Squidoo payday was early this month. Actually, it seems that payout is, month after month, sooner than it was in the past. Are the lower amount of lensmasters as well as the lower amount of money to be paid out the motives for such a strange change.
Anyway, payday was early. Sadly while early payday is often a good thing, when it comes to the amount of money that's dropping in your bank account, it's not the same tune. I've never seen such a low August payout. At least, and from day 1 I worked on Squidoo more seriously than with the goal of building backlinks for my other sites, I don't remember having got an amount as small as the one I've got yesterday.
Sales dropped dramatically since the introduction of the new Amazon link limit. Oh I already hear the "I know everything, I do better than you" saying that their earnings increased (but never provide any proof). I hear the same people claiming that if I don't get sales it's because I don't build my pages for sales purpose - yeah... and why did I make lots of sales those previous years out of the exact same lenses? Hm...
I hear them pretend that last year traffic peak was fake traffic, robot traffic... Yeah, I know : robots use to buy from Squidoo lenses. I hear them state that I do everything wrong and that the new Amazon link limit was the best change ever introduced on Squidoo.
Well, let me tell you that it is untrue. It's the worst thing they ever implemented. Especially for people like me! Understand that I don't write stories, I don't write guides for people looking for art or history. I don't write tutorials for people who are looking for car repair tips nor do I write for people looking for long lenses filled with text.
I write for a very specific audience: people who enjoy nothing like window shopping. People who are looking for visual pages. People who are looking for a nice display of the 100s of different items from the exact same category and that they don't have time to look for themselves.
When you look for a Halloween costume, do you really care the personal story the seller tries to sell you along with the costume?
When you look for a Halloween party prop, don't you want to see ALL available models? Will you really buy the very first one you saw while running your search on Google, Yahoo or Bing?
I'm pretty sure that you won't.
The same applies to my lens readers : they look for PICTURES, not for stories. They don't bother my personal life, personal stories just like I don't mind stories when I look for something really specific that can't be sold without a lot of images or different models.
And all this end of year holiday season - in which I include Halloween and Thanksgiving because Halloween opens the season - will be ruined by this stupid Amazon link limit.
And if it was only the Amazon link limit... But there's also the huge traffic drop on an individual basis. Halloween season's on... However traffic hasn't joined the party. I only have one lens with traffic in the 1,000. I've never seen that. Some of my Halloween lenses used to generate traffic in the 5 figures...
What a disaster!
I can even predict that my December payout (October earnings) will be more or less 1/5th of what it was after 2009. Yes, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the best years for me on Squidoo.
Because of this, I don't plan on building new lenses. I don't spend 2 days on a lens just for the pleasure: I work for the money, of course. The pleasure comes with the expectation of a monetary reward. That is my way of working online. I don't have time to waste online. All the time I spend on the Internet MUST be financially productive otherwise I don't see the point staying connected from 7 AM till 11 PM.
There's even more to be said but the way things have turned, I'd better stop writing here and go work on my own sites. At least, they still earn me some money and if I want to waste time on them, I can do so: after all, they're mine!
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
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