Squidoo to HubPages Puts the Forums on Fire

Squidoo to HubPages Transfer

Never again will I see this ugly monster

How glad am I for having deleted most of my remaining lenses before the transfer! This will enable me to repurpose all those lenses and possibly keep away from both HubPages and Squidoo - or at least what remains from Squidoo.

My transfered lenses are now fixed - all but two of which I don't know what to do. The modified ones are getting traffic, at least the seasonal ones. However I don't see HubPages sending me as much traffic as Squidoo did - and I don't talk about the 2012 traffic but more about the overall traffic my lenses always got during the first 6 years I've been on Squidoo.

Staying away from HubPages is not something I want to do but I think it is necessary for me to stay away from those constant problems that occur in the forums between Hubbers and former Squids.

After all I'm both a Squid and a Hubber. Actually I'm not a Squid any more. I'm a Hubber, just that.

Some don't seem to understand that, since Sept 2nd, we have all become Hubbers. That is something those that have been Hubbers and only Hubbers in their Internet life should remind when they criticize or judge a former Squid's property.

These people never had any kind of experience on Squidoo. They heard about the site, they got some feedback from forums they're members of, and they are particularly aware of the very bad reputation Squids have always had. Whether this reputation is founded or not doesn't seem to matter.

Then there are those that have been both Hubbers and Squids. In this category you will find:

• People like me -- those who played by the rules on both sites, were successful on HP and on Squidoo, then only on Squidoo. While on HubPages, we've been hit several times by Google, some recovered, some never recovered. Some like me suffered from the subdomain implemenation, tried to save their subdomain but never got the same traffic rate as before. They thus focused on driving traffic to their Squidoo account and used HP as secundary "home".


• People who experienced more or less the same problems except that they were one day successful on HubPages, after the first or second Google slap were forced to leave and join other writing platforms. Among them you find people that joined Squidoo. However, for whatever reason they never got any kind of success on there, thus they went back to HubPages and were more successful because the subdomain thing worked pretty well on new accounts.


• People who were forced to leave Squidoo after a major failure and found a new home on HubPages.

Squidoo's and Squids' bad reputation

My Squidoo profile... you'll never see it again

Squidoo has always had a very bad reputation among marketers. I won't pretend that it is justified, I just note it. I recognize it. I admit it. It is a fact, something I can't negate.

Not long ago, a former Squid told me that she didn't want her name to be associated in any way with that site and its bad reputation and that she would delete her account.

We've always had the worst reputation that is possible to find somewhere. I never knew why but it was that way, period.

Most "professional marketers" bashed Squidoo and Squids as much as they could. However this never prevented them from exploiting any loophole to their own profit. They even sold ebooks and courses on "how to exploit Squidoo as much as one can" like cakes. 

I must admit that sometimes, while visiting a forum where Squidoo was the subject, or reading a blog post about Squidoo, I've been unable to even post the tiniest argument I could to defend it. I generally left without commenting and thought to myself that, luckily, it's all a virtual world and that hidden behind a computer screen one could post anything without fearing consequences.

Though those people who posted weren't actual lensmasters, but I suspect many of them were banned Squids (you know those that exploited the site and gamed the system) or people who's virtual friend had a virtual friend who had a virtual friend who was a Squid in the past (probably banned for having gamed the system or whatever other reason as, sometimes bans happened).

Rumor and failure are harmful when...

 

My useless trophies... though it's been 7 years!

These were only rumors. I actually made money on Squidoo. OK. The site didn't last for more than 8 years, but in terms of Internet, 8 years is almost and perhaps more than one generation. 

But this isn't a problem. When a site closes down, another opportunity opens else where. When joining a new site you're not forced to let anybody know that you were associated with a site that has a reputation that bad. It is something I've heard many times. They fear their new online endeavours to be hurt and put down because of Squidoo.

Problem is that... our accounts were openly moved to HubPages, with a big sign made out of neon light that clearly states "we're all former Squids". 

Some nasty people even added a lighted sign on our back - which we didn't see - and that reads "I'm a cheater, and a rubbish producer".

Needless to say that the opinion of Hubbers was formed. Needless to say that they feared our arrival. I myself, as an old Hubber was surprised to learn that HubPages acquired the right to display Squidoo's content! Both sites are so different!

HubPages policies have been extremely strict for the past three years - and even before but the sharp cuts have been done during the last Google slap. They did everything they could to survive and succeeded. But this was done to the detriment of many Hubbers that actually made good money on the site and some had to stop writing online because the big mess (for the authors) these cuts involved.

My own HubPages account suffered and never recovered. I did my best to write good Hubs, never violate a single rule, to no avail, Google doesn't like my old account as much as it used to. I've even been often willing to leave HubPages and move all these Hubs else where - to my own sites, for example.

So seeing those lenses reaching the site at a huge rate, knowing Squids are allowed 4 months to modify the former lenses and make them comply with Hub's TOS is beyond Hubbers' understanding.

And thus, they're angry, upset, frightened to see the sacrifices that HubPages team required from them being simply avoided for the next 4 months for Squids. I don't think they detest Squids as writers (well two or three of them detest Squids), they just dislike the freedom we've been attributed during the transition. They fear a new Google slap. And they let us know although we aren't responsible for the HP staff purchase!

Being penalized by Google can happen overnight. There is not always sign of it. You wake up one morning with zero traffic and a penalization mark in your webmaster account. It's as simple as that.

Being a Hubber and a former Squid is hard

I'm a Hubber, just a Hubber, only a Hubber now

Sure the atmosphere in HubPages forums isn't quiet these days. It looks like any kind of match could set them on fire. However, I'm not quite sure that it is a question of bullying - except if all former Squids are over sensitive. And even so, some Squids left our own forums because of the aggressiveness and nasty comments and attacks inside our own community.

It's a time of over reaction to critiques or what I call public admission of fear. As I'm pretty sure that as much as we weren't asked our opinion before the move, Hubbers weren't asked if they wanted to see 175,000 (and counting) lenses and their authors joining the HubPages forces.

So I let you imagine the site with the worst reputation online joins the one with the best reputation - as HP has a very good reputation if not the best.

Imagine that we, Squids, were told that 175,000 (and counting) HubPages and their owners would join Squidoo. That HubPages was a sinking ship and that their owners did anything they could to kill it... How would we have taken the news?  

I know many Squids wouldn't have been glad at all. 

On Squidoo, though,the situation would have been really awful as these potential new lenses would have competed for the 2,000 top tier ranked lenses, and thus their earnings, they would have competed against the 83,000 others for the 2nd and 3rd tier earnings. Then they would have competed against potential lenses of the day, potential purple stars and the perks that went along... Hubbers with 25 Hubs would have been awarded giant status with all perks. 

I can already hear and see the hullabaloo!

On HubPages there isn't any kind of artificial, silly, useless games to play, nor are there any kind of bonuses threw into the playground for Hubbers to fight against each other. Still there is a strong history of sacrifices, strict rules and other not always agreeable things that profited all, or more or less all Hubbers.

There is also no incentive for Hubbers to cheerfully accept lenses and their respective owners, no tier payments, no community interaction providing bonuses, no gain for playing hypocrisy games.

On HubPages one is accepted and liked on our own merits. That is what I like on that site. Not to mention the freedom of speech we were lacking of on Squidoo. It's harder to get banned for a bad word on their forums than it was on Squidoo.

Hubbers and Hubbers will be together

Wishing myself to be there on day for good... exit online stuff, only beach and fun!

One day, though, established Hubbers will take our word for it and believe that we are able to create high quality work - we already did on Squidoo.

They will also one day probably admit that if they're good at writing informational content, we're great at writing commercial content that drives both traffic and generates sales.

They will also one day realize that we generate money for the best future of HubPages and that, among us, they will find people with similar qualities than there are on HubPages. As among former Squids there are people who write for the sake of writing and sharing their written creations just like there are writers like that on HubPages.

They will find out that they have more similar interests as we have than they thought at first sight. 

Former Squids won't fear going to HubPages' forums and will dare popping up from time to time to take part to the hunts for site scrapers, copyright infringement, then just to share their thoughts about something - provided that they find the forums entrance which I am still looking for after 6+ years on that site.

Where will I be? I don't know... I must admit that HubPages is a writing platform like I like... No need of community interaction, I can be myself, can say what I want to say. It's important to me to remain myself and not have to pretend I'm someone else.



Posted by Holly Day a WAHM who is able to turn any day into a holiday.