Squidoo Cracks Down on Marketing Lenses
Do you Squidoo? And if you do… Are you a marketer doing Squidoo? If so, you need to know that Squidoo has decided that they don’t like marketers. At least, that’s how it seems to me.
Here’s an email I got yesterday:
Dear Squidoo lensmaster:
During the Summer of 2009 we publicly updated our anti-spam policies to disallow the creation and hosting of certain topics on our site.
==WHY THIS EMAIL?==
You’re getting this email because one or more of your lenses have been determined to be on these SquidDon’t topics. We’re sure you’re a goodguy and doing no harm! But alas, such categories have demonstrated such an overwhelming attraction to spammers or tricksters that we’re not able to support lenses on them at all–even if the quality of the lens is high.
Un-frickin’-believable.
The lenses in question were both Overcome Everything lenses, and they’re just solid content. One is all about list building. It has articles, videos, and I don’t even think there’s a link back to the ListBuilding Club on that lens. The videos have the link in them. But there’s absolutely NOTHING spammy. You can judge for yourself: http://www.squidoo.com/listbuildingwarrior
The other lens is much shorter and has clean content, as well. But… It’s also Internet marketing content. So, what’s Squidoo telling us? They don’t want to allow us to provide information for other Internet marketers on their platform?
That’s exactly the case.
Check this out:
On the Squidont’s page, it says, “Junk = Topics that too frequently turn into Spam.” Hmm… So, what’s that mean? Anything about marketing is “junk”? That’s pretty insulting.
I know that Squidoo can be abused and that lots of people do it. I agree that it’s not right and totally sucks. People shouldn’t spam or put out tons of dupe content everywhere or whatever. But basically, Squidoo is telling Internet marketers that they just don’t want our business. They’re discriminating against us, it seems.
This isn’t surprising, really. Tumblr just shuts your account down if they see a hint of an affiliate link, as will Scribd. I get that.
But to just decide that a content lens is not worthwhile makes me shrug. WTF? If we’re not breaking any rules, why are we being abused? Doesn’t seem at all fair to me.
Just sayin’. And wanted you to know.
