Now Squidoo is considering copying the Hubpages subdomain move!

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   Silver Roseposted 13 years ago

   See this article where they say they are experimenting with staff accounts:
   
   http://www.squidoohq.com/2011/09/13/wer … -accounts/
   
   I think they are prompted by the fact that HP appears to be slowly moving out of teh Panda penalty (albeit with some accounts seeing wild movements). Here's Quantcast:
   
   
   
   Squidoo still haven't managed to break past their Oct 2010 high.

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      jcmayer777posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I read about this yesterday or the day before.  I think they are going forward with vegetarian domain or something.
      
      It's interesting, but if I were running the show there I'd wait and see how Hubpages does first. 
      
      I've never written for squidoo.  I signed up for an account about 2-3 years ago, when I was really new to online writing.  I couldn't figure out how to make it all work and I never went back to it.

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         Silver Roseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I much prefer Hubpages too. On Squidoo, the revenue distribution is opaque. People appear to be forced to subsidize the favoured cliques. On HP you take home what you earn, it's an extremely fair system.

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            WriteAngledposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            I signed up over there and wrote one article. Then I read how Squidoo actually stops your work appearing in the search engines and makes you get all your own traffic in other ways. That was enough for me never to go back.

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               Flynn the Catposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               What are you talking about?
               
               IF your lens is very poor in quality and doesn't pass the filters or if it drops very far down in rank, it will go into WIP status and not appear in the INTERNAL search. It still exists - it's just, if search traffic found it, it wouldn't be in WIP anyway (rather than WIP>no search traffic).

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                  WriteAngledposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  The information I read says that squidoo blocks it from external search engines. Given that a hub of mine is on the first page of Google search even for fairly vague search terms, and is my major earner here, while a very closely related lens is nowhere to be seen and has not earned a penny, I feel I have experimented sufficiently with squidoo for my purposes.

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                     Greekgeekposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     You misunderstood.
                     
                     A lens is not findable by search engines until Squidoo's algorithm takes a look at it, determines its categories and tags, and plugs it into Squidoo's directory tree. This indexing takes place once a day (usually) around 8AM. The lens is then crawlable and may be found by search engines, which dig through Squidoo's directory all the time.
                     
                     There's nothing to stop you from tweeting or linking to a lens before the daily indexing. I can sometimes get a lens to show up on Google within 20 minutes.
                     
                     I don't think you have Squidoo sufficient testing to figure out how it works. I'm only making 5-10 cents a day on Hubpages, which is a ridiculously low ROI, but I know I'm not experienced enough to know what works here and what draws traffic. I'm making about $25/day on Squidoo.  Do I assume my poor return from HP is because Hubpages sucks? Nope. I assume that's because the sites are different, and the skills I've acquired on one site aren't quite the ones needed for the other. And that's a good thing, because it means one can get slightly different income streams, just as it's a good idea to diversify one's mutual funds.
                     
                     Squidoo pages tend to be more interactive for users, but the key to success there, as here (I assume) is not simply to cater to the Squidoo community, but to create pages that are valuable, useful, and draw a lot of people from the web. Making pages more interactive for visitors so they can vote, take quizzes, etc is a known web design technique for encouraging user engagement, keeping them on the page, and getting them in the right frame of mind to click on ads and Amazon links. However, not all Squidoo lenses take advantage of that approach, nor do they need to.
                     
                     Squidoo recovered from their 2007 Google slap in 3-4 months and began surpassing its traffic from before that time -- I still have the traffic data for my own lenses showing the dip (here's one). I predicted back in March that Hubpages would chart a similar recovery, and returned here during the worst of the dip.
                     
                     Also, for anyone looking at only a year's worth of traffic data on Quantcast, you're missing the big picture. Many sites have seasonal traffic. Squidoo has several major peaks (in fact, they're just about to enter a surge period) every year.
                     
                     Some niches do better than others on each site, but there is absolutely no reason to follow popular trends, any more thna there's a good reason to buy what everyone's buying in the mall right now. You can certainly carve out a niche for yourself. Flynn, Relache and I have.
                     
                     (I, too, have multiple accounts on Squidoo, but there's a tiny disadvantage to doing that: each account gets paid separately, so the $1 transaction fee from Paypal is charged once per account.)
                     
                     I find some things on Squidoo annoying. But the complaints leveled against it by people who aren't active on it tend not to apply. You'll be annoyed by other things entirely if you actually use it.   

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      Barbara Kayposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've written 3 articles at Squidoo. I earn around .50 for one of them each month. To be honest, I never did much linking or anything for them. I never got involved in their discussions either. I need to put more work in on them. I've just found Hubpages easier to use and have been writing here.
      
      I figure once I reach my goals here, I'll try Squidoo again.

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   EmpressFelicityposted 13 years ago

   If I were Squidoo, I'd wait for another six months. Squidoo's traffic looks to be on a gentle upward slope anyway, so it's not as if they are in dire straits traffic-wise.

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      Silver Roseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I don't think Squidoo traffic is on a gentle upward slope - they appear to be capped at the 1 million mark. If you look at teh graph they seem to have tried to break out of this in May and plunged back. The old "Google slap" that they got may be holding the domain back as a whole, so perhaps sub-domains will help them.

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         Flynn the Catposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         The Google slap has been gone for years.

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   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   Squidoo shouldn't be regarded as a content farm, they have plenty of anti spam measures in place, I think it was the add groups' function that got abused a lot by spammers leaving their link, it had an option not to autoapprove mind.

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      psycheskinnerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      It's still a content farm.  A content farm is a site that gets a bunch of people to write about whatever in order to earn advertising income.

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         Greekgeekposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         So you're saying Hubpages is a content farm?
         
         Because we do exactly the same thing on both sites:
         
         We (the members) pick topics we want to write on, and write them. We are not assigned topics to write on.
         
         Yes, often, I pick topics that I believe will get traffic. But Squidoo certainly didn't tell me what to write on. I did the keyword research myself.
         
         They do have challenges for newbies, just like Hubpages does, but I don't participate in them. Nor are those challenges tied to keywords. They are challenges like, "Hallowe'en is coming... make some Hallowe'en lenses!"

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   Lisa HWposted 13 years ago

   I signed up there a few years ago.  I like this site better (which is why I ended up doing more here than there).  It's just more straightforward:  You write.  You earn/you don't earn/you sort of earn.  You know exactly what's earning what.  If you're not in the mood to write you can read if you feel like it.  If you're not in the mood to do either you can come to forums or else do something somewhere else.
   
   Not long ago I looked back into Squidoo, and I can see, maybe, using it for some types of writing; but it looks to me as if more emphasis is placed on then discussing what's been written than I want to get involved with.

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   relacheposted 13 years ago

   I have several hundred lenses across a few accounts at Squidoo and for two or three years, I made more money over there than I did here.  In fact, it was Squidoo not being effected by Panda that paid my rent during the few months where my earnings here utterly tanked. (Okay, so "tanked" is a relative term, I was still pulling down a few hundred a month, but it was close to 1/3 of pre-Panda levels, which btw, have now returned)
   
   
   
   If it shows better performance for the site, I'm all for it.  It wouldn't hurt at all if my lens earnings were to go up.
   
   P.S.  I've never had a problem with my lenses appearing in search engines.  I have some that take top spots (meaning #1-#3 for strong key phrases) just like some of my Hubs do.

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      Lisa HWposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't know someone could have more than one account there.  Guess I didn't look into it closely enough (obviously),  Just wondering, though, whether discussing each lens/socializing  is more important on there than than it is here.

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         relacheposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I don't discuss/socialize lenses or hubs.  That sort of behavior is only important if you happen to think it is.  My experience has taught me that my time is better spent on other activities.

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   skyfireposted 13 years ago

   No offense but since when hubpages patented subdomain move ?

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   makusrposted 13 years ago

   Is it permitted to join squidoo while you are writing in hubpages. Can you post your hubs that you write on hubpages on squidoo. How does squidoo help grow your traffic and revenue?

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      QuestionMasterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Both Hubpages and Squidoo do not allow duplicate content. If you write on each, you'll need to submit different content.

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   Topnewhottoysposted 13 years ago

   @Greekgeek -  I wrote 20 or 30 lens before coming to HP. Didn't see much return from them - BUT, I was new to it and perhaps didn't write to the right keywrods.
   
   I also didn't participate in the community - which seems to be a factor in your earnings,
   
   Considering returning to try again.
   
   Would you consider sharing your squid name so I can check your work. Warning, I won't steal your content, but I will mimic any good idea I come across.

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      Greekgeekposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I'm Greekgeek there too.
      
      It's true, I do get some benefit from participating in community, but I've also got accounts under alternate usernames that do not, partly so I can test and hone my skills.
      
      One account does not do well: it's all "thinky thought" articles that aren't well-optimized. (Still, it pulls about 1200 visitors and $60 a month.) The other account does well: it's catering to a popular niche of video games *sheepish grin* which have a fanbase that never dries up.
      
      Niche and keyword research, lots of clickouts and opportunities for visitor interaction, and delivering entertaining/informative/lively content seem to be the ticket, or one ticket, to success.
      
      It's not easy. But I bet taking stuff you've learned on Hubpages, you could go back, improve and get better returns on the lenses you wrote before, if they're still there.

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   Topnewhottoysposted 13 years ago

   @Greekgeek - Thanks for the reply. I'll check you out when I get back to Squidoo.
   
   Other than visiting these forums for a break, I seem to be spending every waking hour creating my own content and seo efforts.
   
   I never seem to be able to bounce around, an hour's effort here, and hour's effort there, like I see others speak of. I end up getting immersed and spending most of a day on each project segment.
   
   Maybe I should check-out some time-management hubs LOL
   
   GA

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