To Squidoo Or Not To Squidoo?

If you’ve been online for at least the last year or so, you probably know all about marketing with Squidoo…and how that has changed recently.

“Bum Marketers,” or affiliates who like using free marketing techniques, love web 2.0 sites that let them create pages easily that rank well.  Until now, Squidoo has been one of the most popular of these sites for affiliate marketers.  You can join instantly, make “lenses” for free, and use all kinds of modules to sell things, either with ebay or amazon, or your affiliate links.

If you’ve bought any ebooks or courses, it has probably included ways to market effectively with Squidoo.  In fact, when I first came online, all the training was about Squidoo, and I followed the bandwagon.  Why?  Because it worked!  When I first started making money, it was almost all entirely through Ezinearticles and Squidoo.  You can optimize the pages well so they rank well and make money.

BUT….in recent months, Squidoo has decided to change their policies.  They decided that some topics would be off-limits from now on.  They picked topics that had a lot of spam, although obviously not everyone in those niches was a spammer.  Such topics include weight loss, dating, making money online, and several of the most popular/profitable niches.

If you had any lenses in these topics, they may have been locked (removed), and you can’t make new lenses for these topics.  For the full list of topics that are off limits, go to http://www.squidoo.com/squiddont.

Obviously, this has angered lot sof bum marketers.  Some people made all of their money with Squidoo, and overnight their income vanished.  Some people wrote hate mail, some boycotted Squidoo, and others just moved on quickly.

But what should you do?  Is Squidoo still a good option?

Yes and no.  I still think that Squidoo can work well, IF you follow their rules (which do stink by the way, lol).  If your niche is not in their “Squidon’t” list, then you can make a lens the regular old way and make money.  But if you want to make a page about dating, weight loss, etc then you can’t use Squidoo.  There are some alternatives though.

Blogger.com, Vox.com, Wetpaint.com, Weebly.com, Hubpages.com are just a few of the other web 2.0 sites you can use.  You can use any (or all) of these sites instead of Squidoo.

Also, if you DO want to make lenses for a topic that Squidoo still allows, then go for it.  You can get this free guide about Squidoo for some extra tips if you are new to bum marketing.

The point is, Squidoo is still a good site to use, but there are lots of other fish in the sea too.  Why complain if one site doesn’t work?  There are still lots of choices out there, and I would actually recommend using as many as you can!

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