Hey everyone, I wanted to share my unfortunate experience at Squid U forum and Squidoo. Before before I do, I acknowledge there are others who have had better experiences. My friend Robin told me about this forum and about Squidoo, and she has had some success there. Still, people deserve to know what can happen so that they don't invest their precious time and energy in something that may well turn out to be a total wasted effort. I had created maybe 20 or so lenses at Squidoo. I followed their terms of service (TOS) carefully, and I was not in violation of their policies. My lenses were starting to be well-liked there, and I even had an Angel Blessing and likes from several high-ranking Squids on a lens entitled "How do I get a money miracle?" While I was participating at Squidoo, I read a bunch of lenses on Squidoo, and it became apparent that to have maximum exposure and readership to your lenses, you need to participate on SquidU forum. I carefully read the terms of the SquidU forum, made sure I was not in violation of any of them, and posted according to their rules. Unfortunately, an internet troll came along and began making false accusations about my lens. And instead of investigating the facts, the moderators deleted my lens. I reposted there with a respectful explanation of my business and my lens so that nobody could possibly confused. The moderators then deleted everything I wrote and threatened to ban me if I posted again. I emailed the moderators for help, and they did not respond to my messages. I emailed people at Squidoo for help and was told that Squid U forum is "independent of Squidoo" so there was nothing they could do. (i.e., no accountability). Well, SquidU forum is not independent of Squidoo. High ranking Squidoo official presented the leadership council at SquidU, and it's moderated by people in the inner circle at Squidoo. Not one to be quiet about censorship, I posted factual information about my unfortunate experience at SquidU in two of my lenses in an attempt to get the situation remedied. I was still happy to participate in the community so long as my lenses could be featured at SquidU just like everyone else. Alas, all my hard work over the past couple of months is down the drain as of this morning when all my lenses were locked without any specific explanation. Not ONE lens locked. ALL of them locked, with no specific explanation. In other words, you could invest months or years creating content there and have it all disappear because a high-ranking Squid doesn't like you. Thank goodness I am not dependent on Squidoo for my income. Now all that said, my friend Robin has (so far) had a pretty good experience at Squidoo. Using tools she learned from me, she's actually been making pretty good money the past few months. However, I read a lot of lenses at Squidoo, including one of a high-ranking Squid who acknowledged working 30 hours per week on her lenses and making only a few hundred dollars a month. That's not even minimum wage where I live. All in all, I simply do not recommend that anyone invest their time and energy at Squidoo. I have heard a lot of stories about people's content being locked down for questionable reasons. I've had my own websites for several years, and I run a very successful online business. Especially for someone like me who is on the cutting edge of transformation, and is into radical honesty and free speech, it just is not a worthy investment of valuable time and energy when that risk is there that someone might get their feathers ruffled and all that work is wasted. If you have any questions about my experience at Squidoo and SquidU forum, let me know. Like I said, my friend Robin who also posts here has had a better experience than I did, but to me this is too risky for any entrepreneur who is committed to their business. And hopefully free speech is allowed on this forum, because I think entrepreneurs have a right to know about this sort of thing BEFORE they invest a bunch of time, energy, and content, on one of these websites. - Erika Awakening
What topic were your lenses on? I have had lenses locked too but they were on a taboo topic... such as : work at home make money at home lose belly fat weight loss etc...
The controversial lens was "how to get a money miracle." The ideas discussed could be applied to working at home, and I have applied it to working at home. However, that was NOT the focus of the lens. The focus of the lens was about becoming consciously aware of our limiting beliefs and using tapping to transform limiting beliefs. Other locked lenses included an article about A Course in Miracles, my near-death experience, and learning how to let go and let God by following my intuition. Another locked lens was about Pilates and what I was learning about Pilates workouts. Another locked lens was about what I was learning about making money on Squidoo. A Squidoo community lens. These topics are not banned by their TOS unless somehow I didn't see A Course in Miracles, near-death experiences, intuition, and Pilates in the list of banned topics.
That's too bad! One thing PotPieGirl talks about in her OWM is to keep only the related lenses together and under one account. That way if one gets locked you only lose that account. I have learned to stay FAR away from anything that smacks of making money with anything and from anything related to losing weight. lol But the near death experience, and learning how to let go and let God should be okay as long as you aren't talking about the how to get money miracle on that lens...
The Pilates lens wasn't about losing weight. I don't need to lose weight. It was about getting in touch with our bodies and transforming both from the outside in and from the inside out. No way it could possibly be construed as violating their policies. And there are tons of very high-ranking lenses on Squidoo about making money on Squidoo. The idea that someone is not allowed to say, "hey, you can make more money on Squidoo by changing your limiting beliefs" is simply preposterous. Especially when top-ranking Squids there are (from what I read in a lot of lenses), essentially working for Squidoo for less than minimum wage. I wouldn't bother with multiple accounts. Too much hassle. My main issue is that there seems to be no accountability at Squidoo. If a high-ranking Squid doesn't like you or what you say, you can get banned and have all your lenses locked even if they don't violate anything. To me, it just makes a lot more sense to save my content for places where it won't be censored. And build up the traffic of my own website. I've participated in lots of internet communities of various kinds with no problems at all. So when I come across censorship like this, for me it's a simple "no thanks, I'll take my content elsewhere."
ErikaAwakening: To me, it just makes a lot more sense to save my content for places where it won't be censored. And build up the traffic of my own website. I've participated in lots of internet communities of various kinds with no problems at all. So when I come across censorship like this, for me it's a simple "no thanks, I'll take my content elsewhere." Yep I am totally with you on that. I still use my Squidoo lenses to direct traffic to my SBI sites, but my main focus is adding content to places where I have complete control over them. I learned that lesson when I had some very nicely built wordpress blogs (free ones) and the traffic was building very nicely when without warning all of them got locked and they were in a variety of niches as well... guess I had one that violated terms. It took me for a loop for a little bit but then it prompted me to figure out the whole hostgator thing and how to upload my own wordpress so it was all good...
Squidoo has removed a lot of lens without notification and I am very sorry this happened to you. This is one reason why I always think it's better to invest a little into your own website and domain. You control it and you don't have to worry about others deleting it.
Yeah I'm with both of you, payment proof and mountainmom5. Fortunately, I do have my own websites and I'm not even dependent on Google for my traffic. Free speech is very important to me. I don't wish to be living in fear of any of these entities so independence is treasured. I'm thinking about writing an extensive article about this actually. I really don't think the Squidoo-ers are getting a good deal. And they could do so much better having their own content on their own sites. After reading a lot of lenses, it seemed that you can work a long time to get to the upper echelons of income on Squidoo, and even then it's not a lot of money. I do live in San Francisco so our cost of living is much higher than some places, but still ... I'm not sure people understand their content is valuable and they can make a lot more money using it in non-Squidoo ways. Plus not have to deal with censorship and favoritism.
Erica, If you write the article well, it may be good for keywords and get you some additional traffic. It's depressing to have someone else delete what you worked hard on. I used to have a Hub page. Had it for about 5 years. It followed the TOS at the time I wrote it. But Hubpages changed their TOS and then removed my hub without notice. So I share your frustrations. And I am sorry it happened to you with Squidoo.
Thanks payment proof. I'm contemplating a potential article. "Work at home," by the way is one of Squidoo's OFFICIAL article categories in their Upmarket magazine, so the idea that somehow this is a "forbidden" topic if that is true is double speak in the extreme. I have a screen shot of it but not sure how to attach it here. Literally, when you are categorizing your article before publishing it, one of the choices is "Work at Home." They also have an entire "business" section and a "small business" sub-section. But apparently you can't help people make more money in their business by helping them identify and clear their limiting beliefs. It seriously makes no sense whatsoever.
Perhaps the Universe led you there to rock the boat Erika and open a few eyes. Perhaps you can do this. I too have tried to create work at home lens and have been stopped by the same warning, even though it was a category. Regardless, I sill love Squidoo. It is one stream of income for me and a good one. It was and still is a learning platform for me. It helps me decide what streams of income I will follow. If it does well in Squidoo, ranks in Google, that is my key to focus on the topic and make it bigger. It's a great testing ground and you can make money while you are testing. I stay out of the Squid forum. There is some negative energy there and I know of a two people who have had their lens locked by ruffling feathers there.
Yeah, to me, I just don't want to be involved in a community where you can get lenses locked by "ruffling feathers." My life purpose is to unravel ego consciousness. Unraveling ego consciousness challenges people at the level of their most cherished assumptions, and it must be done. If moderators at SquidU forum are allowed to run roughshod over anyone they don't like, even for made-up and manufactured reasons, they have created a space where ego consciousness reigns supreme. This is why I have been guided for years to be independent of authority figures. I'm also, as far as I can tell, making more money working from home than even the highest-ranking Squids (other than whatever folks must be raking in the cash who own the site). So I don't feel that I need whatever advantages they may be able to offer, and the price of sacrificing my freedom and integrity is way too high. Anyway, for the curious, I did write an extensive article about this last night on my blog. I hope people will think twice about whether it really serves them to give their content to Squidoo for what may well turn out to be less than minimum wage payments. I've had a lot of success with my own websites, and anyone who is committed can do the same. By the way, I also re-read Squid Don't policy again last night. I've read it three or four times now and still don't see anything I wrote about on that list. Of course, they say they "know it when they see it" about spam. And given how totally imprisoned by limiting beliefs their entire SquidU forum appeared to be, it would not be surprising that powerful valuable content like what I write would be considered "spam" from their perspective. Again, that's the downside of having no accountability there. If it threatens their ego, they are going to ban it, and we won't have much recourse. Way too much hassle and downside from my perspective. I'll run my own business as I see fit, thank you very much.
I agree with staying away from the Squidu forums. I noticed the negative vibe there, as well as the "put me down syndrome" from the experienced lensmasters. I owned the old OWM and the advice there is to leave the socialising on squidoo for a later period (it does not seem to be the focus of Potpiegirl at all). I asked for others to critique my lens there and I got this feeling that I am supposed to get their "blessing" on the particular topics that I write about.
I also had a lens locked, while many others were on a similar topic and had been up for some time. Very disappointing when you invest the time in building a lens and mine was performing very well before it got shut down. I haven't been back to Squidoo since.
I am actually giving some thought to revisiting Squidoo. I heard an excellent suggestion of turning existing articles you have written into Squidoo lenses. I have a few that should be easy to do and I will see what the results are. Some years have gone by and I have also heard that there have been improvements, so I'm going to give Squidoo another shot.
Just had Squidoo do this to me. Spent ages working on a really nice article only to find out today its been locked and without any reasons. Thing is I didn't find out until after I had spent another whole day creating a second article. What a complete waste of time. I'm wondering if its not been flagged by other members who feel it competes with their lenses. All in all I'm done with the wet squid and advise anyone else to seriously consider spending any amount of time creating articles that can and are being band for pretty much no reason at all that I can see.
Sorry to hear you had your lenses locked. I've never used places like Squidoo, where they can delete your content on a whim with no recourse. After all, remember that their TOS applies to you, not to them... I learned that lesson many years ago when I had a blog at Wordpress.com where I had put hours of hard work in, developing good quality unique content related to my niche but that did not actually promote anything. Followed the TOS to the letter. Yet one day they took down my blog and banned me as a spammer. To this day I don't know why! I always advise anyone to always host their own content.
I am a member of Squidoo and decided early on that the amount of time and effort that it takes to make money there, is not worth it. This was several years ago. Things have gotten worse for some of the people who stuck around over there and saw a steep decline in their earnings. I do believe that it is still a great place to learn and exchange ideas. However, when it comes to making money, we should never put all of our eggs in one basket.
