats come from? Internal traffic to Rocket Squid and other quest lenses? That also could inflate the stats.
Some lensmasters see an increase in their traffic numbers but they're so few of them. When looking at the official forum posts, I notice that some more recent lensmasters seem to be satisfied with 50 weekly visits that they find a "good number". Hm... They surely never see a lens that would generate 30,000 visits/week. Or as it happened one year, a single lens that brought its owner 1 MILLION visitors/week!
We only old timers know what Squidoo is experiencing nowadays. And to say the truth, while there was once in one forum a thread that would ask some of us if we feared the end of year on Squidoo and while I answered "no"... I say now that I really fear Halloween and Christmas cancellation.
Is there a future for Squidoo?
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
I just deleted more 10 lenses a couple of days ago - the ones that hadn't had any traffic at all for the week. I'll probably do the same next week. My idea is to delete lenses, many of which have done well in the past, so I can use them elsewhere even though I'll probably rewrite and update them. The sooner they come down, the sooner Google de-indexes them.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any Halloween lenses but I'm trying to decide whether to remove my Christmas ones and try to use them elsewhere ASAP. I think I've left it too late this year and I don't expect them to do much on Squidoo.
Small increases in traffic don't encourage me at all. Historically, September has always seen an increase as people return from holidays and are spending more time indoors. There should have been a much more significant rise if Squidoo had really turned a corner in terms of traffic.