Squidoo Migrants-3 years later.

1. 86

   Projectlazyposted 5 years ago

   Hello,  about 3 years ago I along with many others were forced to leave Squidoo.com and come here. I'll say it really killed my love for the hobby. I saw articles that on peak days were getting over a thousand views drop down to less then 100. Now those same articles have become stale and get 100 a month. So I've deleted most of my almost 80 that I came with.
   
   I'm looking to get back into this a bit though. I'm sure the rules of ranking have all changed but It could be fun. Any advice for a some one returning to the game?
   
   Also is there any other Squidoo folks still around?

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yep. And I have found it to be a wholly positive experience. To be fair, I already had a HP account, but being welcomed onto the Apprentice program, meeting a new bunch of people, seeing my hubs becoming more successful month-on-month and equalling, then overtaking, Squidoo earnings has been a fun journey.
      
      No complaints here

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   2. 96

      PegCole17posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Hello Projectlazy, It's good to see you're still here and looking to return to the writing game. I believe the key difference between Squidoo and here is that HubPages is more of a writing site than a selling site. If you have skills and patience you will earn money through views on evergreen articles more so than with the sale of products. At least that's been my experience. But I've only been here 8 years.
      From your profile, it looks like you came from a serious writing background. Go with your strengths and write some articles about things you know and love. This is a community of supportive writers who share the love of the written word. If you want to build your following, read the work of other Hubbers and leave some comments.
      I wish you all the best.

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2. 90

   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   Write quality, in-depth hubs not amazon promos and best gifts for a 10-year-old with nothing but 10 amazon capsules and a small intro. Sadly this is my impression of Squidoo, I know there were a few good articles there, but most were just amazon lists.
   
   Your goal is to get to a niche site. That's where the rankings and traffic is. Good luck!

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      To be fair, you probably wouldn't have seen all the good stuff. There was a lot. From people writing about their local community to addressing parenting issues and masses of creative work. It wasn't all bad, otherwise I wouldn't have written there for so long.

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3. 86

   Projectlazyposted 5 years ago

   Lobo you sort of nailed it. I'm guilty of reaping that. I would write a sales article and the 5 "fluff" things to direct traffic to it. Back then though Hubpages never gave me close to the same returns.

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4. 86

   Projectlazyposted 5 years ago

   theraggededge, I think I just realized that it was losing the community over there that really made me lose interest. I was front page multiple times for the categories I wrote in (never lens of the day though) and I knew everyone who wrote around the same stuff I did. I guess I'll have to find a new home here.

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      It was a fun community. There was a lot of back-stabbing too I upset one person once who was gaming the system, and she went to one of my articles, clicked on an Amazon link and ordered thousands of dollars worth of goods, then cancelled it all. It had zero effect on me, apart from getting a bit excited for about five minutes.
      
      Anyway, there are some lovely people here too, so don't be nervous about launching yourself right in. You'll get all the help you need.

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      1. 90

         lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         OMG, how do you know it was that person. What a tool.

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            theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            It could only have been her It was such an obvious, petty, pointless thing to do.

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            1. 90

               lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               

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      2. 86

         Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I had a story like that. Another other and I would often write in the same categories. I swear everytime I had an idea for a series of articles they would see the first one and do 5 just like it. Drove me crazy.

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5. 90

   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   I had one article on Squidoo too. I got some purple thingy for it. My hub on how do magnets work was on squidoo for like 2 years and received no more than 100 views all from the initial launch. It was top 30 in physics too. I cannot imagine there being a lot of traffic to the other pages if I was in the top 30 for a long time I know the amazon sales hub made a killing there and there were plenty of well written articles too. But in general, the idea was Squidoo = spammy amazon articles. This is just my opinion though.

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I had one, long, comprehensive, art-related article that earned over $2500 during its lifetime. Traffic was always high, though I can't remember the stats now. That lens made it to #1 for three whole days, until it was knocked off its spot by some Amazon-filled dross.
      
      The trouble was, the good stuff was pulled down by the bad crap. You should have seen the dreck that the founder, Seth Godin, published. It was excoriatingly awful. It was a shame. Many of us tried for a long time to persuade the team to clean up. Some even volunteered to spend our own time doing it. Unfortunately management's efforts to make changes came too late.
      
      Thank goodness, we had HP to fall back on. It was just a shame that it caused Google to penalize HP. Although, it must be said, that HP had an awful lot of toxic content of its own at the time.

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      1. 90

         lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Wow. I knew that the founder had bad work up there, didn't know it was bad in that sense lol. I'm sure HPP had it coming, the Squidoo takeover was definitely not the reason for the downfall. Anyway lessons have been learned and thankfully the HP staff are of a different feather.

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   2. 86

      Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      It's to bad because Seth Godin is actually a really smart man and it stained his legacy. His ted talk is still totally worth watching.
      
      I think Squidoo did better for some categories over others top 30 in physics should be good but it's not. I use to hock collectible toys and being top 30 in those categories guaranteed you 100$ + a month.

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      1. 93

         robhamptonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Just curious.. did people make good money on Squidoo?

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         1. 97

            theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I think my highest pay was around $550 in one month. That was probably 2011/12. Amazon paid separately and directly, so it was actually quite a bit more than that, maybe a couple of hundred $s. Although I had some 'sales' lenses, it wasn't something I was comfortable with, so ended up deleting more than I kept. My best Amazon sales came via my art lenses, which were fairly long and comprehensive.
            
            I remember one person who had over a thousand craft lenses. They were short (as in a few paragraphs),  heavily monetized, keyword-stuffed, and all highly ranked. That person would have been earning a fortune. I was so jealous, but I couldn't create stuff like that and call it writing

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            1. 86

               Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               I was one of those slimy monsters. Once you do it, it's addictive. I'd write something insightful that I cared about and it would make 0.03 a month. then I'd write some crappy sales article that took a quarter of the time and make $20 a month. Not much but when you can bang 2-3 a day like that it's disgustingly easy.

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               1. 90

                  lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  This is why I like HP. You are paid per view and not only if you rank in the top percentile. You can make serious money over the years from informative articles.
                  
                  If you write hubs like you did on Squidoo (the $20 a month lenses) you won't see the same traffic

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               2. 43

                  funwithtrainsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Let's be honest, in its prime Squidoo was a lot of fun and quick money.  I had some longer lenses (fairly well monetized) and I had some 250 word lenses with affiliate links (web hosting, Clickbank products, etc.) and sometimes you could really rank high in G for the spammy lenses too and make some nice $$.  You could also use Squidoo for link wheels and drive some pretty decent traffic to your own websites too.
                  
                  Alas, that was too good to last.  Sure, things had gotten spammy, but since then the G pendulum has swung too far (especially for smaller people/companies).  I've met some nice folks on HP, but after being away a few years and coming back now it seems that unless you want to bloviate ad nauseam about Aunt Martha's Quilting Patterns (I made that up, no offense quilters) or other non-commercial topics it is hard to get a lot of love from HP.  I've revised and/or deleted all of my hubs, and my overall score keeps going down and low traffic.
                  
                  EDIT:  I meant to mention that you can still finding G ranking some big corporate websites highly for content that is no less spammy than the old Squidoo days.
                  
                  Oh well, as I said there are some nice folks here.  I'm just feeling a bit nostalgic for the extra cash flow I used to have!  :-)

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                  1. 86

                     Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     First off "bloviate" great word
                     
                     I miss the Squidoo game to. It was different but it was fun in it's own way and It was nice to know you could always find some success with it. I know when I first got here most of the things I tried didn't work out. I'm playing with Youtube a bit now to but the keep increasing the requirements for ad revenue.

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                  2. 90

                     lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     I completely disagree. I have hubs on niche sites that are on range hoods and electric ranges. You just need to provide value and commercial hubs are welcomed.

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                     1. 86

                        Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        That's neat actually I run an exhaust system cleaning company for a day job.

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6. 89

   MelRootsNWritesposted 5 years ago

   I was on Squidoo and I'm still here.  People have their impressions, but there were a lot of good things about Squidoo.  I came in through RocketMoms and met some really nice people. I give Squidoo credit for giving me the courage to write outside my comfort zone, genealogy.
   
   I haven't done a lot of original writing on HP in the last year as I'm rebuilding a large hand coded and not mobile friendly website (700+ pages) in WordPress.  Time consuming and tedious, to say the least.
   
   I do come in to update old hubs.  The traffic is still low, though I had a couple of hubs get traffic boosts in January which gave me a little boost in Amazon sales.

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   1. 90

      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      My website is hard coded and I can imagine the time for 700 pages. Good luck with that. How far along are you?

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   2. 86

      Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I had a lot of fun with Squidoo to. The community had its good and bad apples but I mostly liked them. I don't think I'll ever mirror the traffic I had there.

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7. 95

   EricFarmer8xposted 5 years ago

   I signed up for Squidio but never wrote anything. When I originally joined HubPages I did not really write much either. This account is the first time I really taking online writing seriously.

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8. 89

   MelRootsNWritesposted 5 years ago

   Lobobrandon, I'm almost half way done.  I'd probably be farther, but many of the pages were written in the early 2000s.  I'm adding graphics, reformatting, and rewriting when necessary  I will be glad when the whole thing is over.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Not bad, improving them is just as important as moving them. It would be worth the effort.

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9. 89

   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   I agree. Improving the articles makes a big difference. It is also humbling.

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10. 89

    MelRootsNWritesposted 5 years ago

    Lobograndon and Kenna, The rewriting is tedious, but I agree that it is important. What readers expect on the web has changed so much. 
    
    It's kind of nice in away.  When you go back after having so much time and space between, you can be objective.  You can appreciate what you created, but you can see where the holes are, how you could have said something better, and you see that glaring typo that should have been obvious before. 
    
    I rework my hubs from time to time as well.

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    1. 86

       Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       This hit's home so hard. I have a confidence issue where I have to much of it. I can't even see my flaws. I'll read over the same mistake 5 times but in my head its right.

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          lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

          That's not a confidence issue. There's a term for it, some blindness. A writer very often overlooks his or her own blunders. Sometimes no matter how often you read it you'd never see it because in your head you know exactly what you meant. In the other cases, you should let it go and edit a few days later, you'd be surprised. Also reading out loud helps, by loud I mean murmuring it to yourself. This is very important when I'm writing my technical papers, I've not done this on hubs yet.

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          1. 86

             Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

             My tactic currently is to just let it sit for a week or two and go back to it. I say confidence though because it bleeds into other areas of my life as well. I usually can't see myself being wrong lol.

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    2. 90

       lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. I do the same on my website and hubs. This is especially true on my website, where I keep editing the most visited pages to add more and more information based on the incoming searches.

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11. 85

    ILoveLegosTooposted 5 years ago

    I'm really glad I found Squidoo when I did.  It taught me a lot and gave me courage to explore writing online and creating websites.  The community was nurturing and most wanted to help.  And then there were the people writing blogs and willing to share their experiences.  I remember staying up a couple of weekends until early in the morning putting together a series of lenses.

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12. 84

    Ladymermaidposted 5 years ago

    Hi ~ waves ~ there are still plenty of us around. I'm slowly going through my articles to update or remove them as well. Be sure to open the copyright box at the foot of your articles as you do. Good news on this feature is that it allows us to keep the copyright date our articles were originally created on.

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    1. 86

       Projectlazyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Wow thanks I actually had totally missed that. Did you use the same pic for Squidoo. I think I recognized it before I read your comment.

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13. 40

    Jadelynx-HPposted 5 years ago

    Funwithtrains - I could not agree more.  I have seen my pages go down and down and down.  Even the ones that are informative and not for sales can't seem to stay featured.  I don't see how it is possible to be successful here....and it is not like I don't know how to write; as I have successful blogs
    and articles on other sites.  This tells me that most likely I am not the problem.

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14. 91

    paperfacetsposted 5 years ago

    Squidoo was fun. The buying public was just getting to be comfortable with trusting online shopping. There even was a search on Google like Images called "Shopping".
    Of course, 10 Best was just a store front. The next best thing to 30s-40s style window display on a NYC sidwalk.
    Google decided that style if shopping was over and had run its course. Slap slap slap. We have ads all over our searches controlled by Google only. No more, hey, look at this stuff, from some home body having fun on the computer. Of course, some of that sharing was out of control. A heck of a lot of stuff is still out of control in this world.

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