Squidoo Bluebox and Payday

Show me the money!

It was payday on Squidoo a few days ago. In my case, nothing to be worth speaking about since I haven't been paid: money owed stored in my reserve hopper. I'll get my payout next month since this one was a few cents below the new $25 min amount required to be paid.

Also I'm one of the few lucky ones who got a blueblox although no payment. And I presume this is because I've set some lenses to pay charities... As while I haven't been paid, charities were.

I don't think I'm gonna make payout each month since nowadays very few of my lenses get any kind of traffic. It is very strange as if it was mandatory for non giants and old timers to get a huge amount of their lenses getting low traffic rate of no traffic at all.

You know, I've deleted 14 lenses one month ago. These were below five visits/week lenses. I thus was happy to see my account with lenses that had visits only. Suddenly, it was like it is mandatory to have at least 15 lenses with NO traffic at all in your account. Yep I've seen 15 lenses which traffic dropped to zero and never shown a single visit since then. Strange is it?

This is not an incentive for me to build lenses of course so I'll be monitoring my remaining lenses and see what to do with them. I already don't expect much from Halloween since traffic has not started to take - although it might have taken for new lenses built on the site. But for mine which always brought huge traffic, it's more or less dead.

Now one might argue that I did something wrong, I'm not sure... I don't know and rather like to think that Google does not like my pages any more instead of thinking what I tend to think more and more.

See you soon.



Posted by Holly Day

Squidoo Lensrank Acting Strange...

Hi there, I hope everything's all right with you and your Squidoo or any other affiliate marketing endeavours. Although I still log into my dashboard on an everyday basis, I currently focus on my own sites. I'm not optimistic about my lenses' traffic and performance, so this explains that.

Last week I posted two of my sites for sale so as to be able to focus on broader ones that would include the two topics of the sites I sell. For one I got an offer from someone but it was not a purchase. Instead I now partner with the potential buyer and we both manage the site. The other will be posted for sale later on. Fingers crossed for the price to be reached and the site to be sold to someone who will care.

Before doing so I'll have to go check my webmaster tools out first, delete all bad backlinks if there are any and sell the site as a clean baby.

But anyway, today's post relates to the strange lensrank behaviors experienced on my Squidoo account.

As I said earlier, I planned on deleting all lenses that would not get traffic. Zero traffic lenses were thus deleted provided that:

• They were evergreen lenses,
• They did not make sales,
• Their traffic stats were stuck at zero (or 1-2 visits/week) for a certain amount of time.

That is how I ended up with 87 featured lenses - 1 WIP and anther WIP that has never been published.

Note that I did not delete lenses that would have at least 5 visit/week!

That is where the fun starts. I deleted all those lenses. As of today I have deleted 120+ lenses in total. Strangely these past weeks I noticed a new trend : zero traffic lenses are back! 

So let's say that I deleted 14 zero traffic lenses, these were the pages that did not get a single visit in several weeks. To be honest, I must admit that I also deleted some seasonal lenses. Those that did not perform in their matching season (Mardi gras lenses for example). 

As a matter of fact, although previous years my Mardi Gras lenses used to perform pretty well, this year they did not get the deserved traffic. The Venetian Carnival did, though. Anyways, Mardi Gras lenses will be moved to my holiday site.

So when I was finished with the lens deletion, all 87 left lenses did have traffic. However, 15 of them now have NO traffic at all any more. How strange is that?

When I cleaned up my account, I kept ALL lenses that would get visitors. So what happened to those lenses? 

How on Earth pages that would get traffic for an entire year, whether seasonal or not, would end up with NO traffic at all once all non performing pages on my account would have been deleted?

Another thing I noticed recently is that sales do not have the same impact on lensrank that they had before. In the past for as long as lenses did make sales, they would be ranked higher than others for some time - generally some days if not a whole week.

Nowadays, when lenses do make sales, their rank increases slightly but not as much as before on lensrank update; then the very next day, they get back to where they were before the sales.

Seems that there have been some changes in lensrank factors and that the weight of sales, and therefore those that bring in money for Squidoo as a whole, do not deserve to have their lens rank higher for longer as it was before. What are now the main factors for lensrank.... well seems that internal traffic counts more than anything else. 

But what does internal traffic only bring to Squidoo?  Internal traffic does not bring money, therefore, does not benefit the community.

See you later for another Squidoo post... It's been payday yesterday.



Posted by Holly Day

Social Media Bugs Can Ruin your Day

Pinterest login bug (email removed)

Weather is absolutely awful here. It has been pouring for days and it does not seem to come to an end...  Sky is grey, wind makes me think fall has fallen... Well typical Belgian weather, not attractive at all ! Perfect summer day to stay inside and work on my Internet stuff.

I could, if Internet would only work ! I started this rainy day willing to log into my Pinterest account and update along with taking a look at my followers and group partners pins but I could not log into it. So I asked for a password reset to no avail.

I thus filed a bug report but given the time difference between Pinterest's country and mine I think I'm good for a few additional hours waiting for a reply. Frustrating !

Then I made a post on my fortune-teller blog and wanted to schedule Twitter and Facebook page posting so I logged into my Hootsuite account and... system looks broken since I can't post either. The message I get is "loading link, please wait". Yeah, I've been waiting for ages now and links still not loaded.

Actually link has loaded, I even added my own text, then scheduled the post and... still link to be loaded message.

When social media does not work, it can actually ruin your day! And it is doing so. I should be able to do something else, but it is also breaking my daily schedule. I planned to social media today plus two blog posts, nothing else.

As if I was not procrasting enough, now I am forced to procrastinate... 

Well as Scarlett O'Hara used to say: "after all, tomorrow is another day". Let's see if social media works for me tomorrow. Fingers crossed for my Pinterest account to work fine and not me having to create a new one and start all over! Hootsuite is a detail in history... after all, Tweetdeck might work even better and entirely free.

See ya :)


Posted by Holly Day

A Gift Turns A Boring Day into a Holiday

Home alone, because of child gone on holidays without Mom, I woke up bored. What am I going to do today? Since the Google disaster that hit my Squidoo account and my sites later on, I am not really enjoying my online job. There are days that I just write one article or do a little promotion through social medias. Though I was very active before mid-2013.

A little gift turns my day into something joyful

Actually I have plans for another type of business model but the company I founded with a business partner faces some problems due to the associate having done some things the wrong way. She wanted to do everything because she's accustomed to found companies, but she got it all wrong this time. 

OK. So I am waiting for the bank issues to be fixed and then we'll be able to start working - right on time for Halloween. This means that I won't be able to focus on creating lots of related pages. We will surely have to overlook Christmas as well; which is not something that would make me smile either.

Sun is shining today and I have lots of gardening to do. Sadly my back and legs are hurting too bad and I can't move at all. Therefore I spend the day inside the house - I could cry sitting outside doing nothing but looking at my garden desperately needing me.

So I got bored from the very beginning of the day. And thought that nothing would change that. Until...

You know, I have that article rewriter software I like so much. However, with the bad humor I woke up today, I did not even think about writing anything and even less rewriting the smallest sentence. Though I read my emails... replied to those sent by friends and deleted the promotional ones.

And then I saw that one with its "goodie" title. Oh what is that? Another thing that I have to subscribe to in order to get the goodie? You know how it works, you are offered something you would want but have to subscribe to someone else's list in order to get your hands on it. Because you are not really interested in what the provider promotes, you unsubscribe quickly or... like me, you forget about it and just increase the size of those emails you'll never read.

What is that gift sent to me for free...

Still I opened and read the email and... clicked on the link provided and oh my... what a nice gift! NO need to subscribe, just watch the video and download the present. Now that is unusual...

Independence Day gift? Nope since today is only the 3rd of July. Free gift, because the rewriter software owner is a nice man and from time to time comes up with gifts that make his subscribers very happy. Indeed, I rarely have to subscribe to anything in order to get his presents but as said earlier, I was completely bored. To say the truth, I could not even link the sender's name to the software.

Once I clicked on the link and discovered the present, I went from bored to glad and when I watched the video and downloaded the gift, I went from glad to happy. I am really happy because this time I've got a nice WordPress plugin entirely free. A plugin that many affiliates would enjoy. A plugin that many bloggers buy in different versions and names. These come from different sellers, for expensive prices.

It is already uploaded and activated on one of my different WP blogs and I'm going to enjoy playing with it!  

From what I could read in the email another gift is coming. I'm excited to see what it is... 

Now seriously if you are looking for ways to transform your genuine articles that you wrote into unique pieces, then you should take a look at this stunning piece of software. It is also a precious tool if you buy PLR articles and want to turn them into something unique that you are proud to publish on your website.

The Spin Rewriter 4.0's subscription comes with some bonuses like a blueprint that will provide you with information on how to launch dozens of sites each week to a great plugin that will turn your WordPress blogs into the same piece of software, allowing you to spin articles directly from your backoffice.

The software comes with three payment options you can choose from:

• Monthly -- affordable but for exceptional use
• Yearly -- very affordable and comes with 60% discount
• Lifetime -- pay once in your life...

See Spin Rewriter 4.0 in action now

I will certainly let you know when I will get more gifts. I love presents as they can turn an average day into a holiday.

See you later, I've got some articles to write ;-)



Posted by Holly Day

New Lens Payout Limit and Lens Deletion

Besides the new lens threshold, Squidoo has implemented a new payout limit. As of now, if your account has not reached a minimum of $25 you will not be able to requets payment. For those that have hard times driving traffic and, therefore sales to their account it means a lot. It actually means that it will take ages for them to see their money.

How is the new payout limit going to affect lensmasters?

For some others, older lensmasters, who used to get a lot of visits, high rankings and also lots of sales, but whose account stats have dropped dramatically, it means that they will have to wait two or three months before getting paid.

Squidoo's TOS precises that if you have not reached payout in one year, your earnings are going to be given to charity. Indeed, they consider that if you haven't requested payment, it means that you do not care about your account and, therefore, tied money. Which is not true since the new payment policy.

Sadly they did not reply to questions regarding this matter yet: is this term outdated or is it still in action?

Lots of lensmasters worry about losing their hard earned money... And expect an answer.

What about you? Did you reach the minimum amount required to be paid in July? Are you going to have to wait for an additional month before getting your payment?  

Personally I don't know... but my earnings dropped that much that I am not sure I will receive anything in July.

The problem with that new policy is that it is going to make the site look like it does not pay as promised. Newbies will think that they are never going to be paid and it is detrimental to our reputation. The minimum should not have been set that high... at least until money stats increase, if they ever do.

New batch of deleted lenses...

I did not help solving this problem since I have not created a lens since last December. Also I deleted so many of them that I did not have more than 102 remaining ones in my account.

Because I am not interested in having lenses beyond the new 175,000 rank threashold, and because I don't know what the point in keeping seasonal lenses in tier three during their matching season, I also cleaned up my account once again.

I just deleted 14 lenses today. 14 Squidoo lenses that did not get traffic any more, or which traffic's rate was so low that it did not make sense to keep them in my account. I now have 88 remaining pages on the site.

With such a low amount of lenses, I am not going to earn more money than before, even though earnings are 10 times lower than two years ago...

But I have a cleaner account. 

As said in other posts, I did believe that Squidoo would not recover by June 2014 and that we would not see any kind of improvement in our stats. Quantcast clearly shows nowadays trends in Squidoo's traffic stats and I do not see them recover by the end of the year either.

The new lens threshold is going to keep lensmasters off of building lenses - at least those who do not want to work for peanuts and who do not build lenses only for the pleasure. These are lensmasters that actually drive traffic and generate money for the whole lot of us...

The new payout policy is not going to attract more writers who are able to generate either traffic and sales... I do not know where Squidoo will be in one year from today but I am sure that is will not be at the peak of its form either.
 
Despite what I can read here and there, I am convinced that Google has a lot of responsibility in this disaster (their latest algorithms are the worst they have created ever and I do not search through Google any more because I never get the results I look for). 

Sadly for all lensmasters, HQ did not help with their constant policy changes. These keep people away from wanting to be involved in helping the site get better :(



Posted by Holly Day