Forum

[easyrider]

I have a site that sells women products (ebooks specifically) on dating, relationships and getting an ex back. I understand that Squidoo is cracking down on some of these sorts of things. So, am I wasting my time designing a Squidoo lens to link back to my site?

 

[Cecille L]

I don't think so. Creating a Squidoo lens referring to a related article back to your site will do your website good. I see lenses made by other marketers, obviously out there to promote their products and their site, on Squidoo all the time. Just make sure the article you post there gives value to readers, otherwise, Squidoo will reject you.

 

[easyrider]

Can I link back to review pages or should I only link to general pages that give actual advice?

 

[chris72]

I hate to contradict a staff member but this is directly from the SquidDon't section ..... - http://www.squidoo.com/squiddont

--Likewise for help with love life, sex life, dating sites, etc. If getting your ex back (who might be gone for a reason) requires paying $29.99 for a PDF, we have to say no.

This comes after drugs, sex, miracle cures, eBooks, MLM, PPC, affiliate marketing, weight loss, diets ....... and before gambling, make money, video games, illegal downloads, envelope stuffing, currency trading and anything else sold on Clickbank :)

 

[easyrider]

Yes, I have seen this and that is why I'm asking. If you look at their website you can find people giving dating and relationship advice and selling the sort of products that Squidoo says you aren't allowed to. So is their bark worse that their bite???

 

[chris72]

It depends - if you class your site being locked and taken down overnight as the 'bark being worse than the bite' then yeah :o)

It really depends on what your keywords are as to whether the lens is even allowed - I know that when you try to make a lens with keywords along the lines of those mentioned in the 'Squidont' list you are 'told off' before your lens is even created.

Many of those sites that you see are old and well established that is why there is no more room for more lens' on the same theme. A quick site search through Google brings up over 10,000 Squidoo lens' with the keyword dating, change the keyword to relationship and the number jumps to 24k - how many of these do you think are giving the reader new content and advice to look at? This is what Squidoo and other 2.0 properties have been cracking down on over the last couple of years.

Some lens' have snuck through the system and are just running on borrowed time. (I personally have 4 that were created before the rule changes and I am very aware that they could disappear overnight so have stopped linking to them)

If you are able to create your lens then consider every day that it is online as a bonus. One of the disadvantages of using a site that you don't own :o)

 

[easyrider]

To me, it makes no sense to class dating and relationship topics as spam. What is wrong with selling people a $30 ebook with dating advice??? It seems if they are against people actually making any money off the site other than through the stupid Amazon ads (that the site presumably gets a cut from). The funny thing is that they don't seem to have any objection to dating and relationship products getting sold if they are from Amazon (which is renowned for having a lot of low quality products).

Moderators are the bane of my life!!! Getting banned from forums, having blogs shut down ...

 

[chris72]

With some topics its not so much the spam side, its the new and relevant information aspect. Imagine a site that has over 35k articles all rehashing the same information - you have to draw a line somewhere.

Also you don't know how many spammers and hackers Squidoo are fending off on a daily basis. I know that most of my sites are fine, sites that have a certain 'theme' like MMO, dating and health naturally attract auto spam bots. On one of these sites I am deleting 50 comments a day - and its not even a popular site like Squidoo.

Moderators are the bane of my life!!! Getting banned from forums, having blogs shut down ...

I have to ask - and maybe you should ask yourself ..... why are moderators booting you out?

Have you gone in with guns blazing saying that this is the best product ever, everyone should buy it and all your troubles will be sorted?

If I came up to you in the street and started with that would you listen to me or push me out of the way and walk on?

People are not in forums to buy anything. They are there for support and advice.

No matter how great these products are, to sell them you have to build trust with the people you are supposed to be helping. Show them how great the product is by the advice that you give and the way that you build YOUR relationship with them and then you'll find that moderators give you a break and sales will come in.

 

[easyrider]

No, it is just that some forums don't like you having signatures with links to your site in them. One forum (with high PR discussion threads) banned me (and others) on suspicion even before I had put anything in my signature or made any reference to any of my products. The blog that was deleted was an .edu one that the moderators didn't like any reference to anything commercial.

 

[chris72]

Three words (or letters)

Terms of Use

Most forums have them, check 'em out and make sure you can live with them before signing on. These ToU or TOS are how they keep their high PR discussion threads :o)

The blog that was deleted was an .edu one that the moderators didn't like any reference to anything commercial.

I don't understand how your .edu blog can be deleted by moderators?

 

[easyrider]

For the forum that I got my account deleted on suspicion, the moderator was exploiting his position to get his own private blog ranked (he does not own the forum BTW). There was one short discussion thread that he was on that was PR7 and he closed it off to comments. I checked out his private blog that was linked to in the signature and it was also PR7 - I wonder why!!!

 

[chris72]

Annoying, but the perks of being a mod :o)

Off topic question - Is it snowing where you are?

 

[easyrider]

I live in Christchurch. Obviously there has been a lot of snow, but most of it has melted away now. I have not seen any new snow falling in the last two days. What about where you live?

 

[chris72]

Hawkes Bay - probably the only place in NZ to miss the snow show!

 

[gradyp]

Did the aftershocks finally stop? I haven't heard of any from there in a while over here.

 

[easyrider]

Chris, the West Coast of the South Island and the Nelson areas didn't get any snow. You guys were just lucky - but I'm sure it was still brutally cold where you are.

Gradyp, there have not been many aftershocks recently, but there definitely will be more. Experts have estimated the probability of another aftershock of magnitude 6+ being 23 percent over the next year. And the chances of a magnitude 5+ one are still close to 100 percent over this period (around a month ago we had one of 5.1). Apparently it will take 2-3 years before things really start to settle down.

 

[williamluke01]

Some lens' have snuck through the system and are just running on borrowed time. (I personally have 4 that were created before the rule changes and I am very aware that they could disappear overnight so have stopped linking to them)

 

[hardnova01]

Stick to making your OWN micro-sites and you will get a lot further a lot faster in the traffic generation arena. If PR ever comes back (in actual reality, not hype-land) then it may again become a resource but for now, don't waste your time.

I hate to contradict a staff member but this is directly from the SquidDon't section ..... - http://www.squidoo.com/squiddont

--Likewise for help with love life, sex life, dating sites, etc. If getting your ex back (who might be gone for a reason) requires paying $29.99 for a PDF, we have to say no.

This comes after drugs, sex, miracle cures, eBooks, MLM, PPC, affiliate marketing, weight loss, diets ....... and before gambling, make money, video games, illegal downloads, envelope stuffing, currency trading and anything else sold on Clickbank :)

 

[Cecille L]

I hate to contradict a staff member but this is directly from the SquidDon't section ..... - http://www.squidoo.com/squiddont

--Likewise for help with love life, sex life, dating sites, etc. If getting your ex back (who might be gone for a reason) requires paying $29.99 for a PDF, we have to say no.

This comes after drugs, sex, miracle cures, eBooks, MLM, PPC, affiliate marketing, weight loss, diets ....... and before gambling, make money, video games, illegal downloads, envelope stuffing, currency trading and anything else sold on Clickbank :)

Thanks for pointing this out Chris! :)

Once upon a time (pre-Panda and pre-Squidon't era), Squidoo accepted all articles and let you build lenses on any topic under the sun. Now they are notorious for turning down practically anything to do with affiliate marketing. If you were able to build a lens before Squidoo tightened the reins, then good for you. If not, there are other ways to build backlinks and get traffic to your site.

Happy Holidays everyone! :)

 

[esolutions]

Yeah, in general it will always be a bad long term strategy to build up someone else's properties. These types of sites come and go, so stick to your own stuff and only use these sites while you can to promote, don't spend too much time trying to get them to work.