Squidoo Introduced a New Featured Lens Threshold

Squidoo is millions useful pages...

Squidoo introduced two new policies this past week. Not actually policies... Let's say that they introduced two new features to all lensmasters. Today I am going to talk through the second one as it affects all lenses and all lensmasters all at once.

What is going on right now? Starting yesterday, the number of featured lenses will be reduced to 175,000 instead of the 350,000 that were already a reduction of the previous number of featured lenses on the site. This means that all lenses below the 175,000 mark won't be featured or found by search engines. This also means that if you have lenses languishing in the 175,000 and above mark, they will not be featured on the Internet any more. Only direct traffic will be able to reach them.

Direct traffic will only be able to reach WIP lenses

Unfeaturing these lenses means that they will be marked as WIP (work in progress) and search engines will not see them any more. This means that they will not be enable to index these lenses in their database and, therefore, unable to serve them as their search results.

This also means that your lenses will be visited by people who received your link and/or clicked on it from your social media profile, for example. Direct traffic will be the only way to discover your work.

What are the lenses concerned?

From what I could read on HQ's blog, lenses that have a rank superior to 175,000 are lenses that have not been updated in many years. However, I know that many lensmasters who updated their lenses not long ago have some that are ranked higher than 175,000.

They also stated that lenses with such a lensrank are those that get no traffic. This is not absolutely true: many lenses that get traffic are ranked above 175,000 because some categories seem to be ranked higher than others. For example I have lenses with low traffic figures ranked higher than lenses with higher traffic figures. Just because the category is not that popular on the site.

Another reason seems to be that these lenses are incomplete. Well not all of them since there are millions of lenses built and only 350,000 featured until Friday. This does not imply that they are incomplete but more than there is a huge competition and that it is not easy to be featured on the site.

I will not criticize their decision : it is their site... I am just a writer that posts her articles on Squidoo and earns some pennies for doing so. 

Is there a benefit to such a new policy?

HQ seems to think that there is a benefit to this: it is supposed to make the site look good in search engines' eyes. They try to do whatever they can to get back in to Google's good graces as, if you are a lensmaster, you have noticed that the major search engine punished Squidoo like a mother would have done to a child who would have stolen the honey pot.

I don't buy Google's will to own the Internet but many site owners to abide by their rules. I think that if everybody online would stop using G for searching and advertising, they would be forced to work for the good of their customers and not the sake of their shareholders. Sites like Squidoo would become once again favorites and we would all benefit from that.

But I digress and criticizing G is not the purpose of this post.

What reducing the number of featured lenses means for us?

From some people's perspective it is best to have a site with less pages than a site with more pages that aren't visited. 

I don't agree with this opinion: with more pages available, G and other search engines might find out that the site is worth a second look and a second exam. They might even find pages to feature in their page results. However with only 350,000 pages featured on millions, they can't have any idea of what is available on Squidoo.

I'm pretty sure that there are worthwhile lenses hidden in the above ranks. Now with the reduction to 175,000 it will be harder for search engines to find out that Squidoo has a big collection of quality pages. 

Keep in mind that within the pages with the lowest rank there are pages that benefit only from internal traffic. This doesn't mean that they are of quality.

There is a huge number of lensmasters that do not dare updating their lenses for fear to have them locked, others didn't log into their Squidoo account because of the lack of incentive for doing so.

These are people HQ should care for: I know many of them and know their pages are of top quality. If they would update them they would help bringing back traffic to the site.

As said earlier, less traffic means less revenue. But this does not seem to be important these days as if Squidoo had decided to cut on revenues any way sooner or later.

Cutting on featured lenses will help the site recover and get more traffic.

Once again, I disagree. How all lenses after 175,000 can help all lenses before 175,000 generate traffic? In no way. Instead, all lenses above that number would help people find all lenses below that figure.

Even worse picture: with less lenses and, therefore less traffic, if all 175,000 lenses got 1 visit each - some would have 4 some would have zero - the site is about to lose 175,000 visitors and potential ad clickers and buyers.

Cut on the number of featured lenses, you cut on the revenue as well.

My view on this is that instead of reducing the number of featured lenses they should have increased it to 500,000 or even 1,000,000. Doing so would have given search engines some food. They would have found lenses that are worth featuring, they would have forgiven Squidoo for... what? Being a membership site, a writing platform that was once successful.

Ah well that is life and it is not my site. I just can sit and watch. With sadness...

Posted by Holly Day

PLR Healthy Cooking Tools + Reviews

Healthy cooking tools and reviews plr pack

JR Lang produced a great package that I'm thinking about buying these days. I don't know if I'll ever have the time to rewrite the content and publish it on a cooking/cuisine blog I own but didn't update in ages. However I just love this package and think that anyone blogging in cooking/cuisine niche will love it as well.

This pack isn't as huge as the previous one I already posted about but it is filled with absolutely up to date files that will make your audience run to your site. Healthy Cooking Tools Report + 20 Cooking Product/Book Reviews (plus slideshows) is a pack you owe yourself to own.

Here's what you can get your hands on:

16 healthy cooking tools reviews

These are highly rated on Amazon and come with great search volumes

• ArtCook Fresh Herb Keeper
• Breville JE98XL Juice Fountain Plus Juice Extractor
• Hamilton Beach Digital Steamer
• Misto Brushed Aluminum Olive Oil Sprayer (now that is one I MUST BUY for myself)
• Ronco ST5000PLGEN Showtime Rotisserie Platinum Edition
• Etc.

4 healthy cooking recipe book reviews

Books that are also best rated on Amazon.

These two great packages are meant for your to get commissions on all sales.

But here are the plusses I love...

20 Slideshow videos, slides and images

20 slideshow videos related to the product that are reviewed plus 200 slides from the slideshows AND the 20 PP files. Images work great on Pinterest and sites like Polyvore or Instagram. PLR article packs rarely come with images and this is what makes this one such a great opportunity.

The high quality of the Healthy Cooking Tools Report + 20 Cooking Product/Book Reviews offer reminds me from the times I used to Internet affiliate marketing to my mailing list. I remember how excited I was when I shared a great pack for sale on the Internet with my reader. The newsletter was set to be sent all Sundays. Early morning I checked everything to make sure I didn't miss a single thing, even though it was not that important.

But I digress. I think this pack is ideal for anyone who is in the food blogging niche and with a bit of work can make the most out of it.

See you soon for a new blog post - related to your favorite writing platform.


 

Posted by Holly Day

Cooking and Recipes Rock on the Web

My strawberries - don't copy or download. Thanks.

I'm not accustomed to promote things on my blog but have to admit that this time, I found something that I literaly fell in love with as soon as I saw it.

As said in some posts during my ebook publishing short guide a few weeks ago, recipes and crafts rock on the Internet. Blogs about cooking, dieting, healthy eating and about DIY stuff are those that get the most traffic.

Huge Healthy Cooking PLR Package

PLR comes in handy when you have a lot of work to do. It also is agreeable to have PLR articles on hand when we run out of ideas on what to write in order to keep our sites updated. It happens to me quite often. PLR articles always saved my time - they provide me with ideas and I just have to rewrite them (I do that myself and only use a rewriter software for article distribution to directories purpose).

That is why I wanted to let you know that JR Lang put together a stunning Healthy Cooking PLR package that you can use in almost any way you wish - you just can't pass on rights or use her name as the author. 

It comes with a lot of pages and graphics; which makes it a great buy.

The package includes an ebook that provides you with 77 pages of healthy cooking tips. From reasons why healthy cooking and, therefore eating, is essential to materials that enables you to cook food the right and healthy way; from methods for cooking to health related facts.

In this ebook you will find great articles to personalize and publish as an e-book or Kindle (requires more personalization). A good use of this ebook is to split it into as many articles as there are topics covered.

This is a gold mine for you if you blog about cooking and if your readers are looking for healthy eating tips and tricks. These articles are surely going to work pretty well with the Summer time beginning in a few days.

The book also includes 120 images that are copyright and royalty free. And you know how hard it is to find low cost pictures that you can use in any way you wish on the Internet. There is also a shopping list that comes with 15 pages filled with tips to give to your readers or potential subscribers. Here again a bunch of pictures illustrate the ebook.

In addition to this already huge package, you will also be given 15 healthy cooking articles that you can use as blog posts or compile into a short report to give away to your site/blog readers. 

Another great feature are the 3 image collages and 2 infographics that you can use to drive traffic to your blog/site through sites like Pinterest where big pics are always enjoyed.  

As if this package wasn't big enough, the author also added:

• 100 tweets dedicated to the topic so that you can schedule promotion on Twitter;
• 8 healthy recipes "for a week" ebooks (healthy breakfast for a week, healthy lunch for a week, etc.)
• 10 email autoresponder sequences to help you build your list.

As you can see this Healthy Cooking PLR package is worth talking about. And you can use it in any way you want: compile all articles, rewrite them, add even more pictures; turn it into an ebook or Kindle and make a profit out of it. Split all ebook articles and post them to your blog, monetize using Adsense and/or Amazon products. 

Don't forget to personalize your PLR articles

Rewriting all articles is not hard to do: using the Spin Rewriter Software you will quickly and easily transform all articles into new and unique ones. Using this software is easy as a pie: upload your article or all your articles and depending on your preferences, let the software spin it automatically or keep control of what the software does. It's the only one software that is able to turn spun articles into readable ones. I use it and am very fond of it.

 

Posted by Holly Day

More Squidoo Hoops To Jump Through

I'm back from my break abroad. Weather was splendid, compared to weather in my area, it was a relief: I saw and felt the warm sunlights, I could swim in the wonderful turquoise sea, I could tan on the superb white sand beaches. 

All in all, even though the partner wasn't always of the best humor - he now is responsible for more business tasks, especially the one of the car we rent to tourists and residents - and my best friend of an absolutely bad humor for the whole two weeks, it was a great time spent in a lovely country. 

However, Squidoo followed me to that holiday spot. Hey after all, I have my laptop on there, I thus can log into my account and see what happens.

And what happened didn't make me happy at all! While on my vacation time, I found out that two lenses of mine were flagged for... er... well, dunno the reason. At least at that time I was clueless because my mail provider didn't allow me to log into my mailbox from abroad.

Since I could not access my mails, I could not learn how many time would be left for me to fix the two flagged lenses. I suspected that one of them was flagged for being over commercial - it was a lens dedicated to Holly Hobbie games available in stores. It got a lot of content although also a lot of products (no more than 10 in any way since one can't find that many different Holly Hobbie games in stores). But over commercial was what I thought of when I saw that lens flagged.

Sadly for the other one, I had no idea what the reason would be. It was a Halloween lensography, filled with lots of content as I always did for lensographies and didn't see a reason for it to be flagged.

Then the very next day of this discovery, I wanted to log into my account and delete the Holly Hobbie lens while trying to save the Halloween one. Problem: my laptop died. So I could not do anything apart from waiting till the day I'd get back home.

I will not pretend that I had sleepless nights on there because of my lenses, but this was a bit annoying knowing that there was something to be done and not being able to do anything. 

Given the low traffic and earning figures on Squidoo these days, I decided that I did not want to spend money going to a Publinet - cyber cafe - trying to find out more about the lenses.

Good on me, when I got back home on my desktop computer I could learn why these lenses were flagged, that I was given 14 days to fix them - and the 14 days were just expired. 

All I did was deleting both lenses that were flagged. Were they "over commercial"? The Holly Hobbie one, was probably filled with too many products, although balanced content. 

However the other one didn't feature a single ad! It was a Halloween lens, that would just feature my Halloween collection on Squidoo and would feature less lenses than in the past since I deleted almost 50% of my Halloween pages on there. Moreover, I always created lensographies WITH actual content as I never liked those that would be only filled with an intro and a bunch of links.

Anyways, even though some seem to be satisfied with the low traffic figures of Squidoo these days - "new lensmasters" for the biggest part of them - I am not. I know what Squidoo was capable of using the power of its best lensmasters. Most of them have left and brought their work along with them while others had it locked and deleted. I am NOT satisfied with the current traffic trends and certainly not with the direction things are getting to.

And because I'm upset with these numbers I don't waste my time trying to figure out why and what was caught in the filters, how to get out of that trap, etc. I can earn money doing other things. I'm upset with the loss of 100 lenses I created these past years but I just cannot think of spending hours trying to save them to see that, in the end, they don't get the traffic they used to generate in the past.

I am today hopeless regarding the future of the site. I think those days of "information" pages are over, they don't generate the kind of traffic they used to. Nowadays people want quick stuff, Google indexes stolen pages before genuine ones, with such bad configurations right from the start, we are all condemned to work for peanuts. Add to that the fact that we are unsure as to whether our lenses are going to be ok for a while and you will understand why I did not really bother saving the lenses.

Ah well that's life. Time to get back to work (on my sites). I'll see you later.



Posted by Holly Day

Squidoo Traffic Not Exctiting These Days

I'm almost gone. In a few hours I'll be flying to my partner's country where I'm going to spend a few weeks. It's a sunny area. However, it may be one of the last times I can get to there since my Squidoo traffic dropped like a stone along with matching earnings. 

If you have read my previous post you know that I had to change my lenses primary keywords so as to match the lens topics and not the default Squidoo categories in which my lenses are listed. This hurt my lenses bad since for a few days I've got next to nothing in terms of traffic.

Now they seem to get some visits once again and miracle! one that looked lost for good gets more views than before. It is probably a matter of time to see traffic increasing once again. Hm... Not sure as I just checked Squidoo's traffic stats on Quantcast and, once again, Squidoo's overall traffic is dropping. On 26th May there was a traffic peak. Since then traffic decreased and it is now more or less the same as on 30th April. 

I hope that numbers will be higher when I'll get back from my break abroad.

Nothing to write a novel about as you can see.

Well HQ took measures that hurt the site, that is a fact. And even while some lensmasters consider those decisions and the algorithm changes as good for the site, for the writers and for our reputation, I will not agree.

Setting the filters' standards too high will keep the site from keeping its best authors as, I'm afraid to say that most of their best assets have already left the site and I don't expect none of the new ones (big voices or not) to be able to keep the site's standards as high as they once were.

Where have all they gone? Else where, most of the time on their own domain name where their work is respected and preserved as it deserves.

There are some lensmasters who stayed but didn't take the time nor have the pleasure of updating their lenses. I just checked on of them earlier today. The account is still there, no update in a year. The niche was taken over by a new lensmaster who does not write 1% as good as the other one. But the great lensmaster's lenses aren't featured on the site any more. Though they are excellent pieces of work.

Let's not blame Squidoo for the traffic loss, though. But Google has also its fair share of responsibility in this mess. Problem is that as long as people will use Google as search engine, things won't change and the company will keep thinking they are the Internet's owner.

Since I don't play that kind of silly and unfair game, I recently filed a negative feedback for the bad results in searches I ran. Now each time I don't get the result I look for, I file a feedback. You can find the link at the bottom of result pages.

This comes in very handy as a way to let them know they're wrong. 

Not long ago while searching for "where to find a black hat...", I was returned black cat and black cab or so results. All gay related. Since I'm not gay and wouldn't be searching for gay stuff, I thought it was a really really bad joke. Makes Google look like jerks. Ok  did it as a joke but the results were there.

Anyways, while looking for a studio for rent, I only get "all inclusive hotels" as returned results. What was I looking for? Oh yes, a studio for rent... So I search now mostly on Bing. The page results look like Google's but the results are good.

Well that was my rant for the day. I wish you some quiet, peaceful and happy weeks. I'll be back soon!

ETA! 

OMG! I just realize that last week when I tried to update Best vacation lens the system pretended it had too much duplicate content. Today it is spam words.

So what are the filters up to? Are they properly set up? Are they even working? Not sure...

Posted by Holly Day

Changing All Primary Keywords on Lenses

Because I was not really active on Squidoo these past months, I realized recently that I missed a few things that would help my lenses to be found. Eh... Since the new dashboard design, I never thought of the keywords and other settings available in our backoffice.

It was brought to my attention by a lensmaster/friend who is expert in SEO and driving traffic to lenses. I want to thank her once again for the heads up!

What did happen? When Squidoo removed the former keyword form and introduced the new one, all my primary keywords were switched into the default category ones.

From the old dashboard to the new one, primary keywords changed

For example, my "growing strawberries..." lens' primary keyword became "vegetable gardening" or something like that. My "mermaid prom dress" became "prom dresses". And so on.

Thus I had to change 104 lenses' primary keywords so as to make them indexed by search engines in regards of their actual keyword/keyword phrase and not for Squidoo's default categories.

I know this is my fault as I haven't paid enough attention to the latest "improvements" done on the site. But in all cases, I think HQ should have let us know that our primary keywords would change with the dashboard switch.

Anyways, changes have been made. I took advantage of doing so to remove the love lens and bookmark widgets from the lenses, update some products that were out of stock or those of which Amazon and other affiliate programs changed the links to.

Things were running smoothly as I updated the pages until two of my best content lenses were hit by the filters. 

Best family vacation destinations seems to have too much "duplicate content". Indeed I added a bunch of touristic information links, Google maps, etc. So yes there's surely some content that is duplicate - the links introductions for example. There was never a problem and I don't earn enough from this lens for me to make any change. It's nowadays almost in the abysses of the site rankings, so I don't see a benefit for me to modify this lens.

Instead I'm going to rewrite everything, split it into 5 different pages and move them to my sites. My readers will enjoy getting Italy, Spain, Greece and other countries information for them to spend their holidays.

Then my Friends TV show lens was hit as well for... er... words that aren't allowed to be published on Squidoo. Now that is a first for me! What kind of words a lens like that would use that is so bad to tell that the filter hit it like a silver bullet?

Unless my Friends lens is bound to disappear and leave room for lower quality lenses using the same title?

As I often noticed that, whether on Squidoo or other platforms, if a topic works pretty well, some other smart guys will copy the topic and try to build a page that they think is a good one on the subject. They then will promote it like fools and get more traffic to it than the original one.

Copycats are legion on such platforms and that is something I definitely hate with a passion. If you carefully study these sites you'll quickly see that some people who aren't absolutely not accustomed to write about some topics took them over or literaly stole them from their actual owner whose involved in the topic entirely.

Ah well that is the Internet. At least I could update my lenses, provide them with good keywords and will keep you updated on how good they are doing since then or how bad they are doing.

See you soon :)

Posted by Holly Day

Outsourcing Online eBook Tips

Outsource your recipe ebook

Hello and welcome to the last article related to how to outsource your online business. Here I'm going to take an example on how things will work. These tips can be applied to a previous guide I wrote - this one walked you through how to publish your e-book or Kindle book.

Outsource your recipe ebook

Outsourcing the writing of ebooks is a pretty popular practice. The advantage of ebooks is they are typically less expensive than traditional books, because the publishing costs associated with publishing an ebook is significantly lower than it is for publishing regular books. 

Here are a few easy guidelines that should be followed when outsourcing the task.

1. Choose an excellent writer. He/she must have alot of experience in the recipe/cooking/kitchen niche. Don't ask an insurance writer or motor cars expert to write recipes.

An ebook is a important project in which you invest a great deal of time, money and energy so you have to be sure that the final results are of a high quality.

2. Before the writing begins, create the ebook outline. It is a crucial step as a well built up outline will assist in making a logical flow to the content presented in the ebook. 

As the outsourcing customer, you owe yourself to actively participate in the outline creation. The writer may have ideas about the content he wants to include or thinks is pertinent but it is your responsibility to make the decision regarding what goes in the ebook. 

Once the outline established, you will be ensured that there will be no surprise with the end result.

3. Ask someone else to read the document instead of letting the writer edit the ebook. As the writer did the job, he may overlook the mistakes as he subconsciously makes the correction as he is reading through the document. 

An independant person is not as familiar with the project so they are more likely going to detect mistakes.

4. Make sure that pictures ordered from another outsourced company match the recipes that fill your ebook long before publishing it. Otherwise you might find yourself with recipes and no matching photos.

5. If you plan on outsourcing your ebook cover, then once again make sure that it matches your ebook content. Don't publish pasta recipes with a Mexican cover.

6. When outsourcing the PLR rewrites, check each article through Copyscape so as to make sure they are absolutely unique. Sometimes, PLR are simply spun and rewritten using that technique. This doesn't make them unique at all and some original writings might be left.

7. You can outsource the ebook promotional tasks through social media and other means. Supposing the company that is in charge of this job plans on writing a lot, ask them to ensure that they don't post the same article/blog post/promotional text every where. Ask them to rewrite each of them as many times as there are supports to post them to. They can greatly make it using an article spinner/rewriter. There are some very intelligent out there and rewritten texts results are outstanding.

Well these are just a few of the things you should take care of when outsourcing your online business. Wishing you good luck if you opt for such a way to save time and money. I'll see you soon for more articles, tips and tricks.

Posted by Holly Day