EPD Is Getting Even Better!

Easy Product Displays new features

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. To be honest, there is nothing really new worth talking about in my marketing world. HubPages is slowly sinking - at least it's how it looks. 

I moved some Hubs over to Wizzley but without any real hope for the pages to be safe, since Google's shaking the site ranks and even its existence once again. WebNuggetz is, as always, a profitable and exciting option and Whyrll is also a good one. 

Apart from that, there is nothing new under "my" sun: to be honest, I don't really enjoy working online any more.

However, Easy Product Displays, my favorite marketing tool, is improving day after day and playing with it is fun. Actually it is the only thing that succeeds in having me logging into one of my blogs or those I'm member of. 

What is EPD?

If you do not know what Easy Product Displays is, let me tell you that it's the best tool that enables you to display Amazon, CJ.com, Share a Sale, Zazzle and other affiliate products: images + descriptions + buy buttons, all in one. 

The displays we can create with this tool are amazingly beautiful. In the beginning I didn't think this could make a difference on my sites, but I quickly realized that this incredible tool produced performing displays. 

And best of all, these past weeks, some upgrades have been made to the tool. 

Easy Product Displays improvements

1. AZIN search

 
If you are like me and prepare a list of AZINs for products you wish to display in your blog posts before posting, then this feature is for you. You can now type up to 10 Amazon AZINS in the search box, separated by a comma. Then click the search button and see all the products magically appear. See the picture below. Once the list appears, all you have to do is click on "use product" button. What a time saver!

 

Here is my display, created in just a few seconds. All I have to do is copy and paste the code into my page. I can choose between so many different types of displays...

2. Switch buy buttons

The other feature I'm fond of is the ability to change each "buy" button of a display. This means that, we can now mix any merchant in our displays. 

Let's say that I want to feature Frozen costumes from different merchants: Amazon, BuyCostumes and Halloween Costumes. But I want to use the three different buttons in one single display. It was not doable before - at least not automatically. But now, it's doable and in just a few seconds. 

Here is the basic display:

Now let's have a look at the right column of our creation panel. 

As you can see there is an edit button next to each product. This "edit" feature enables you to change each button in the display. This won't change other buttons.  Here's how I changed the buttons:

There are now three different buttons, one for each merchant.

This feature is not just a time saver, it also enables you to create price comparison displays for example.

3. Large series of buttons

Loads of buttons have been added to our backoffice. This makes it so easy for us to create product displays with the right merchant's button. Once again it is a time saver as before, for many merchants, we had to write their name next to the "buy" word if we used the customized feature - what we did before having more buttons.

Only a tiny bit of the iceberg

4. Share a Sale merchants integration

Share a Sale is now integrated to the merchants automation. So from now on those who opted for the SaS subscription in EPD are able to just use the EPD search feature to add their Share a Sale products to their display.

Personally I didn't subscribe to SaS option as I'm not affiliated with many of their merchants - I'm more accustomed to CJ's merchants and don't plan on leaving their network.

As usual, you can always import your codes in order to quickly and easily replace missing, out of stock or wrong products. It's easy as a pie and saves loads of work and time.

To say the truth, I'm pleased with anything Thomas and Holley come up with. They work hard for our success and ease of work.

Try EPD for three days without spending a penny

You can give a try to Easy Product Displays for free and for three days. You will find three different options for you to start building these beautifully crafted affiliate product displays: Amazon and Zazzle, Share a Sale or the full product, which includes Amazon, Zazzle and Share a Sale.

You can also subscribe on a cheap monthly basis or a yearly one - most interesting.

Just in case you don't remember what EPD can do for you, here is an updated video, that will walk you through all the wonderful features this tool offers.









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

Former Hub Moves to WebNuggetz

My unfeatured HubPage was moved to WebNuggetz yesterday

 

Since the quality of my work is not good enough to HP, it's got moved else where. Actually, what I did is delete a similar page on my own site and pasted the former Hub instead.

The deleted page was entirely reworked (rewriting all texts and missing products replaced) and posted on WebNuggetz. This is because the Hub was too long and readers would have been bored with the huge amount of info. WN is perfect, ideal, amazing, wonderful, incredible for visual pages. The former Hub is too long and needs additional pictures. In addition, I have to find related products to feature as after the move from Squidoo I had to remove 90% of the featured masks from it.

Fingers crossed for the page to be as successful as it was on Squidoo. I'll never know how it's worked on HP since it didn't have a chance to make a season. Never mind, it's now safely hosted, hehe.

EPD features discovery

While working on that "nugget", I also discovered some specific features on Easy Product Diplays. I knew some of them but never thought of using them, and some, I never knew. 

The first one I really love is that I can have a product floating to the right or the left of my text directly form my EPD dashboard. This feature is a time saver especially when I want to copy and paste a former lens or hub into a new page. This feature helps me not to have to paste the content first on a Notepad so as to get rid of the formatting code contained in those old pages. The system allows basic HTML, though. I can thus add titles, subtitles, italic, bold, underlined texts along with text links. 

Another feature I love is that I can opt out from displaying a buy button. That is something I accidentally discovered. And with this great option, I can even add text beneath my featured products just like I did in Squidoo modules (well over there text was to the right of the product).

It was fun to make. All I had to do is uncheck the buy button option, and type text in the product name form. Then I changed the font into one that matches my site and pasted the code in the page.

Because I forgot to add a buy button to some items, I also worked with the import code feature for the first time. This one is a big thing! When you create an array of 12 or more products form your affiliate programs, you don't want to have to re-do all of them in case of missing products. This is where EPD is fantastic! Instead of searching for all item codes, just grab your existing EPD code, go to "get code" tab in your EPD dashboard and click on "import code". This will make the system display your articles and enable you to just replace the missing ones.

It saved me time when I had to just add a "check price" button! 

Price comparison for the same product is also easily done using Easy Product Displays. How many times do you find a product that is cheaper in an online store than in another. However, you know people will want to buy it from the other store. Doing a price comparison will help them buy the cheaper one. 

Another use for such a feature is for example, some products that come in sets of 2 or 3 products (perfumes, beauty products, etc.) Using EPD I can show that this store sells a set of 3 for the same price as that store sells a set of 2. I plan on using this option for future gifts and Halloween costume articles I'll post on my sites. 

When searching for products, for example, Venetian masks, if I want VIVO products displayed first, all I have to do it type "Venetian masks - VIVO" in the search feature. This way these authentic masks will appear first in the results. If I do not want them to appear in the results, I will type "Venetian masks -VIVO" (--> minus sign).

Also if I'm in a very productive mood - which happens very rarely - I can search for dozens of related products before adding them to my article. In EPD, I can type up to 10 ASIN codes each separated with a comma. The system will provide me with the 10 products so that I can add them to the display.

I hate having to copy and paste all Zazzle codes and then remove excess code from them in order to paste the good part on my pages. Using EPD, I can just use the link code, then click on the fetch button and the Zazzle item will magically appear in my EPD display. 

How to use the fetch feature

Well, that's it for today. See you soon for another trip in the fabulous world of Internet marketing.




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

My First Unpublished Hub for Quality Matters

Spammy Hubs

So early this morning (I'm in Europe so evening for you is morning for me) I've received my first notice for a hub unpublished for quality reason. Hm... the title was "friendly" - "A Friendly Heads Up: Your Hub Could be Featured!" Er... my hub WAS featured yesterday. Let's read (portions of) this email.

Dear justholidays,

We wanted to let you know that Best Venetian Masks for Masquerade Parties has the opportunity to become Featured! Didn't know it was not featured...

Featured Hubs are... They are also made available to search engines... strongly recommend dusting it off and making a few improvements. I just updated that page (second time since it made the transfer from Squidoo)

The perks of a Featured Hub don't end at increased visibility online. Featured Hubs are likely to be more successful... Not sure about that, traffic started to increase as soon as I updated it, but when it was still OK for you it didn't get any kind of traffic at all! Not to mention that my HubPages traffic is dysmal compared with dying Squidoo traffic (incredible uh!)

It's possible that your Hub is not Featured because it contains spammy elements. Thank you so much for insulting me! Perhaps it was written for a link, Wow! keep on insulting me, please, you can't imagine how pleased I am! or has too many unrelated or distracting products capsules. Yes, 7 Amazon ENTIRELY RELATED capsules on a grand total of +/- 2,500 words. Even Hubs... We recommend that you remove any spammy elements that might be present in your Hub. Unless Amazon capsules are spammy elements, I can't remove anything BUT content... which is not what you want, is it?

What else can you do to improve your Hub? High-quality Hubs are original.... My Venetian mask hub was probably not a high-quality page but I was proud of my work and don't want to ruin it so as to match your standards. I'm sorry but Venetian masks are VISUAL stuff not just boring endless content.

Thank you for taking the time to update and improve your work! I won't waste my time reworking a hub that doesn't get me the same traffic rate as it did on its original home so as I always did when Squidoo started getting mad at locking lenses, I deleted the hub. It's going to generate money for me on another site or platform.

Cheers, Cheers :)
The HubPages team Justholidays

That is how I fix a low quality, spammy, violation, whatever page on a platform where I can't control anything. Even though we don't have complete control over our work, we always have the liberty to pack and leave. 

I've deleted 9 hubs since the big move from Squidoo. More will follow, of course, especially the Venetian pages since the one deleted today was part of a series. Without it, the others don't have any meaning any more. 

Thank you HubPages for making me feel like a spammer, a cheater, a loser... Well actually I don't feel like that, but if I was as sensitive as some writers are, I'd be really depressed. I'm not, writing is not my life, I just write to earn an income to enable me to get together with my foreign partner some times in the year, because he is not allowed to travel from his country to Occident (documents are hard to get and my country doesn't deliver such visas nowadays). That's all my writing is meant for. It's just going to earn me money else where.

More screenshots of this hub

 

Yes there are big pictures on the page, but these pics are there for illustration purpose, no link on them. If they're part of a mask that is for sale on Amazon, I added the related Amazon capsule somewhere. Is there anything more related to a Colombina mask than a Colombina mask? 

White Colombina is there to show what an original one looks like, the other one is just more intricate and makes the page look nicer. OK, I could remove the white but I've never agreed to test over and over again just to have a page republished. There are only 24 hours in a day and I have different sites to take care of.

 

How to make a moretta mask tutorial - what a spammy capsule!

Personally the only spammy elements I can see on this page are the floating ads that follow me wherever I go on the page. Impossible to get rid of them. This is what I call nuisance... I rather liked the older ads, those that don't move, that are text based and don't distract me from what I read. Even the new Adsense layouts are absolutely ugly and a real shame. There's nothing that claims "I'm an ad" more than those.

Since I updated another hub yesterday, I'm pretty convinced that it's going to be unpublished as well in the coming hours. However, because it is one that is part of those Venetian pages, it is going to be deleted anyway.

I feel that I'm beginning a long, very long journey deleting unpublished hubs... 




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

My Favorite Affiliate Product Display Tool

Easy Product Displays Search Feature

My favorite affiliate product display tool is what I'm going to talk about. It is not Squidoo or HubPages related. It's an entirely different subject. Yet it is the perfect tool for those who plan on leaving HubPages for greener pastures (hear: their very own site or a platform that allows page personalization).

How to display products on a page

Nicely displaying products on our pages is a must for us, former lensmasters and other webmasters. We were accustomed to nicely craft our pages and still love doing so. However there are very few online software that enable us to do so.

My sites are now all on a WordPress platform and although I was accustomed to HTML and CSS writing manually on my older sites, I enjoy the ease of use of that platform. This is a big time saver and I definitely love writing on it. 

But when I want to add products on my pages, I still have to play with HTML or CSS so as to display the items in a good way. This is where I waste time. And believe me, I often waste a lot of time, because I want my displays to be as nicely crafted as I can. Then when I conceived the table, I must look for the products on sites like Amazon. Once I found the product, I must make sure I enabled the right tracking ID so as to know which site generated which sale.

After that, I must open each product page or go in my affiliate site backoffice and search for each product in order to get the URL, the image link and the product name. Paste each of them in my table. Once one table is done, I must create another.

There are some free tools I tried for the purpose. However, once again, I had to look for products, find links, copy and paste them into the forms and then copy and paste their code into my pages. Most of the time, I had to get back to the settings so as to have my product display fitting within my pages.

I even paid some plugins to do the job. Sadly one of them doesn't seem to be updated in a long time as it doesn't work any more. Another doesn't enable anybody to reach the actual product page. When I realized that, I had to deactivate them and look for another way to add affiliate links and images in my pages.

Easy Product Displays 

Easy Product Displays Layout (flow - 200 pix)

 

A friend of mine offered me a free trial with Easy Product Displays, a superb tool that allows me to create affiliate displays on all of my pages, in any way I want. Plus I don't have to browse Amazon or Zazzle to add those products, all I have to do is type my keyword and choose the product directly from my backoffice. 

My affiliate program IDs are saved in my profile, so when I start my search for products, I only have to select the appropriate program and ID (once for all searches).

For other affiliate programs like Share a Sale or Commission Junction I must copy and paste the product links, though. However, they will soon integrate Share a Sale into the system. This will help me save big time once again!

The little plus is that I can choose between several layouts (14 different static layouts and 7 flow templates). I can also add borders or no border, I can also choose what I want to be written on my button, choose its color and even select some pre-designed Amazon, BuyCostumes, Zazzle, etc. buttons in addition to be able to link to a customized button I host on my own site. 

Everything can be personalized in a display. Want a big 400 pixels image? It's ok. I prefer 3 x 200 pixels images? It's ok as well. I can set the font size for the description and the button. Border, no border, rounded button, square button, and so on.

As soon as I'm finished with the desired settings - which I can save for later use on another display - I grab the code and paste it into my page. The code is designed to fit within most Web pages and the way products are displayed will adapt to my site. 

As an example, when I select 150 pixel images, my site will feature 4 x 150 pixels products in a row. I can add as many products as I want, they will all become 4 rows of 4 products. The last row will include the remaining products - 3 if I added 15 items and 4 if I added 16 items. 300 pix will enable me to present a choice of 3 items per row and so on.

On top of that I can also add text and align images. But there is more... As a marketer, you surely know that you have to update your product pages all the time. I hate that task! 

With EPD, I can easily upate them, all I have to do is import my old code into the system and replace the missing products, then grab the new code and paste it into my page. There are so many things I can do with it. Too many to be listed here, actually.

So if you are looking for a tool that helps you save time when you want to display arrays of products on your web pages, then don't look further, Easy Product Displays is the only one you will want to use. How to videos are available on the site. 

Check EPD in action

I definitely recommend this tool.



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

Squidoo vs HubPages Traffic

So early September, my 36 remaining lenses moved to HubPages. As the announcement stated, HubPages is now the largest site of its kind. However that doesn't mean that former lenses get as much traffic as they deserve and used to get. 

HubPages traffic is dismal...

When former lenses turned into Hubs, traffic was not a big problem as they generated the same traffic rate as on Squidoo. For some, number of visits was even higher. But as soon as Google launched their latetest update, traffic dropped like a stone and never really stopped. 

Right now, with Christmas season in full action, my only one related Hub doesn't get more than 15 visits/day. It's a page that was successful on Squidoo, not for its traffic, but for its huge number of sales. 

Christmas trains riding around the tree add to the magic of the season. This former lens used to receive if not an incredibly huge amount of visits, at least it generated a huge number of sales! Those visitors were actually buyers.

Now that it's turned into a Hub, it's getting very low traffic - 15 visits/day is nothing compared with what it was on Squidoo - and it has not generated a single sale since the move. Last sold Christmas train was in the latest days on Squidoo.

It's unbelievable!

Unfeatured Hubs

I've been without an Internet connection for a few weeks so when I got back online in the end of November, I found some threads about unfeatured Hubs in HubPages forums. 

It seems that a few rules have changed since the initial FAQ put together at the time of the big move. Now Hubs that benefited from the 4 months grace period aren't protected against "lack of quality", "lack of engagement and traffic", etc. They thus can be unfeatured without warning for those motives.

This new rule is, in my humble opinion quite unfair to former lensmasters since many of them, caught in the big holiday season hullabaloo, couldn't fix those moved lenses. HubPages knew it, Squidoo staff knew it as well. Still instead of waiting till the beginning of the year for the move, they acted right in the middle of the biggest season for Internet marketers.

A more natural way to move 450,000 lenses without hurting HP as a whole would have been to unpublish all of them when they reached HP's site in January, then have each former lensmaster rework/fix/modify/whatever, in order to publish them one by one. At their own pace. Less stress, less worries.

There would have been no grace period, many lenses wouldn't have been deleted by lensmasters who knew they couldn't work on them in the 4 months grace period. 

Most lensmasters would have left their holiday lenses on Squidoo as they knew the site would have got decent traffic from Halloween till Christmas. Not the traffic rate we were accustomed to, however we would have had a decent holiday season.

There wouldn't have been this mass exodus we witnessed in August and HubPages would have transfered the best lenses instead of a good balance between good and bad pages.

On top of that, Hubbers wouldn't have been angry after Squids for having joined the party and wouldn't consider them as guilty for HP's traffic drop.

A ruined holiday season on both sites

Because of this, many have got their holiday season almost if not entirely ruined. A big part of these now unfeatured Hubs have been deleted as former lensmasters were misled when they agreed to move from one site to another.

Some play the game, mostly because they have no other place to host their former lenses. Others trust HP enough to give a try to fixing those unpublished pages. But those who have their own sites or are members of other platforms move these Hubs else where.

I'm convinced that the only one individual that earned something in the selling of "Squidoo's best content" is Seth Godin. He sold that content to HP and thus made a profit. HP bought the content and right after the transfer, was hit by Google's update which in addition to its average mess penalized the site for spam or something like that. The "nice" side of Google is that they don't tell you more than "spam"... so you don't know what to do to fix the problem either.

As said, because of this update, HP lost traffic and thus money. Former lensmasters lost traffic and thus money. I'm also convinced that, apart from a few exceptions, even those who moved their lenses in August didn't make as much money as they did on Squidoo with those specific former lenses. 

None of my Hubs were unfeatured for lack of quality yet. They might be hit one day or another, though. However, given the poor traffic figures, I don't think I'm going to take the chance to allow them to stay on HP. Valentine's Day is near and I will unpublish most of these Hubs so as to delete them and move them else where. Hopefully they'll get their traffic share - I'll relocate most on my own site and those that are too similar to existing pages will be hosted on other popular platforms.

So here we are. Another poor Christmas season. Another badly conceived project. Another proof that we definitely should have control over our work and our assets.






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

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.

My Move from Squidoo to HubPages

7 years on Squidoo now a Hubber

34 lenses moved from Squidoo to HubPages on 8th September

So my 34 remaining lenses finally became Hubs this 8th September 2014 for my greatest pleasure. As indeed, it's pleasure to see those lenses getting their fair share of traffic. And it is an even greater pleasure to edit them and turn these pages into Hubs.

Like many Hubbers I was quite surprised to see the site acquiring Squidoo lenses and was also a bit frightened. After all, becoming the best online writing platform on the Web didn't happen overnight and HubPages was sacrificing themselves and many writers to keep their site online and in Google's good graces.

Why would they take the risk of acquiring content from a sinking (almost totally sunk, actually) site? Hm... It is something we'll probably never know. But at the end of the day, I'm happy of this action and enjoy being a Hubber. Now if their admins decided that I'm not a good asset, they may kick me off... and I would surely whine on here like I did when Squidoo was sinking.

But I know HubPages for long and know their leaders are smart...

Former lenses look good turned into Hubs

To be honest, I was worried a bit about how my lenses would look after the transfer. And even more scared about what to do to them to make them look good. Not perfect, but at least, acceptable.

And I must say that I'm agreeably surprised to see that I could turn a fancy Squidoo lens into an attractive Hub. Now comes the best part... I will add that I love my Hubs more than I loved my lenses.

Whatever I added to a lens was lost in their fancy design, which I liked a lot, don't get me wrong.

However whatever I do not add but just modify a bit, turns my Hubs into something I'm proud of. While it took me time to craft a lens and make it acceptable, I find out that just a few fixes and removals of excess links and other fancy stuff, turn my Hubs into something that is more than acceptable.

This is because of their clean design I think. Anything you add to the Hub (video, picture, Amazon product, recipe capsules, etc.) pimps up the Hub and doesn't disappear between multiple ads and fancy stuff.

No, frankly I won't miss Squidoo, I won't miss my former account, I won't miss my multiple Amazon modules... I already made sales on HubPages with this new account. How could I regret anything that happened these past weeks?

One thing, though. On 8th September, when I saw HubPages email saying my account was transfered, I felt a bit sad... Never again will I log into my Squidoo account, never again will I edit a lens, never again will I check my stat tab, never again will I see my lens traffic. I have to say goodbye to a 7+ year membership and a community I knew so well...

Ah well, it's for the best :D

HubPages' forums atmosphere

The atmosphere in their forums isn't the best these days. Indeed, the arrival of 175,000 live (plus those that are currently unpublished) lenses along with their owners doesn't seem to please all Hubbers. And so, some need to post their worries, show their knowledge... and let those they call "Squidoo Refugees" that they know how to run HubPages and that Squid's productions aren't welcome or as welcome as they should be.

While I understand them, because I've beena Hubber for so many years, I also feel for my Squid fellas, who I know for so many years. Some I like, some I detest... One can't please everyone. But what I dislike even more is that my former Squid fellas aren't at ease and confronted with some disagreeable comments, patronising, etc.

Some Hubbers did wonders to warmly welcome former Squids, some Hubbers did wonders to make them feel unwanted. Still my fellas shouldn't pay too much attention to what is said in forums. Actually the ambiance makes me think to the atmosphere in SquidU and the soon-to-be former official forums that one could find on Squidoo. 

Whenever there was a change, you could see everybody rushing to the forums and fight who would agree with HQ; who would disagree with HQ. We could also see fights because of the poor quality of tier 1 lenses in the past, or because of the blatant favoritism that was one of HQ's specialties... On SquidU we were more or less allowed freedom of speech - though limited. But in the new and soon-to-be former official forums, we would have been simply banned, without any way to defend ourselves for speaking our mind.

I know, I was banned!

I was even removed my Giant status because of a post I did on here... See the copy of the email I've received:

Hi Holly,

This blog post ended up on my desk: http://angel-on-squidoo.blogspot.com/2014/03/deleting-low-performance-lenses-these.html and I'm sorry that you feel this way about Squidoo.

However the Giant Squid Pact clearly states:

    2. Don’t lord your access or power over other lensmasters, or use it to do harm. This means on Squidoo, SquidooHQ, and elsewhere on blogs or even offline. If you flame or harass or malign other human beings online, that’s not in keeping with the spirit of Squidoo, and    certainly not the Giant Squid program.

So we're removing you from the Giant Squid program. My hunch is that you really don't want to be a Giant right now anyway.

Sincerely,
Bonnie
 

Talk about freedom of speech!

Well I wasn't frustrated nor did I feel offended, I didn't care at all. My traffic was already next to nothing, coming from lenses with 40,000 visits/week/lens to almost zero... Why on Earth would I have been worried to lose my giant status?

Moreover I've got only 5 locked lenses in total even though they removed this status that didn't protect me at all.

On Squidoo, once attacked, you couldn't defend yourself, nobody could do it either, you just had to shut your mouth and accept to be bullied like you'd be at elementary school.

On HubPages, instead you have freedom of speech and liberty to defend yourself when you're attacked. That is all what matters to me. And then again, we can't agree with everyone, we can't be friend with everyone, we can't prevent those that have knowledge or need to show it off, to do so. We have to accept everybody as they are or ignore them.

One thing, however, from now on, I'd like Hubbers to never name former Squids otherwise than... Hubbers. Because it's what they have become. They're now entire part of HubPages and I know for a fact that many really enjoy the change.





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