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Are you selling or spamming?

Bonnie Diczhazy
by on Wed, Feb 27th, 2013

Screen Shot 2013-02-27 at 2.50.16 PMTake a look at this lens and this lens.

These lenses share personal reviews, personal recommendations and personal photos AND they have the right combination of useful information and sales links to be profitable.

This lens has got nothing to offer but links.

Consumers love useful reviews and recommendations on products they intend to purchase and you have the power to provide amazing content that can persuade people to purchase the new book you just read or the juicer you’ve been using for years.

It’s fun to share the things you love and get excited about why you love them. That’s a wonderful human emotion and interaction.

But what happens when you just list products links? Are you bringing anything to the table? Are you adding a human element? Are you giving back?

Are you selling or spamming?

Image Credit

Bonnie Diczhazy (bdkz) is Editor of the SquidooHQ Blog and Head of Community here at Squidoo.com.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sethgodin sethgodin

    Well said, Bonnie. Squidoo is first and foremost about personal, about humanizing the web and giving people a voice. If your lens is voiceless, expect it to be dinged, ignored or locked…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sethgodin sethgodin

    Well said, Bonnie. Squidoo is first and foremost about personal, about humanizing the web and giving people a voice. If your lens is voiceless, expect it to be dinged, ignored or locked…

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/tvyps tvyps

      Where is the “like” button..oops, this isn’t Facebook…I will just say I like that comment, ha!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DaveStone13 DaveStone13

      Not really in the Squidoo spirit, Seth. Too each his or her own, as long as we stay within the guidelines, right? If what you say is policy, the lens in question has been in violation for nearly two years.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      http://www.squidoo.com/great-stuff-for-your-new-kindle

      I may be missing something but I don’t see all that much difference from the “bad” lens pointed out in this HQ post and the one I’m linking here…

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Heather426 Heather426

        LOL, and so true!

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Heather426 Heather426

        LOL, and so true!

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ted-batchelor ted-batchelor

        Brilliant. A perfect example.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Titia Titia

      Why then I ask, have lenses/accounts not be locked that has been reported by lensmasters as being spam lenses/accounts several times.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

      Funny, the lens used as an example has not been dinged, ignored or locked. In fact, it’s near Tier 2. Are you hinting that in the future lenses like the example will be?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

        …and no doubt, the lens will probably BE in Tier 2 either tomorrow or Friday……..due to the lopsided weights that internal traffic, likes, comments, and blessings have on tier ranking. Are ya gonna fix that too?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Flynn_the_Cat Flynn_the_Cat

      Dinged? You know that the ding option hasn’t been around for many months, right?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/earnu2 earnu2

    Good opinion,to much links isnt good

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/earnu2 earnu2

    Good opinion,to much links isnt good

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Ladymermaid Ladymermaid

    There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to create a sales lens.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Ladymermaid Ladymermaid

    There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to create a sales lens.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MSchindel MSchindel

    Bonnie, as usual you’ve brought up another key aspect of our responsibility as lensmasters to create content with significant and unique added value and provided excellent examples that drive home this essential message. “Shopping spam” lenses like the shower curtain example you shared are one of my pet peeves. I’ve always believed that effective marketing, i.e., marketing that results in targeted sales and repeat business, is based on “How can I help you?” marketing (“you” being a specific target audience with a well defined need or interest) rather than on the far more common “What can I sell you?” marketing. There is an art to identifying the sweet spot where your customers’ needs and your needs as a marketer intersect. Fortunately, Squidoo has many tools and features to help us reach our targeted audience segments with products that are relevant to their needs, but it is up to us to provide the helpful, personal perspectives that make peer reviews of products such a compelling marketing tool.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MSchindel MSchindel

    Bonnie, as usual you’ve brought up another key aspect of our responsibility as lensmasters to create content with significant and unique added value and provided excellent examples that drive home this essential message. “Shopping spam” lenses like the shower curtain example you shared are one of my pet peeves. I’ve always believed that effective marketing, i.e., marketing that results in targeted sales and repeat business, is based on “How can I help you?” marketing (“you” being a specific target audience with a well defined need or interest) rather than on the far more common “What can I sell you?” marketing. There is an art to identifying the sweet spot where your customers’ needs and your needs as a marketer intersect. Fortunately, Squidoo has many tools and features to help us reach our targeted audience segments with products that are relevant to their needs, but it is up to us to provide the helpful, personal perspectives that make peer reviews of products such a compelling marketing tool.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/nancycarol nancycarol

    Unfortunately, as lensmasters we often write about things we have not personally experienced. That handicaps our ability to write about them as though we know them. Someone once said to me about one of my lenses, “If someone is looking to buy a particular item, they don’t want to wade through all the blather, they just want you to show them the goods.” I’ve often prided myself on being able to write something interesting to the reader. I often do extensive research into the history and background of a particular item. But I was told I’m boring my readers, and they just want to get to the products. Now I have to wonder, which one of us was right? But I think I will revert to my own style and not worry about “just getting to the item.”

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

      I think that in order to write an effective lens you need to have some sort of interest in a product. You may not own it but say if you’re writing about the KitchenAid mixer you can explain how you’re looking to buy one and would like some opinions on your Duel Module.

      As for writing too much. There is definitely a balance that can be achieved. However just displaying a list of links has no benefit to anyone. A consumer just has to type a key word into Amazon to get the same results. With a lens you have to bring more to the table.

      As always I appreciate your feedback Nancy.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

        lots of good points here — but I have to respectfully disagree about same results by typing keyword into amazon. I spent 2 hours last night finding new products for a seasonal baby clothing lens that would not have come up in a a simple amazon search (believe me, I started with just such a search and got a bunch of cr*p). I handpicked the items for color, style, size availability, and the way they rounded out the full “collection” on the lens. I wrote a line or two about each item, but even if I hadn’t, there was still a LOT more work involved than just an amazon search….and that work will continue as products go out of stock, which happens all the time. these themed product collections are not as easy as they seem, if you want to do them right. just sayin’….

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

          Carefully curated collections that offer insight, content and value can certainly be great lenses.

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

            OK but this post makes us confused. How will we know if our lenses fulfill the right criteria?

            I’m kind of new and I’ve only been doing sales lenses since the holiday season, My first was for the celebrate magazine and this lens is my latest http://www.squidoo.com/soup-mugs-with-handle-soup-bowls-with-handles

            I don’t know if it is now considered spammy??

            can you please help me out here.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/SerraBlogs SerraBlogs

          I had the same experience last night, but it was trying to find an 18″ rear bicycle wheel for my son’s bike. It was *dreadful* trying to specify the search in the right way to actually get what I wanted. I ended up having to use words I wasn’t familiar with and going by other dimensions of the wheel. I never ended up buying anything.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          totally agree, I do the same. Carefully picked items do take much effort and time to collect and saves the reader lots of hours of search

      • MuleWagon

        No, it isn’t true at all that you just have to type a keyword into Amazon to get the products for a sales lens. It takes hours of work – keyword research, multiple searches and search filters, checking reviews, checking images (I only use products that have good images, preferably white background, and that complement the other images in the module), assigning to categories…

        Then you do it all again in a few days, because the Amazon search serves up more results when you search for something repeatedly.

        After all that, sometimes I can’t think of much else to say besides “Ooh, shiny!” Which is a lack, but it’s not lack of work.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          well said, I agree completely

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/debtfreeguy debtfreeguy

    Thanks for the tips! It really helps to see these samples and to compare and contrast. I missed the RocketSquids programme but, I never miss the HQ Tips. Eight months here, and still learning every day. I appreciate the work you guys put into the site. Kudos!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/n2b n2b

    I am with you. I read today some comment on losing rank on S. forum. I think people think that they are entitled to nice ( good) rank if they put some moduls together. I think, even if it is not so hard to do so, it is much harder to do a great review, with the consumer in mind.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jonart jonart

    Have to agree with you Bonnie. If there is no human connection, it’s like watching a 30 second commercial on TV. I prefer connecting…:)

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ted-batchelor ted-batchelor

      And we all buy something after watching a 30 second commercial..

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/walkingstick walkingstick

    I like reading lenses where the product is part of a story.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/alexmasters alexmasters

    Very helpful and informative. Thanks for making that distinction about selling and spamming.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/alexmasters alexmasters

    Very helpful and informative. Thanks for making that distinction about selling and spamming.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sherry-b sherry-b

    Thank you for sharing this, Bonnie! Very helpful to me since I am pretty new here. Looking at the lens with all the links, I have to agree that it is WAY too much! I, for one, like to know a little bit about a product before I even think about clicking on a link to buy it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/gonzalezdenise gonzalezdenise

    Thanks.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/penepenep penepenep

    Thanks for this info. I’m a newbie and still trying to figure everything out and this is a BIG help!!

  • ismeedee

    That’s why most of my lenses are either informational or about children. I am not a great consumer so don’t have many products I can recommend. Tend to buy old, second hand stuff when I do buy, or borrow books from the Library. Or I buy toys or kids clothes. So that is where the material comes from for my lenses. Because I do agree that the lenses are much better with personal touches. There are sooo many about just products and they are pretty dull.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/myspace9 myspace9

    True, most of the times in my lenses I write through my own experiences. Still Learning each and every day on this platform. Thnks for the information.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DaveStone13 DaveStone13

    If the lens is as crazy as the shower curtains thing, you’d think the market would decide. On the other hand, if you’re just shopping for shower curtains, you may not have time for personal stories, but there are plenty other purely commercial webpages for that.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

      Exactly Dave. People can easily find a list of shower curtains on the web. What you personally bring to a lens is special, personal and the reason people will share your work.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

        But I think it is possible to bring something personal to a collection…in what’s chosen, how it’s displayed, and how it’s categorized. For example, Squidoo obviously thought this list of links worthwhile (http://www.squidoo.com/DailyShowBookLis)–they gave it a purple star and it’s been featured as the Lens of the Day even though it is ENTIRELY a list of links, apart from the intro. You can tell that collection took time though—and a lot of devotion to the Daily Show (he had to watch it every day just to get that list, or do research).

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

    Hmm. I don’t know…if I was shopping for a unique shower curtain, I don’t think I would feel “spammed” if google sent me to that example page. I understand why the other pages are better in many respects, but I don’t see collection pages are necessarily spam. The ones I do find spammy are the ones filled with lots of products scattered throughout that have little to do with the topic at hand. When I come across a lens or other web page that is straight forward about selling I don’t mind that (especially if it’s a good, well thought-out collection). But when you have a topic like “Growing Up in the 80′s” and the product modules (even if topical) outnumber the content, that that feels spammy to me.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

      Interesting. Although I think there is a difference between being spammed and writing spammy content. The takeaway here is that with a Squidoo lens you get to do more then just create a link list. You get to create amazing useful content that has your name on it. Why do just the minimum when you can excel with a quality piece of work?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

        It’s a conundrum to an extent, however. I love to create lots of original content – but sometimes a sales lens is a flat out sales lens, and that’s what works the best if you want to sell. If I look at my best-performing holiday lenses? They are honestly ones with a LOT of products simply linked with minimum content from me beyond organizing those links for quick, sorted browsing. I can meanwhile do a great personalized lens on 10, 5 or even just one product I highly recommend from my personal experience? And not sell a thing. And unless the topic manages to tier rank well, it’s not going to earn me a thing whereas the simple sales lens will.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DaveStone13 DaveStone13

        The answer is more complex. We create product lenses to sell products. We stay within the guidelines. I’ve written plenty of quality content that never earns a dime. Quality content is great, but what is being referenced as quality here isn’t really what’s making money for lensmasters.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

        “Why do just the minimum when you can excel with a quality piece of work?” That’s assuming that this is “the minimum.” I have a review lens which I put up which had a lot of great written content and even got featured on the front page at Squidoo. It took very little time to put together (and has sold a total of 1 product). One of my first lenses was mostly links and little text, but I speant hours and hours choosing and categorizing the products and hours since upkeeping the products (since some products drop occasionally). Its a collection you couldn’t find easily just by searching the shops I pulled these from., and itwas fun to put together because I got to share things I found beautiful and funny. And it’s made lots of sales (I made hundreds for charity over the holidays with that one, while I made less than $1 on the “more quality” lens). I think if you make a list that’s fun and visually pleasing, people want to browse it. And while some items (like cameras, books, ipads) need text to get people interested, I don’t see where a lot of text does much to add to more visual items (like artwork, t-shirts, and quirky shower curtains). Honestly, if I was looking for a quirky shower curtain, I probably wouldn’t read what was on the page anyways…I would just look at the pictures.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

          (Sheesh…sorry for the typos on that! Going back to edit.)

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/dom-wells dom-wells

            you made a very good point and I don’t see the issue with that lens either. I can see the “perceived issue” but it all depends what the reader wants. If I am searching for that particular keyword, I’m not interested in reading a personal story about a unique shower curtain.

            I would even go as far as saying that susan52′s example lens at the top, written by someone who I am a fan of and who has produced countless great lenses in the past, is a very messy lens. Just in the introduction module all I can see is links. By the time I reach the middle of the lens, I am distracted, confused, and suffering from information overload. All I typed into google was “kindle wireless reader”

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

            well said I totally agree with this point. specially if a sales lens gets a good PR2 or 3 or even sometimes 4 from google how could that be spammy??

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/vallain vallain

        I frequently create a link list for a product lens on first publishing. Then over time enhance it with comments about the products, polls, youtube videos and zazzle images for some extra pizzazz.

        If someone looks at a newly published product lens on my list, I hope they don’t think SPAM. As several have mentioned, it takes a lot of work just getting the right products in place.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flycatcher flycatcher

          Ditto, @squidoo-aea5b0ec6a3b3e8650ad7e79aa47fee9:disqus
          Product selection, if done thoughtfully, can be rather exhausting so it’s often very useful to “fill out” the lens gradually over time, once the bare-bones basic framework is there.

          I too worry about people judging some of these as “spammy” when they are actually more like “lenses in development.” A good lens, like a fine wine, improves over time. :)

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Titia Titia

            Ditto all that and wasn’t it HQ who spurred us to add more amazon modules in our lenses at one time?

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/attitudeforlife attitudeforlife

          I agree. I decide on my lens topics and each of the modules I want included. I then send that idea to my VA account and have them do the technical setup for me because that’s not my idea of fun. My other VA pretties them up for me (also technical stuff). I then transfer them back to my main account so I can start adding my content, my youtube choices, and personal stuff because I want ME on there, not my VAs. I don’t see how that’s spammy,

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          totally agree a sales lens might take days to first publish picking the right quality products, and is returned to often to update.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Titia Titia

        I hate to say this, but you say: The takeaway here is that with a Squidoo lens you get to do more then just create a link list. Shouldn’t that count for every lensmaster, HQ staff included? They’re there you know, but I don’t see those getting downgraded and publicly humiliated.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/GiftRepSandy GiftRepSandy

    Actually, I am surprised at how may lens I
    have seen that reek of product links yet have very little content! I
    would like to see Squidoo set up a better policy on this issue!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ruthclark3 ruthclark3

    Where is the fun of just posting links? Reading about new places, new adventures, new hobbies takes me out of myself and allows me to be a part of the larger community for a little while.

    We don’t know where others come from in their experiences, nor do they know us. But, we can share a little on here and become neighbors if only for a little while.

    I am a frustrated photographer and I loved the lens with the beautiful pictures of closeups made with the Sony camera. I doubt that I can ever own such a gem but by sharing hers, I can share the beauty.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      Fun? Maybe not. But sometimes “just posting links” is what brings in the sales. And for those in Squidoo not just as a hobby but as an actual income, making sales is vital – we have to balance creating fun lenses with creating profitable ones. (Of course I love the rare and magical lenses that manage to do both, but they are not easy to figure out and get just right.)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Teri-Singer Teri-Singer

    I can scroll through the “nothing to offer” lens in less than half the time I can the other 2 lenses. That was an eye opener for me. Thanks for the examples.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

    I have to admit I am flummoxed by this post – the lens that is given as a bad
    example of a sales lens…is this not finger pointing, which we are
    told is against Squidoo TOS? And if we can “expect it to be dinged, ignored or locked” as Seth has said in his comment, then why does this lens still exist? It has been up since the first comment was given in August 2011!!

    Or maybe someone from HQ just made it to then be able to give an example of a really bad lens? In which case the 17 people who “liked” it and those who commented did not agree it was a bad lens….

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

      I hope this was indeed an HQ bad example lens. It’s not Squidoo’s style to fingerpoint like that.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ElleDeeEsse ElleDeeEsse

        If that is the case then there are 125 more in that account all exactly the same created by HQ?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ElleDeeEsse ElleDeeEsse

        If that is the case then there are 125 more in that account all exactly the same created by HQ?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LavinaS LavinaS

      My sentiment exactly! It is extremely bad form to call out this person. Besides, there is something that some people fail to grasp, and that there are some customers who simply want to SEE what the curtains look like (visual buyers) and a bunch of text is nothing but an annoyance to them. This ‘bad’ lens DOES deliver exactly what that kind of buyer wants.
      Another point I would like to add here is that I believe this entire account belongs to a very reputable lensmaster who has several accounts.

      Different strokes for different folks, people! Surely we dont want a ‘one size fits all’ lensmaking style here – bearing in mind that customers do not ALL fit one size.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

        I’m also trying to think about what really needs to be SAID about shower curtains, beyond them being unique, which is what that lens showcases? If I’m shopping for a unique shower curtain I probably want to just quickly scan designs, not read a life story about what a particular shower curtain means to the lensmaker…

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

          yes

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          totally agree and well said

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

        That’s true, the lens may deliver what buyers are looking for. However, I think what HQ is looking at is the high number of internal likes/participation which occur in order to boost the lensrank, regardless of the quality of the lens content. If this lens sat there with 0 squidlikes, 0 participation it would take forever to appear in search engines, if at all, it would never actually reach prospective buyers, and, it would never reach the paying tiers. Lensmasters manipulating the lensrank of mediocre lenses via “eternal backscratching” techniques that don’t have the potential for encouraging outside of squidoo searcher success is the problem being highlighted here, as far as I see it.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

          This lensmaster does not manipulate lensrank!!! Period.

          And why would you think so, if this lens was in Tier 3, which pays 50 cents at best. BUT it was 14,000 rank yesterday to 300,000 today with all of the attention. Hmmmm? I wonder how that happened.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Titia Titia

          Think twice before making your wild accusations. I’ve come across a number of lenses full of TOS lately which were liked by even HQ staff members. I’ve seen lenses featured by HQ in the magazine pages who had only 1 intro, 1 text and 1 amazon. I’ve seen HQ staff lenses that have great similarity to the shower curton lenses.They could have well taken one of those to humiliate publicly.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thenumber73 thenumber73

      Was just thinking the same thing myself, as I was surprised to see a specific example given of a bad lens, which appears to be a real world example by a real squidoo user. I wonder how they feel about being used as a bad example.

      I recently wrote a couple of lenses on bad design, but was careful to avoid naming any real world example, as it would seem a bit offensive, and instead created a dummy lens myself to act as an example instead of finger pointing.

      Since the writer of the lens used as an example here has 126 featured lenses, I have to assume right now it is indeed a real user???

      Amusingly enough, I see that aj2008 mentions it has 17 likes just two hours ago, but is now at 20 likes. I’m guessing that the 3 likes in the past two hours are probably all from people who followed the link here, so perhaps the point was missed. Or maybe some people simply disagreed and liked it anyway ;)

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thenumber73 thenumber73

      Was just thinking the same thing myself, as I was surprised to see a specific example given of a bad lens, which appears to be a real world example by a real squidoo user. I wonder how they feel about being used as a bad example.

      I recently wrote a couple of lenses on bad design, but was careful to avoid naming any real world example, as it would seem a bit offensive, and instead created a dummy lens myself to act as an example instead of finger pointing.

      Since the writer of the lens used as an example here has 126 featured lenses, I have to assume right now it is indeed a real user???

      Amusingly enough, I see that aj2008 mentions it has 17 likes just two hours ago, but is now at 20 likes. I’m guessing that the 3 likes in the past two hours are probably all from people who followed the link here, so perhaps the point was missed. Or maybe some people simply disagreed and liked it anyway ;)

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MooshkaDaisy MooshkaDaisy

        I like your idea of making a dummy lens to act as a bad example. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

        The new likes could potentially be coming from the core lensmasters who are supporting each other, not necessarily the content of the lens.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DaveStone13 DaveStone13

      Agree completely. It actually has 13 Squid Likes. If this lens is poor, but within the guidelines, then its value will be decided by the marketplace. People buy or they don’t. We all have different styles and aren’t expected to be mirror images of each other.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

        Squidoo lensmasters do not reflect the buyer’s marketplace, which is a major part of the problem. Too much emphasis is given to internal liking of lenses, much of which arises from lensmaster alliances offsite. One can bet folks are chatting up a storm on google plus, facebook etc, in private conversations. The number of squidlikes going down (and they did, they were at 17 when I looked yesterday) could reflect innocent folks who’ve been following a core group of successful lensmasters (T1 wise) realizing they’ve been duped into participating in something they may not wish to participate in. To give a personal example, I recently realized I was following a lensrank manipulator and contributing to their success which was taking away from my own. I emailed Tom and without giving names, informed him I was unliking all the likes I’d given and deleting their comments from my lenses.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

      Agreed…I’m hoping this was one Squidoo made themselves as an example. I would be in tears right now if one of my lenses was made an example like that.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

      Actually this post isn’t about calling anyone out or labeling a lens as bad. Deciding if a lens is bad is in the eye of the reader. However it’s worth thinking about which type of lenses you want to create. Ask yourself which type of content is valuable to the web and your own collection of lenses?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DaveStone13 DaveStone13

        Except that’s not the position Seth took. I appreciated your original information, but Seth seemed to take it a lot more personally and with some anger. I’m probably not the only person on this thread who got a little put off by that. And from Seth especially.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

          Seth does seem kind of ticked off in this thread. There must be more to this story than we writers are privvy to.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

        What’s “valuable to the web” isn’t necessarily what is valuable to the wallet as far as generating actual sales, is the problem…

        [Edit to add: I don't make many "just sales" lenses myself. I prefer to create informational content. But there are times that "just sales" lenses are, well, exactly what ended up "selling" the best. And I find it a bit disingenuous to make it sound like sales-oriented lenses are bad when, to be honest, those are what generate a lot of income to Squidoo directly and Squidoo lensmasters. And there are a lot worse content lenses that get reported and never dealt with...]

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

        What’s “valuable to the web” isn’t necessarily what is valuable to the wallet as far as generating actual sales, is the problem…

        [Edit to add: I don't make many "just sales" lenses myself. I prefer to create informational content. But there are times that "just sales" lenses are, well, exactly what ended up "selling" the best. And I find it a bit disingenuous to make it sound like sales-oriented lenses are bad when, to be honest, those are what generate a lot of income to Squidoo directly and Squidoo lensmasters. And there are a lot worse content lenses that get reported and never dealt with...]

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

          So true. One of my first lenses was a “just sales” lens. I was introduced to Squidoo through CafePress as a way to promote CafePress products…so that’s just what I did (and up until now I’ve never heard that this was not ok with Squidoo). I’ve sold more off that lens then any of the more content heavy ones I’ve made since (even more than two that were featured on the front page of Squidoo, including the one I got a purple star on). One of those two was a review page, with lots of text just like the ones they highlighted as “good selling” reviews here…and it’s only sold 1 product, compared to hundreds of dollars worth of product sold on the “bad one” during the same time period. (Both go to charity…so I’m not making money off these directly. And honestly, it’s fun to make collections of things that are interesting. Now I have Pinterest for that, but before that, Squidoo was my Pinterest ).

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

        Sorry Bonnie, but I dont buy that. You ask in the post title “Are You Selling or Spamming”, then you give examples of lenses that you obviously approve of and then another example of one that it is clear you don’t like and Seth’s comment backs this up.

        I have to say this whole issue saddens me. If anyone had posted a thread like that on the HQ Forum, complete with those links, it would either have been moderated or deleted. And quite right too.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/WendyKrick WendyKrick

          I feel the same way AJ. This whole thing makes me sad. Some how after 6+ years I don’t feel safe here. I am so disappointed in the leaders here at Squidoo. I feel sorry for the person who was the example.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/doug48 doug48

        That is incorrect! If you consider that Lens a bad site then Amazon is a bad site as well or any other site that sells anything!

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          totally true

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flycatcher flycatcher

        “This lens has got nothing to offer but links” is a bit hard to read as anything but a criticism of the lens’ quality.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

        I don’t buy it either. Another do as I say, not as I do example from people at HQ. As aj2008 states, YES…what you’ve posted has never been allowed by lensmasters. I’ve had posts deleted more than 5 times on the forum for just ‘hinting’ of my displeasure – with no links – of obvious misdeeds and what you call ‘spamming’ or ‘nothing to offer’ lenses – that are continuing to rack up Tier 1 royalties.

        If that showercurtain lens is such a ‘bad’ example of what HQ “NOW WANTS”, why couldn’t you just state what’s NOW allowed and what isn’t, and then clean up the mess that we all see – which is multitudes of lenses doing the same thing? State the changes! If there are no changes in awarding these types of lenses with Tier ranking, then what the heck is this post all about?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

      AJ, I was telling my husband the other day about some of the lens I have browsed through in here from the forum. One I read had an introduction paragraph, which was done really well. Then it was just Amazon links, nothing of value at all. I will admit I do write a ton of review lenses, but I put in more then one paragraph of information on the topic.

      The straight up sales lenses, one of which outranks mine on the same product, make me kind of upset and sick. They offer nothing of true value to the customer or reader and end up getting ranked highly for some reason, but in my opinion are horrid and can easily give Squidoo a bad rep or even worse be seen as bad in the eyes of the search engines because of the lack of value the readers are getting.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

        Isabellas — if people have purchased through those links, then *they*
        found them “of value,” even if you don’t. I don’t know which lens you’re talking about, but if it’s highly ranked, it’s likely been “valuable” to someone & probably a lot of someones. Lenses with no reader interaction (sales, clicks, time spent browsing through the lens, comments, etc.) don’t shoot up to the top of the ranks, do they?

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

          I agree, they probably have purchased through the links, but the lenses are terrible looking and very disappointing when you are like me, find the topic interesting and want to learn, but end up getting bombarded with nothing but an intro paragraph, then blasted with Amazon links.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

          I agree, they probably have purchased through the links, but the lenses are terrible looking and very disappointing when you are like me, find the topic interesting and want to learn, but end up getting bombarded with nothing but an intro paragraph, then blasted with Amazon links.

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/RockinPicks RockinPicks

            I would be turned off if the topic was electronics. There I want opinion and a good review. I can handle the Shower Curtain myself.

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

            And that is the crux of the whole debate. Are you selling something that is visual, as in shower curtains? Does the searcher need an inane commentary about what they can actually see for themselves? Are we adding value or do we insult their intelligence like on the shopping channels?

            Are you selling something technical, where it is helpful to compare specifications and actuall needs, as in electronics?

            If I am buying something visual I will scan until I see a picture I like. If I want a new laptop then I want the information along with the picture.

            Different horses for different courses….

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

            And that is the crux of the whole debate. Are you selling something that is visual, as in shower curtains? Does the searcher need an inane commentary about what they can actually see for themselves? Are we adding value or do we insult their intelligence like on the shopping channels?

            Are you selling something technical, where it is helpful to compare specifications and actuall needs, as in electronics?

            If I am buying something visual I will scan until I see a picture I like. If I want a new laptop then I want the information along with the picture.

            Different horses for different courses….

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/luvmyludwig luvmyludwig

            amen to this.

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/wrapitup4me wrapitup4me

            Agreed!

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

            well said AJ you’ve just summarized the whole thing

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          well said sometimes buyers just want to buy! they don’t want to read lots of content on how you think about something. they just want something “They” will like and you save them all the search time that would be involved if they haven’t found this “collection of products only” lens

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MelissaNRodgz MelissaNRodgz

        I really think this is the problem. If Squidoo gets a bad rep in the search engines, then everything that the community has built will suffer.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Fitzcharming Fitzcharming

    I agree with the sentiment but if you’re going to lock the lens or even the account for spamming then do it. I’m not sure embarrassing the person and holding them up as a terrible example for all of us to gawk at is the right thing to do. Who is next?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/lestroischenes lestroischenes

    I was quaking in my shoes – so relieved that one of my lenses was not the spammy one!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/secondhandrose secondhandrose

    It’s all about the writing first and foremost for me in my lenses. I do put in items to sell, but they are secondary, which is probably why I don’t make that much money.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/tvyps tvyps

    I used to try to write to “make money” but realized that I enjoyed the social aspect and the stories more. Squidoo is a way to be a Grandpa; have someone sit on my lap while I tell them about what I know and hope that my experiences and knowledge will help them. How many people spend their lives with a wealth of knowledge and never tell anyone about it? This is a platform for just that. Forget the money people. You may make a few bucks but won’t get rich and that ain’t what it’s all about anyway. If it comes down to it, I would rather spend my time writing than to play stupid games & waste my time on other sites. You know what I’m talking about! Thanks to all Squidoo staff for supporting the cause!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/tvyps tvyps

      Squidoo = Family!

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Susan52 Susan52

        Agreed!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Susan52 Susan52

      The social aspect and stories are wonderful, but I just want to add that it is most definitely possible to write an interesting lens with a story that also happens to be quite profitable. :)

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Susan52 Susan52

      The social aspect and stories are wonderful, but I just want to add that it is most definitely possible to write an interesting lens with a story that also happens to be quite profitable. :)

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

      Sadly, many people on Squidoo are unable to “forget the money”. Many like me joined because serious illness or disability forced them out of work, others made redundant, others’ businesses crashed due to the economy, some found themselves single parents

      I wish I could write for the love of it, but that won’t get my kids through college.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/aj2008 aj2008

      Sadly, many people on Squidoo are unable to “forget the money”. Many like me joined because serious illness or disability forced them out of work, others made redundant, others’ businesses crashed due to the economy, some found themselves single parents

      I wish I could write for the love of it, but that won’t get my kids through college.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/annmackiemiller annmackiemiller

        Well said AJ – it’s easy to be a purist if you can afford to be – I love creative writing and of course my photo journals and they don’t earn me a cent – my sales lenses though – they pay the rent.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jeffryv jeffryv

    Quick question, what do you do about products you do not own?
    Your not condoning just making stuff up are you?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/bdkz bdkz

      No Jeffery, I might not own the Star Wars Tauntaun Sleeping Bag but I can sure tell people why I’d love to own one! It’s all about being creative, personal and human.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jeffryv jeffryv

        That is fine, but not the same as writing “useful reviews and recommendations on products” you do not use or own.
        You can not write a honest review about something you have never used, or am I wrong?

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/PaulOnBooks PaulOnBooks

          You can write about its obvious good and bad points and can collate information and reviews from various sources. Unfortunately, and it’s rife at the moment, there are way too many fake reviews (I don’t believe there are that many people who own vomit-green sheepskin car covers nor do I believe that their whole family is in a state of bliss over those covers).

          Bonnie, can we infer from this post that HQ is going to cull some of the worst offenders, even high-ranked lenses?

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/PaulOnBooks PaulOnBooks

          You can write about its obvious good and bad points and can collate information and reviews from various sources. Unfortunately, and it’s rife at the moment, there are way too many fake reviews (I don’t believe there are that many people who own vomit-green sheepskin car covers nor do I believe that their whole family is in a state of bliss over those covers).

          Bonnie, can we infer from this post that HQ is going to cull some of the worst offenders, even high-ranked lenses?

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jeffryv jeffryv

            “collate information and reviews from various sources’
            But that is NOT personal.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

        And if we are honest…it is (for most here) about picking whatever products give them the best sales. LIke Amazon is cleaning house of their fake reviews, and it is way past time for Squidoo to be very clear…is content valuable, or just the sales lenses that most are just links?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Hexadecimal Hexadecimal

    Does seem kinda silly, people can go to online marketplaces if they just want to shop. But the page does have quite a few likes, so I suppose somebody enjoyed it!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KampSeagull KampSeagull

    So important! I like the way true recommendations reflect well on the whole Squidoo community. The spammy lenses do not.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/servantoftheLord servantoftheLord

    This is a great reminder. Thanks.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/CrazyforCollecting CrazyforCollecting

    The lens shown as a bad example may not be an outstanding lens, but I certainly wouldn’t call it spam, and, if I were shopping for a shower curtain, I think it could be pretty useful

    On the other hand, attempting to shame and humiliate its creator is certainly not what I thought Squidoo was all about.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/patgoltz patgoltz

      The PROBLEM is, it’s nothing but links. Squidoo wants something more, and that’s fine. I agree, it could be useful if you are shopping for a shower curtain. But I don’t think Bonnie shamed the creator. I really don’t. She was gentle. I don’t know of a better way to say what needed to be said.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Dusty2 Dusty2

    Thank You Bonnie. Your lens is very informative and appreciate you sharing the information and tips. Have a great day! (^_-)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Stazjia Stazjia

    I feel very sorry for the writer of the shower curtain lens. That person must feel mortified with embarrassment right now if s/he has seen this. I would have thought there are many other lenses that deserve having a finger pointed at them as an example of spamming and as bad lenses. Actually, I know there are because I’ve seen them and even reported them occasionally.

    It doesn’t seem right to pick someone out for doing something that has never been banned on Squidoo.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thenumber73 thenumber73

      They’ve had a lot of squidlikes in the last couple of hours, so perhaps aren’t that bothered. Maybe the old saying that “no publicity is bad publicity” is true. ;)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/StephenJParkin StephenJParkin

    Totally agree and am glad Seth thinks this way too!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/campingman campingman

    Hmmmmm….bad vibes coming from the head squids. If the lens you picked out is so bad, then that means the folks who visited it and “Liked” it as a lens, must be dummies? Is Squidoo going another direction?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Intuitive Intuitive

    When I started on Squidoo seven years ago (has it been that long?) I thought of a lens as a way to sort of micro-curate the Web. A Google search was coming up with a lot of garbage, especially with a narrower topic. I liked that it was like creating a sort of bibliography with pictures. I didn’t get the impression from Squidoo that I had to write a lot of personal content back then. I still think that that kind of lens is valuable. To me, the links themselves create a picture of the person who collects them.

    The same is true with product lenses. Yes, it’s nice to have a lensmaster’s opinion but do I really read it? Nine times out of ten, no. And the search function in Amazon is sometimes baffling with what it returns with. There are things hidden away that don’t show up on a search but turn up in other ways. So if somebody else has taken the time (as I carefully did back in the beginning) to make sure they listed the most relevant items of a certain type, I appreciate it. And most of the time I really just want to see a list of images of a certain product that I can quickly scan. Pinterest is getting more and more of my time because there is a lot less verbal noise to wade through. I get a really good idea of what someone’s voice is by looking at their collection of boards without reading a word. I have a strong sense that that’s the type of place people are going to spend more of their online time at.

    I’ll admit there’s a certain finesse to even just listing products. Not everybody succeeds all the time, myself included. But that’s part of the fun when creating that type of lens. You can tell when something locks into place and it pops. And spam is still spam, no matter how you slice it.

    And I’ll be really amazed if anybody takes the time to read this entire long post. ;)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Intuitive Intuitive

    When I started on Squidoo seven years ago (has it been that long?) I thought of a lens as a way to sort of micro-curate the Web. A Google search was coming up with a lot of garbage, especially with a narrower topic. I liked that it was like creating a sort of bibliography with pictures. I didn’t get the impression from Squidoo that I had to write a lot of personal content back then. I still think that that kind of lens is valuable. To me, the links themselves create a picture of the person who collects them.

    The same is true with product lenses. Yes, it’s nice to have a lensmaster’s opinion but do I really read it? Nine times out of ten, no. And the search function in Amazon is sometimes baffling with what it returns with. There are things hidden away that don’t show up on a search but turn up in other ways. So if somebody else has taken the time (as I carefully did back in the beginning) to make sure they listed the most relevant items of a certain type, I appreciate it. And most of the time I really just want to see a list of images of a certain product that I can quickly scan. Pinterest is getting more and more of my time because there is a lot less verbal noise to wade through. I get a really good idea of what someone’s voice is by looking at their collection of boards without reading a word. I have a strong sense that that’s the type of place people are going to spend more of their online time at.

    I’ll admit there’s a certain finesse to even just listing products. Not everybody succeeds all the time, myself included. But that’s part of the fun when creating that type of lens. You can tell when something locks into place and it pops. And spam is still spam, no matter how you slice it.

    And I’ll be really amazed if anybody takes the time to read this entire long post. ;)

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

      I totally agree! (Except for the last line…for obvious reasons).

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

      Ditto. Yes I read it.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

      Ditto. Yes I read it.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/doug48 doug48

      I Did and can agree!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

      you are so right, I totally agree with you.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/grammieo grammieo

    Great Information for all of us. Good Show!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Chris-H Chris-H

    I’m curious though…the “bad” lens is still ranking between 14,000 and 15,000.

    I’ve got lenses that are almost pure content that rank North of 100,000 but I love them anyway because I love the subject. I simply hope someone reads it and it makes a difference for them.

    Just an observation.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/patgoltz patgoltz

      I’m betting the high rank is because people went there after reading here. The ranking system probably needs tweaking, because among other things, it causes lenses to become unpublished (to the point where you can’t fix it) even though they have good content, because once they go unpublished, you won’t get hits. Ranking is based heavily on hits.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/RiaB RiaB

    I’ve seen a lot of lenses like the one from your example and I don’t understand how they stay ranked here. Although the one you refer to is cleaner than most and presents a great list of products it would be a nicer lens if it had more content. Funny thing is it will get a lot of traffic from this article… It is definitely something to think about when putting together a lens. Thanks Bonnie!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/RiaB RiaB

    I’ve seen a lot of lenses like the one from your example and I don’t understand how they stay ranked here. Although the one you refer to is cleaner than most and presents a great list of products it would be a nicer lens if it had more content. Funny thing is it will get a lot of traffic from this article… It is definitely something to think about when putting together a lens. Thanks Bonnie!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mstcourtjester mstcourtjester

    What happened to freedom of speech and capitalism? I actually liked the lens, it gets straight to the point if I wanted a Shower Curtain. Not a bunch of pretend lovey dovey junk that is still trying to do the samething, get visitors and make money. Personally, I wouldn’t worry to much about what people write, if it is good they will get visits. If it is bad they won’t and eventually they will give up and move on…This is a good lens, it got me to look and make a comment. Have a great day :)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/kindoak kindoak

    If a lens is rubbish then close it. Squidoo needs to more hard-handed and enforce more. Trying to teach a community of tens of thousands of people, many daily newcomers, about proper publishing culture and etiquette without consequences will never have any effect. As long as there is no punishment for bad behavior there will always be many many that will misuse a system…

    Something that always damages the system core..

    Wild kids need to be disciplined, not just reminded about proper manners. Specially since everyone can see that offenders are left to be. Looking at the lensrank it is obvious that this lens is making some sales.. and revenue for Squidoo. A paradox and a symptom of imbalance.

    The easy way to improve lens quality would be to impose a minimum amount of content, something I do not wish for, but it may be something all the spammy lenses may be forcing on us.

    Anyway, I don’t understand the purpose of this HQ post. I do understand the issue, but not how we are supposed to interpret HQ pointing a finger at a blemish that they themselves allow to flourish.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Gala98 Gala98

    I think there’s room for both types of lenses here – if I have a specific product in mind, then I’m going to enjoy reading all the details & opinions etc but if I’m looking for ideas then I like to scroll down fast & just see what catches my eye. Maybe that one does have a few too many links but I can honestly say it isn’t anywhere near as bad as some I have seen.

    The worst ones are the ones with something specific in the title & then over time, they’ve been updated with all sorts of more random stuff. You get halfway down & wonder what it was you started looking at!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

      I agree — it drives me nuts when I start out on someone’s lens about pancakes & all of a sudden it’s a string of links about shower curtains, then a twitter stream on the Green Bay Packers, then a bunch of backlinks on Adam Levine’s tattoos…. I’m sorry, but THAT is spam.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

        Oh yes, KKG! Updating doesn’t mean keep adding, and adding, and adding everything and anything that might get a dollar.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

          and do those lenses actually get sales? if I went there for a pancake recipe, am I really going to buy a shower curtain? I can never figure out the lensmasters’ motivation and so am forced to conclude they must be robots ;)

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

            LOL…I have no clue why they do this. Are they robots, maybe, but more often than not I would say they are just people that figure if A sold, hey put B in there too :) Or A didn’t sell, maybe B will. And if they have 100 things, maybe something will sell :)

  • sethgodin

    It’s not hard at all to transform the shower curtain lens into something fun, something funny, something personal. If you have a collection of other shower curtains, talk about it. If you have three you’d really love to own, highlight them. If you want to find some ideas that might one day be shower curtains, talk about them. If you want to challenge readers to invent their own ideas, go ahead…

    The idea is simple–make lenses that make it clear that you were the best person for the job.

    The hard work here is NOT figuring out how to be a human search engine. The hard work is thematic and creative and personal. If you’re not seeing that, then Bonnie has done you a huge favor, because that’s the secret going forward…

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      So, basically, a single sentence promoting a product elevates it from a “spammy” lens to something personal? Good to know.

      http://www.squidoo.com/book-list-2012-first-one

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jeffryv jeffryv

        Chuckle sockii

        ” Personally I use a shower curtain”

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

      actually, being a “human search engine” *is* hard work. but maybe not the line of work Squidoo wants to be in, going forward – ?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/WritingForTheWeb WritingForTheWeb

        since sales and advertising is what brings in the big bucks – I’m at a loss as to what Squidoo is supposed to be. Me? I’m here to earn money.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/WritingForTheWeb WritingForTheWeb

        since sales and advertising is what brings in the big bucks – I’m at a loss as to what Squidoo is supposed to be. Me? I’m here to earn money.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/adelais adelais

      yeah, but but but…people who want to buy a shower curtain don’t really care about another person’s experience or experiences that they have had with their shower curtains (to be honest I have no idea in how many ways you can experience a shower curtain and I do not want to know). They don’t want anything personal. If they were brought to that page by way of a search engine, then all that they want probably is just a shower curtain.
      I think the best thing that Squidoo can do is to associate itself with more websites beside Amazon.
      That way when the to-be-shoppers stumble upon a page from Squidoo, they will find themselves in a shop (because that’s what a sales lens is) that has products from a lot of different stores and it will probably be really convenient to them. It will make the lens really meaningful as the lensmaster will be comparing different products and different prices etc etc, on it, instead of just listing products that can be found on Amazon.
      How practical this naive suggestion might be, or if it’s actually worth Squidoo to go that way, I do not know.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

        You can do this now, but only if a) you personally join affiliate programs for other sites besides Amazon, which can be worthwhile but takes its own time and effort; or b) you include products from sites you aren’t earning any commission from, just for the benefit of your readers. I’ve taken both these approaches and found value in both. I do agree it would be great if Squidoo could work toward finding a few more good partners, besides Amazon & ebay.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DreamsInBloom DreamsInBloom

      “The hard work here is NOT figuring out how to be a human search engine.” Isn’t that the reason why the “Let Amazon Pick” was removed from the Amazon modules? Because “it turns out your own selections are far more valuable than a list generated from one key word”? That Squidoo does want us to be human search engines? And … It is hard work, and it is creative too even to pick and choose these products.

      With all due respect…while I do agree that more could have been done to this shower curtain lens to make it more fun (my personal opinion)…I do think it is thematic and creative. Maybe it is not so personal (again my own opinion). However, as some are pointing out, they do not think some of your lenses meet the criteria that you just stated. That they are not so thematic, creative and personal and lack substance themselves. I would even think they are likely to say that you have not made it clear that you were the best person for the job in cases like this lens http://www.squidoo.com/book-list-2012-first-one

      I admire you greatly Mr. Godin. But in this instance perhaps you are being a bit hypocritical. I know I have needed that pointed out to myself all too often in regards to my own ways so I could face it and grow from it.

      Anyway, the main point about why people are upset is the “calling out” of a lensmaster for their lens is not allowed on HQ’s forums, so why is it okay for Squidoo employees and higher ups to do so?

      Thank you for all that you do.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

    Thanks Bonnie. I would love to see more posts like this from HQ, frankly, because I’ve seen some top ranking lenses that are nothing in quality compared to the ones you showcased as well crafted lenses. Based on some of my own investigating, including squidutils comparisons with my own high traffic, popular with their target audience lenses (but comparatively low ranking) and those that appear to be lesser quality (but high lensrank – ie top 100 overall) that I suspect are made by lensmasters manipulating the system in order to get the positive input on lesser quality lenses, I tend to think there is even more going on “behind the scenes” than what is shown here. The proof is in the pudding of the comparison. I believe there are groups of lensmasters who communicate offsite and share squidlikes and participation amongst their own lensmaster accounts. The likes (sometimes in duplicate as they appear to have multiple “anonymous” accounts going), comments, blessings and promotions have nothing to do with the content or quality of the lenses but everything to do with lensmaster alliances. Because of this phenomenon, good lensmasters, myself included, contemplate moving content to their own sites in order to not have to share top dollar with those who are manipulating the system. I’ve not named any names, on squidoo or anywhere on the web, and I won’t, even if asked. I’d rather see HQ do all they can to expose the truth as it restores my confidence in waiting it out. Thanks again.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

      I see there’s been an adjustment, nice to see. I like to believe that as my success online with the target market grows, so will the income. If not, I have no way to promote squidoo as being legitimate. I can’t say to my family and friends and online following (especially the ones who join squidoo after coming to my lenses), “squidoo works”, instead I find I am saying, “I like making lenses, and I like the folks at HQ, but I can’t compete with the non-integrous users”. I need to be able to look at my traffic, click-outs and audience participation, all 100% legitimate and originating mainly from Google and other search engines and go, yes – this works. If it becomes a burden on my time to keep up with my success because I am not getting paid appropriately due to weak spots in the system structure being manipulated by other lensmasters not playing fair, I lose hope and it’s only natural to begin to look elsewhere and consequently take the following I’ve built with me. Google employs virtual rocket scientists to delete the cheating, I hope to see Squidoo get this serious about it too. Thanks again, Darcie French.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/csbsews csbsews

    Two different uses for me when looking at Squidoo Lenses: (1) If I am actually shopping on the web for products I want to see those products and links to them (your shower curtain example). I really don’t want to read the person’s story about the product, etc. (2) However, when I am looking for ideas, I do want to know if the person used the recipe, executed the decoration, etc., so in this case the person’s experience is useful to me. Hope there is room for post types of lenses.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/BabySadako BabySadako

    I’m new to Squidoo so I’m not really sure what is considered spam. However, IMHO, I don’t think it’s really fair to compare the other two products to the ‘bad’ one. For the two good lens, they are about kindle and camera, where one can put in lots of information and contents like how to work them or special features. But for shower curtains, maybe the lensmaster can improve it a bit by saying which is a favorite or which ones currently owned by the lensmaster to make the lens so-called more personalized. If I am to do a lens about shower curtains, maybe it’ll end up looking like the one you linked here. =x

  • http://twitter.com/Greekgeek Greekgeek

    Rather than humiliating some random lensmaster, it might be time to consider why lensrank rewards that lens and punishes lenses with more substantial content. This was not the case as recently as February 2011, but it’s become more and more true over the past two years.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

      Surely HQ knows who made the lens and what other patterns apply to it
      towards being a lens to spotlight as poor – I don’t believe they would just choose a random
      lensmaster. Lenrank doesn’t punish lenses with more substantial content, the folks who are manipulating the system do.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/getmoreinfo getmoreinfo

    Thanks Bonnie for reminding us that it is a good idea to focus on providing value to our readers, which can sometimes get lost when we are producing sales type lenses. I understand the need for Squidoo to enforce higher quality standards and I am working on improving several of my recent sales lenses to comply with these changes. I believe this is a step in the right direction and will only make the site better as well as insure that all of us on Squidoo can continue to benefit from this wonderful community.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/getmoreinfo getmoreinfo

    Thanks Bonnie for reminding us that it is a good idea to focus on providing value to our readers, which can sometimes get lost when we are producing sales type lenses. I understand the need for Squidoo to enforce higher quality standards and I am working on improving several of my recent sales lenses to comply with these changes. I believe this is a step in the right direction and will only make the site better as well as insure that all of us on Squidoo can continue to benefit from this wonderful community.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/AlishaV AlishaV

    I still don’t understand. How is giving the reader what they want, spamming them? To me, spam is when you push something unwanted onto someone or lie in order to sell something. If people weren’t interested in finding shower curtains, why would they go to that lens? If no one went there and purchased stuff it wouldn’t be popular and would fall in ranking. I don’t know about other people, but if I wanted to buy a shower curtain I wouldn’t want to go to one full of babble, I would find a picture of one I like, then get it. I don’t care what the writer has in their house, that isn’t going to impact my purchase, only make it harder to do what I want, buy a shower curtain. Some subjects don’t need a lot of discussion, it’s choice based on what the item looks like.
    I’ll admit I have several lenses that are all about selling a certain product. They rank well, give people what they came for, and often took longer to make than lenses that just tell a story. Readers like them because I took time to handpick the items and weed out the junk, plus it isn’t always easy to find what you want on Amazon. Those “spam” lenses are also what make me enough money that I can spend time on Squidoo, writing the lenses about my cats, stories, and whatever. If I didn’t make money somewhere, I couldn’t continue to write on Squidoo, and as much as I like making lenses about original, creative content, they usually are the ones that fall to the bottom of the ranking and are seldom visited. Making a dime a month on those isn’t going to allow me to continue writing on Squidoo, and if you are going to start deleting lenses that actually make money and are popular, I guess I’m going to have to move to another writing site. Sadly, this post reminds me a lot of when eHow started purging their site and eventually getting rid of all their writers. I hope that isn’t the case, but I’m going to start becoming more aware of other writing sites, just in case.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thenumber73 thenumber73

    LOL, this is turning into quite an amusing discussion. Anyone who has read my lenses on “How not to create a squidoo lens” or “Dangers of bad looking lenses” you will already know my thoughts on badly designed spammy lenses, but there are some interesting points here in the comments.

    I’ve always tried to write personal lenses, and will continue to do so, even if for no other reason than I simply enjoy writing them regardless of whether anybody reads them. And not everyone on Squidoo writes lenses purely to sell products, some are just interesting stories/articles that aren’t aimed at sales.

    If you are aiming just to sell something, I can now concede the point that in some niche areas which may be hard to research via google, even just a list of products may have value, if it’s hard to obtain that info elsewhere.

    I do agree with your point Bonnie that personalisation is generally better. When I wrote the aforementioned lenses on design recently, I got a lot of positive feedback on the lenses themselves, but mostly negativity in the forum. I can see where you were going with this article, so it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one to provoke such a mixed response to a well intentioned article. ;)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Accordingtopamela Accordingtopamela

    I think I would have like to have seen two lenses about shower curtains to get a good comparison for good vs bad. I think the point would have been made better that way. There is a big difference in buying a shower curtain vs a camera. How much can you write about a shower curtain after all? A camera of course you are going to want a review, or why it is so great. There simply are products that are bought on visual appeal such as a shower curtains. There are other products that where reviews are needed. In any case the shower lens listed is not my idea of quality lens and this is coming from someone who makes sales lenses primarily.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LiteraryMind LiteraryMind

    I have to point something out –if I hold it in I might burst. Has anyone who commented here clicked on the shower curtain avatar and realized that their are 126 shower curtain lenses created like the example.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

      I did that and that is what really got my goat going. Not only that did you see that almost every single one of those is in the Cozy feature?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

      I did that and that is what really got my goat going. Not only that did you see that almost every single one of those is in the Cozy feature?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

    Well….if that shower curtain lens is HQ’s example of a bad lens…..then it seems to me that the Angels weren’t doing their job. It also seems to me that HQ’s filter was not doing it’s job either. What else could explain it’s rank at 14k?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

    I would just like to see all of HQ be consistent with advice, and what they consider to be a good lens. Many, many of us only had good content lenses…some that got a lot of traffic, some that didn’t. But for the past 2 years the shift has been to rewarding coloring pages with T1, and link lists like so many we see. The mixed messages we get makes it hard to know what to do ourselves, and what to teach the new lensmasters who want a piece of the pie too.

    One suggestion I have is to find and crack down on all those that tell people to come to Squidoo and throw up lenses with scripts to get into the top tiers. That one thing can help, and consistent…no waffling messages also can help.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

      I agree Kathy, like I said earlier when I first joined it was a site full of rich content and nothing like those lenses which had an intro paragraph and then sales, sales, sales.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Isabellas-cabin Isabellas-cabin

      I agree Kathy, like I said earlier when I first joined it was a site full of rich content and nothing like those lenses which had an intro paragraph and then sales, sales, sales.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ted-batchelor ted-batchelor

      Ahh yes…pages of colouring page links in Tier 1…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Kapalbility Kapalbility

    I have to agree that adding lots of content is the best way to sell, but Bonnie, why would you give a real live example of a “bad” lens to the public?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Psychix Psychix

      I agree. It’s not fair to single one person out.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/EditionH EditionH

      Perhaps it is time to stop shedding crocodile tears?

      If HQ had made up such an account in question you probably would not believe that it can exist in reality. There is simply no better way to demonstrate what is NOT wanted.

      The account is totally anonymous no person you can relate to, so no one gets hurt unless you consider a fantasy avatar a person.. The bio is a keyword mashup written entirely for search engine robots.

      The account consists of 100+ lenses made of naked product link lists, mostly auto genereated. The entire account was manufactured for sale and is targeted to butcher a certain niche topic with more than hundred lenses.

      You can bet that this great masterpiece is not a single case, but a business model that has been repeated over and over.

      It is amazing to see that the same smarty pants that have been whining about and against that sort of thing for years now take sides for a “poor lensmaster”. Are you serious?

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/campingman campingman

        Sounds like you need to get over yourself. The great squids have said this is what it is and we must follow. Give it a rest.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Kapalbility Kapalbility

        You must have mistaken me for someone else, Edison. I am positive that I am not that smartypants you are talking about who complained about for years. Haven’t even been an active squid for a year yet. I dare you to prove that claim, dude. And don’t you dare say you were referring to the general people who disagree here… You replied to my post so I will only assume it is me. Are you serious?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/hmrezaul123 hmrezaul123

    I think you are right.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/hmrezaul123 hmrezaul123

    I think you are right.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/PaulSparlin PaulSparlin

    I see some value in this post. Bonnie is pointing out that people feel harassed if you just get them to click on your lens and then shove product links on them. I myself am guilty of this. I’ve done 2 or 3 lenses that are filled with links with the “good intention” of going back and adding filler content.

    People are willing to click through and pay your product some attention if you are respectful of them and not just wasting their time. No one wants to feel like you are just after their money. They want value and sincerity.

    The dilemma I find is how to promote products with little or no experience with the product. Is it good enough to echo other’s reviews? That’s why I try to find the products in a store or do a lot of reading before posting. Even then I wonder how much of an endorsement should be given.

    As for the SPAM aspect of lenses, if guidelines aren’t in place and enforced then the legitimacy of Squidoo as a whole suffers. If Spammers post freely then the readership will drop. Bonnie is just trying to show us what not to do so people like myself will get a clue :) Bottom line, invest time in your lens and people will be more likely to invest in your products.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/AlishaV AlishaV

    If a part of Squidoo isn’t about making sales lenses, why is there a gift lens quest sitting in my quest tab right now? Who buys gifts for St Patrick’s Day and is that what you want a bunch of people creating for the quest?

    One of the Rocketsquids got confused recently about a quest lens he was asked to create. He made it about a family tradition because he didn’t understand why Squidoo would be asking him to create a lens about gifts for Easter. Most people don’t give gifts for Easter.

    I’m not even getting into how many of these quests recently that were all about making sales, for Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Years. It seems like most of the quests lately have been all about finding stuff to sell. You even have magazines devoted to gift giving. Why unless you want to make Squidoo the place to go to find something to buy for whatever random holiday?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LaughingLady LaughingLady

    Good conversation…I believe it’s a matter of knowing your target audience. There are lensmasters who do both selling and writing for more of a storytelling purpose. As long as we stay within the ToS, not sure why it’s an issue…unless of course, Squiddo HQ is changing the rules. I don’t agree, however, with holding up a particular lens as a poor example.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/JohnTannahill JohnTannahill

    I’m also surprised that HQ has done this, but I’m glad they did. It really highlights a problem. The shower curtain lensmaster has 126 lenses, presumably along similar lines – I haven’t looked at them all. If I was tasked with making 126 lenses about shower curtains, I don’t think I could do any better. The trouble is, if you find a bunch of keywords you think have potential, you could be tempted to try. The problem comes when you start with keyword research and get carried away. Keyword-led internet marketing isn’t a very attractive business to me and this example underlines what’s potentially wrong with it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/JohnTannahill JohnTannahill

    I’m also surprised that HQ has done this, but I’m glad they did. It really highlights a problem. The shower curtain lensmaster has 126 lenses, presumably along similar lines – I haven’t looked at them all. If I was tasked with making 126 lenses about shower curtains, I don’t think I could do any better. The trouble is, if you find a bunch of keywords you think have potential, you could be tempted to try. The problem comes when you start with keyword research and get carried away. Keyword-led internet marketing isn’t a very attractive business to me and this example underlines what’s potentially wrong with it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/JohnTannahill JohnTannahill

    I’m also surprised that HQ has done this, but I’m glad they did. It really highlights a problem. The shower curtain lensmaster has 126 lenses, presumably along similar lines – I haven’t looked at them all. If I was tasked with making 126 lenses about shower curtains, I don’t think I could do any better. The trouble is, if you find a bunch of keywords you think have potential, you could be tempted to try. The problem comes when you start with keyword research and get carried away. Keyword-led internet marketing isn’t a very attractive business to me and this example underlines what’s potentially wrong with it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/JohnTannahill JohnTannahill

    I’m also surprised that HQ has done this, but I’m glad they did. It really highlights a problem. The shower curtain lensmaster has 126 lenses, presumably along similar lines – I haven’t looked at them all. If I was tasked with making 126 lenses about shower curtains, I don’t think I could do any better. The trouble is, if you find a bunch of keywords you think have potential, you could be tempted to try. The problem comes when you start with keyword research and get carried away. Keyword-led internet marketing isn’t a very attractive business to me and this example underlines what’s potentially wrong with it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/chinna27us chinna27us

    Awesome. In fact we have some thing to learn from each lens

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LadyDuck LadyDuck

    I have looked at your example lens, surely it’s not a lens with good interesting content, but I will not call it spam. Maybe this lens is useful for someone shopping for shower curtains. Well, if this lens is not against Squidoo TOS I see no problem in keeping it!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LadyDuck LadyDuck

    I have looked at your example lens, surely it’s not a lens with good interesting content, but I will not call it spam. Maybe this lens is useful for someone shopping for shower curtains. Well, if this lens is not against Squidoo TOS I see no problem in keeping it!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jim-bruce-guitar-lessons jim-bruce-guitar-lessons

    You all need to get a grip – everybody knows that 99% of people are here to sell. Some disguise it with an article, some are honest and just sell. I agree that an informative article makes the process more palatable, that’s all.

    Jim

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/poldepc poldepc

    is the lens with the “curtain links” spamming?????…or just an offer of “curtain links”?…I don’t see anything wrong with it…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/chi_kung chi_kung

    What I would really like to know is this:

    which lense performs better at selling Amazon stuff?

    Because if it’s the bad example lense (and I have the impression it does and that’s why it hasn’t been taken down!) than what’s the point of this writing??? in thcase squidoo also profits from that lense a lot

    then we should all learn something from that profile – who definitely knows a lot of things about SEO and internet marketing….
    just my two cents on this topic…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/WritingForTheWeb WritingForTheWeb

    I’m sorry Bonnie (and Seth ) but I understood naming and shaming was against Squidoo TOS – I’m appalled you have singled out one individual like this. I’m sure you could have made your point in much better way – there are dozens of real spammers and cheats who are constantly reported to HQ who are more deserving of being outed publicly. I suspect many people who visit the shower curtains lens from this link will actually LIKE it to show their support for the lensmaster.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/fanfreluche fanfreluche

    If you consider this shower curtain lens “bad”, enough to highlight it for all to see as something that is not good enough, does it mean you will finally act on the other real bad thing we report? Like the real spammy lens? The thieves, the TOS violators etc?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/fanfreluche fanfreluche

    If you consider this shower curtain lens “bad”, enough to highlight it for all to see as something that is not good enough, does it mean you will finally act on the other real bad thing we report? Like the real spammy lens? The thieves, the TOS violators etc?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MooshkaDaisy MooshkaDaisy

    I agree, it was quite an unexpected action of Squidoo to call some lens a bad example. Thanks God it’s not my lens! I think most people are quite sensitive to such comments from the team. For me the lens looks ok, someone may just look for a collection of relevant links on this topic.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MooshkaDaisy MooshkaDaisy

    I agree, it was quite an unexpected action of Squidoo to call some lens a bad example. Thanks God it’s not my lens! I think most people are quite sensitive to such comments from the team. For me the lens looks ok, someone may just look for a collection of relevant links on this topic.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/jim-bruce-guitar-lessons jim-bruce-guitar-lessons

    Well done – you gave the lens lots of publicity and improved it’s ranking probably. I’m a newbie here, but I have to say that you all need to get real. Everybody is here to sell something, you can disguise it as much as you like so that the big G doesn’t penalize you, but we’re all spamming – just to different degrees, is all.

    It’s a lot of nonsense really. I suppose an interesting article does help in our sales pitch, but the lenses are ALL sales pitches. What’s wrong with that? Call them what they are and stop messing about.

    OK, I’ll stick to Squidoo TOS and I do like to provide interesting stuff in my lenses, but every lens has a purpose (even this one) and is 99% commercial most of the time.

    On a more whimsical note, I’m thinking of creating a new social content platform called Spammoo, where nothing is allowed if it isn’t incredibly spammy. (I know this is out of place, but come on, let’s be real – also what about the poor guys who created the lenses highlighted? They are just trying to make a buck like all of us – which includes YOU.)

    Cheers, Jim

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/MarcoG MarcoG

    Hmm judging by the reaction to post, this is kinda complicated. I think the point that Bonnie and HQ was making, is for us to question are we selling or spamming. I don’t think fingers were pointed, per se, at the shower curtain lens, it was just pointed out that it has lots of links. Some people like that, some people don’t. I see the linking, as curating – and for some people, that’s useful.

    To me, spamming is a page full of adverts that no one wants to read – like pop ups etc.

    This has certainly made me look at my lenses were a more objectionable point of view “what would the reader think”, “am I helping them”, “am I offering something relevant to what a reader would hope to find here” etc…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

    I find it interesting that since my lens (that i bought as a collection of lenses) has been listed here, I have received numerous spam comments on this lens and others. So much for speaking about spammy lenses when your readers create spammy comments.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

    I find it interesting that since my lens (that i bought as a collection of lenses) has been listed here, I have received numerous spam comments on this lens and others. So much for speaking about spammy lenses when your readers create spammy comments.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/doug48 doug48

      I and others rather like your UniqueShowerCurtains lens it is a good place to just look and shop! My chose not some one elses!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

      I am so sorry that your lens was singled out like this. I just think that is incredibly bad form on Squido’s part. I was hoping that Squidoo had created an “example” lens themselves and am sorry to hear it was an actual lens by a real lens master. Something like this has never happened on Squidoo before, and hopefully they will pay attention to the many comments made by Squidooers about this and not ever use someone’s lens as a example like this again.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

    If I were to use your criteria for judging worthy content, Pinterest would be considered spammy, since they are only pics with links. Hmmm?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LubosLabik LubosLabik

    Even bad advertising is advertising :) Now I know who got unique shower curtains.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LubosLabik LubosLabik

    Even bad advertising is advertising :) Now I know who got unique shower curtains.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LubosLabik LubosLabik

    Even bad advertising is advertising :) Now I know who got unique shower curtains.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/victel victel

    I find it quite shocking you would pick out some poor lensmaster to use as an example, and to name and shame, when the OWNER of Squidoo puts out lenses with nothing but sales boxes on too, http://www.squidoo.com/a-diet-for-your-mind for example. I for one always try to have plenty of unique text and content on my own lenses. If you had picked one of my sales lenses without too much content on though, for everyone to gawk at, I would be humiliated and embarrassed. I have seen MUCH worse lenses on Squidoo and yes – many of which are in tier 1.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/UniqueShowerCurtains UniqueShowerCurtains

      Great example: Seth’s own lens with nothing on it but links.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DreamsInBloom DreamsInBloom

        Well, to be fair, there is more on it than just links. There are one to two sentences per product.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/calendarsblog calendarsblog

          And it’s a unique list of books – rather random on the face of it, but still a personal recommendation of about 10 books out of the thousands available.

          • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Flynn_the_Cat Flynn_the_Cat

            the problem, of course, with a lot of lenses like this you can’t tell how personal they are, unless you some knowledge of the product/are actually shopping for stuff

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ted-batchelor ted-batchelor

      Yep a link list from the great man ranked in the top 400. Do as I say not as I do?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

      I agree. I myself am new here and I first used to make content rich
      lenses that took me days of work but sadly they never made it and didn’t
      get me much income, then with the celebrate mag and quests, squidoo HQ
      was encouraging us to do sales lenses. some sales lenses I did contain
      small lines containing my personal opinion and recommendations for
      certain products or gifts for a certain personality or occasion. And not
      till I’ve seen respected lensmasters doing these kinds that I started
      doing them. but I do try to pick the best products in my opinion that go
      with the subject I’m addressing.

      Some of these lenses even have a
      PR2 or 3 so now I don’t know what to do should I delete those lenses
      even though google itself says they are good ones or what? I don’t want
      my account to be terminated for violating the TOS and honestly I don’t
      think sales lenses if done properly are spammy and they don’t have to be
      full of content -like the examples given here- to be good sometimes a
      shopper is just looking for good ideas or products that will save him
      hours of search on his own.

      I honestly am looking for answers and would appreciate if someone would help me out here.
      Thanks for reading all that.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/athomemomblog athomemomblog

        I would suggest not deleting anything yet. If you feel that your lenses might not make the cut, go back and add some more content. A blackbox, some text modules, etc. It would be hasty to delete before we have all the answers.

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

          Thanks for your reply :), that’s what I’m working on now adding some text, the lens was originally organized and grouped with blackboxes but I’m going to go back and try to work on them a bit more.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ted-batchelor ted-batchelor

    What puzzles me is the one lens that has been highlighted as spam. I could now probably name 100 others that are as ‘bad’ or worse. 1 paragraph of poorly written text then dozens of products. Even some of the top 2000. I read one yesterday ranked in the top 1000 that was both unreadable in the one written paragraph and then used 37MB of Internet uploading dozens of youtube content, with a final flourish of lots of products. Yet it has been in Tier 1 for the last six months. I keep reading content is king, yet am beginning to despair that in reality keywords and reciprocal liking has much more effect in upping your lens rank. Have many other concerns (like how do people stay in the squidoo squidspirit top 40 for 24 hours in a row, day after day.. which is physically impossible without some robotic assistance if my understanding of the squidspirit top 40 is correct), but that would require a whole lens.. which wont get ranked…;-).

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/belinda342 belinda342

    Per Seth, this type of lens will be “Dinged, ignored, or locked?” That just isn’t the case in today’s Squidoo reality. Think “Rewarded, Profitable, and Featured (home page, etc)”. That is actually the case. I have 93 lenses, 7 Purple stars and add content to all my sales lenses. I do keyword research and play by all the rules…both written and implied. And I have only 2 lenses that beat your “bad” example’s lensrank.

    If your comment is truly going to be the case going forward and you truly do want to reward those sales lenses with actual written content, then you need to take a very close look at Squidoo’s reward system…your lensrank algorithm.

    And it might also help to look at those lenses in Tier 1 and 2 who are only there because of purchased traffic and robotic help…it’s almost to the point where you have to buy your way into these tiers…and break TOS to do so. But that doesn’t seem to get dinged or locked either, although the ignored part is especially true (of HQ anyway).

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/annmackiemiller annmackiemiller

      to my mind that is much more to the point Belinda!

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

      Well said. People follow the examples of those that rank better, and it has hurt us in the long run when the junk, not the cream, rises to the top. It doesn’t help at all that for quite some time now…the emphasis has been to hurry and make lenses, hurry and make Giant (now you only need 25 lenses) and then start with the other newbies.

      Whatever happened to quality? Let people know their lenses are less than so they can learn. The ones that care will change them, the ones that don’t won’t. Simple as that.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KarateKatGraphics KarateKatGraphics

      if there’s a way to ID those lenses with purchased traffic and robotic help, that would certainly be the low-hanging fruit to pick, in terms of increasing our overall quality here. also, any behavioralist will tell you that positive reinforcement — such as tweaking lensrank to favor lenses that make sales with at least a bit of original content vs. no content beyond links — outperforms shame tactics by a longshot.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

      Not only purchased traffic and robotic help gets to Tier1 and 2 belinda342! There’s also the huge problem with the algorithm rewarding INTERNAL traffic, likes, and blessings…….which a large amount of lensmasters have perfected to achieve T1 & T2. HQ has stated that the like and blessing game is not worth playing……but that is nil and void…when we all can see many lensmasters with pitiful ‘outside’ traffic totals, lenses that are poorly crafted and against TOS continually rack in 7-10-20 Tier 1 lenses month after month.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/PhoenixReborn PhoenixReborn

        I agree, these issues are bothersome as well, and actually a lot of those “serial likers” are using bots to help them like so many lenses so quickly…hence the robotic help comment. And technically HQ has never said that playing that game is against TOS, so for now we’re stuck with the consequences. However buying traffic and robotic help are against TOS and should be dealt with when reported…and that just isn’t happening from what I’ve seen.

        BTW, this is Belinda342′s alter-ego. Didn’t have time to switch out identies!

        • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

          Hi Phoenix-Belinda :) I had to go and take a look (good to periodically do, because HQ many times does not announce when they’ve changed the TOS). I think that now, tecnically HQ HAS stated that’s it’s against TOS…..which is good to know – maybe now we can start reporting the same lenses by stating HQ’s own words back to them…..or maybe it’s recently changed, so that they can now get rid of these lenses?

          Under #3 The Rules in the TOS:

          “Note: Squidoo does not endorse or recommend ratings swaps. And, in fact, if you spam people asking for them, you’ll assuredly lose. Building a so-called business on ratings swaps or traffic exchanges could mean you did a whole lot of work for a whole lot of nothing”.

          With ‘rating swaps’ underlined and linked to another HQ page…

          http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo/65359251-FAQ#module65361921

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/squidoopets squidoopets

      It seems HQ IS looking at the problems in T1 and T2 that you describe and are using some finesse when it comes to public posts. Quite possibly they are tired of the negative backlash that occurs whenever cheaters are exposed (cheaters who know they are cheating always come out blowing fire and smoke and after awhile, the messenger gets tired of being burned). Seth likely has good reason to be angry. Awhile back he posted on his blog about the short run and the long run and how one may get ahead in the short run, but in the long run, “we know who you are”. Knowing which people are doing what, based on being able to see the proof in the patterns, it must be highly irritating to wait for the proof of the long run. And squidoo relies on Google adsense – I can imagine how this scenario, “sorry, we won’t pay for these click-outs because they appear to be suspicious” yet there is not yet a way to prove who is doing it because of lensmaster alliance grouping (read: ip’s all over the world and not yet condensed enough to provide proof), must be infuriating.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LisaAuch LisaAuch

    I get it, I think we all do :) – the actual lens throws into the mix to the confusion of why can this rank in lensrank if it is so rubbish *sorry to the owner of the lens in advance* I think you are all missing an extremely important thing here.
    IF you look at the right hand sidebar, it has been manipulated to show “even MORE ” affiliate ads placed in there using the amazon description part of the module.
    Not too long ago using the Bio section etc this way was highlighted as a Breach of TOS in Squidoos Adsense agreement, and it pushes down the adsense that should be above the fold.
    So I totally heartily agree with Seth Godin It should be locked. (The Angels lost the ability to “ding” a lens many moons ago (again due to the abuse of some)

    Many of the lensmasters play by the rules, give lots to the community and as someone mentioned earlier on Squidoo is indeed like a family, we “care” enough about it to get passionate.
    We see the lensrank system being abused, the “like fest” we see certain practices being allowed. I want to clarify we all know what was intended by showing this, Susans Kindle lens is amazing, and has possibly got to be one of THE most successful lenses I know of at my time at Squidoo, To point out Seths lens, with the books is ridiculous. I go to his pages as i read his books and want to know what he is reading. I love Squidoo, I mean it, the platform has taught me a lot and its community has taught me everything I know about working online!
    Squidoo does indeed feel like home, If its hurt or getting attacked I/we want to defend it, but I have seen less and less community as the site has changed recently, and can only put it down to money, where money is involved people change, they feel aggrieved if they have spent forever on a page, for it not to get noticed, and possibly never get the recognition they so deserve from a member of HQ, and then a prestige highlight on HQ blog (even as an example of bad practice gets all the attention and could even push it into a tier 2 payment ( yes people will become upset) – It has been pointed out that “the spammy lens” has received internal likes since being featured….so of course with the lensrank system, the way it is people will be upset.
    For all the ones not doing the job right there are countless lensmasters who many in this thread, give Squidoo everything and make it work, they want it to work, many Seth himself have highlighted their work as outstanding, Many have built businesses around Squidoo. And continue to Support Squidoo by publishing their excellent work here, these articles and pages are imperative to Squidoo, and keeping their good reputation online. Now I would be asking them.. What is wrong, why do you feel this way…..I dont like to see public annihilation of people it hurts. no matter who it is. I know we can put out the message in a different way. and I know so many of us are as Darcie says working on building our content else where. I know my traffic to my top lenses, and the clickouts to the ads and sales they make, more than contribute my fair share to the “pool” but due to a lot very valid issues within the current lensrank system and seeing no resolution to it, although we all raise our concerns, still see lenses such as was highlighted as being spammy, when actually its collecting money from tier pay outs and getting visits, likes, probably sales, and social shares etc etc….If good quality lenses are to disappear, to be replaced by spammy kind lenses that DO/CAN rank and lensmasters who dont really care about the quality or content side of the site and you are left with just the above spammy lenses (as it even proven by this example they seem to rank well), what then will happen?
    *as I say I know what was being achieved by this post* and we all want good quality pages on Squidoo. Unfortunately with so many being upset just now at the whole “spammy lenses” ranking over PS loTDs It is not so motivating to people to go out and build that Quality content, that Squidoo built their reputation online for
    Me, I am thankful every day I came to Squidoo but I am working on content else where, and doing really well, and loving it, but I still check in on “home” and it does make me upset to see “home” struggling a bit.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/manlalakbay manlalakbay

    I think as of now I am in the middle. I need to master and study the principles of selling. Thanks for this post. :)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/GOT GOT

    The lens with all links has 60 squids likes and 10 facebook likes. Not bad.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/pkmcr pkmcr

    The lensrank is determined by the Squidoo Algorithm. Right now the Number One lens on Squidoo is block after block of curated links and only differs from the alleged bad lens in that the lensmaster uses their own affiliate links throughout. The number one lens (as of right now) has been featured on the home page of Squidoo for months.

    So along with expressing disappointment that it was felt necessary to publically comment on a lens in what many perceive as a negative way I would ask a question.

    If a lens which on the face of it is nothing but links with thousands of internal likes can be the Showcase Lens of Squidoo then isn’t the algorithm broken?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LisaAuch LisaAuch

      Yes I do believe it is definitely broken, rewarding internal interaction so much :(

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      Housecleaning is in order and it needs to start with the lenses that are being showcased and spotlighted, and rewarded with the best ranks. If they are bad, spammy or outright in violation, how can honest lensmasters even stand a chance? What are new lensmasters going to want to emulate?

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/VickiSims VickiSims

      I agree that some lenses have appeared on the home page rotation for what seems like several months and as long as they are featured, they will stay at or near the top. If the powers at be at Squidoo want to reward lenses with good content, the ones featured on the home page should be selected because they are good examples of what Squidoo management considers a “good” lens.
      I would also suggest that they be rotated frequently to give the exposure to as many “good” lenses as possible. Anyone who has had a lens featured on the home page can confirm that it makes a huge difference in lensranking and the amount of traffic from both inside Squidoo (other lensmasters) and outside (non-lensmasters). So by featuring only examples of “good” lenses instead of high ranking lenses it will reward “good” lenses with a higher lensranking which will serve as an incentive for people to make more “good” ones.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/lakeerieartists lakeerieartists

    I like to write sales lenses as well as informational lenses. There is room for both on Squidoo. I believe that we should write what readers are looking for, and that is born out by sales on sales lenses and traffic and clickouts on informational lenses.

    While the lens that Bonnie pointed out as less desirable is what I would call mediocre in that it is not put together in the best possible way, the lens is at least on target as being focused. There are many, many more examples of bad lenses with little or no content, keyword stuffing and nothing else, and clear use of robotic liking and commenting. In fact, with little effort, it could be made into a great lens and get even more traffic and sales.

    I think it is unrealistic to expect that lensmasters are not here to make a living, whether that is part-time or full-time. Seth, one of the reasons that I joined Squidoo was an article where you were interviewed on Etsy saying that we could do just that, make money talking about what we loved.

    Squidoo has provided me with much-needed income to stabilize what I earn from other sources. Frankly, those of you who say to forget the money are out of line. If I forgot the money, my daughter would not be in college, and my family would not still be in our home.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rihamah rihamah

      well said, I really agree

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/irminia irminia

    Dear Bonnie,
    Fingerpointing or not, as some lensmasters say, I see your post just as something in line with trying to make Squidoo a better place.
    I would’ve liked to see an even more elaborate post about lens quality, the reason being of totally personal nature: I’m getting “low quality” message on a number of my lenses (even on one with a purple star) and I’m trying hard to figure out what is wrong. If it werent for the yellow star that I was awarded recently (great thank you, HQ), I would’ve given up already. I’ve done a lot of rewriting and restructuring, but all the effort is just wasted.
    So, any further quality-related instructions will just be greatly welcomed by me, maybe one day I’ll be able to exit the “low quality” message dead end. I wasn’t able to get a greenlight.
    Am I bringing anything to the table? I guess yes. My personal experience about how I have solved some of my problems. Am I selling? Yes – the things I have experience with myself.
    For the first time since I have started writing lenses here, I feel that I have nowhere to turn to for advice. Because my fellow lensmasters can’t give me any definite advice on this subject. So I really welcome posts like this from HQ. With examples, if possible – I’m giving a greenlight on using my lenses as bad examples, if anyone wants them.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/greenspirit greenspirit

    Please tell me why, if it’s about ‘humanizing the web’, that there are top ranking lenses with text that is practically gibberish. The text can obviously pass the dup. filter as no one in their full senses would write sentences like that. The text fulfills word count quotas (and more) as well.

    Does ithis text add value? does it humanise? It’s just too simplistic to seperate lenses into those with text and those without.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      It’s a discouraging thing for lensmasters (like me) who WANT to create high-content lenses, maybe lenses that sell but aren’t selling-focused, that it’s so hard to get those lenses to rank at all because there is so much outright TOS-violating lenses hogging up the top tiers today. I have 3 lenses which have been LOTD in the past, and only one of them is even in T3 right now. Lots of great “quality” lenses are just drowned out, and quality does not seem to have much chance for reward like outright selling does. Fix that, clean out the Tier-hogging spam and then it’ll feel like a genuine push for quality.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flowergardener flowergardener

        Exactly Sockii!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/The_Book_Garden The_Book_Garden

    I’m struggling to understand why the discussion here seems to have focussed on why the particular lens is ‘bad’ and why it’s ‘bad’ to ‘point fingers’….
    Seems to miss the point entirely on discussing if you are providing *Value* to the reader or not. The example used as bad is only bad in that it’s not a good example of a spam lens, but I imagine the ones classed as bad examples would likely have to be taken down for being spam.
    There’s a pretty diverse, and obviously from the comments here, a very subjective view as to what is spam and what isn’t. I see a huge grey area in the middle as ‘potentially spammy’ to varying degrees.

    I’m also quite disappointed in a lot of very talented and experienced squids not applying the ‘provide value/good content’ when seeking back links on social networks, in particular G+. When no effort is made to ‘add value’ when posting links there it’s kinda sad – if you just want a back link, make your +1′s there public, and use that feature, if you wish to share a link to your lens, then do say why. Everyplace you leave a backlink should not only add to your reputation as a knowledgable and trusted source of info, if you’re just leaving a link and adding no value it is just as spammy as a lens full of links

    Sorry for the slight topic/drift on this Bonnie :) (can I also alert you that your G+ profile points to a 404 on squidoo?)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KonaGirl KonaGirl

    I do not like any lens that is nothing but a long laundry list of links, but I do hope this wasn’t a real lens made by a real person. Whenever I come across these types of lenses I attempt to contact the lensmaster privately with a wee bit of advice for the newbie. Sometimes they are grateful and make changes, other times they do not want the advice as they have been “Like” and “blessed” by other lensmasters with less experience.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/204ridgewood 204ridgewood

    If I’m shopping for a unique shower crtain, I really don’t want to hear about someone’s experiences in the bathroom. I think that the shower curtain lens has provided value by assembling a lot of funny, unique products in one place. It is the seeking out and assembling that adds value, not a personal showering story.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Flynn_the_Cat Flynn_the_Cat

      Oh yes, personal showering stories on a general shopping lens are not a good idea. Squidoo has an R rating for a reason :D

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/CuriousBoy CuriousBoy

    For a moment I’d like to “praise” “bad” and “ugly” Squidoo pages/lenses.
    (more on this later)

    But, first of all, it is just the case to remind that we all have to adhere to the ToS and are bound by the “Originality Pact” – so, to me as far as a lens does comply to both no one should complain.

    Sure, some lenses are better than others,
    (Even if I saw some of those good lenses that do not fully comply…)
    (while some ugly lenses do…)

    So? Well, I’ll tell you two “stories” concerning good and bad lenses.

    In Japan, many times teachers ask to the students to comment “bad works” encouraging them to find something good even among the “worst” ones!
    (Reasoning: you may learn something even from them…)

    An Italian Philosopher – Benedetto Croce – claims that there are no good or bad books, but only good or poor readers.

    By this he wanted to say that a “good reader” will find something good/useful even in a “bad book” while a “poor reader” will not benefit reading even the best books!

    Need to say more?

    Wish to discuss this in more dept?

    Click on my profile and contact me!

    In the meanwhile… Publish or Perish!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/goldenecho goldenecho

    Here’s something that hasn’t been addressed. Since it’s already been used as an example, how could the Shower curtain lens be made better? (I mean, we might as well add some “contructive” to the criticism, right?) The examples in this article of good product lenses both featured technical products, which by their nature need a lot of explaining. But what type of content works to enhance a product lens featuring VISUAL products? I think we all would agree that being more verbose doesn’t always equal better content. We don’t want to just to add a lot of words describing what people can already see for themselves. Taking the Shower Curtain lens as our example, how specifically could IT be made better? What content additions could make this a better lens–give it more to offer than “just links?”

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/rms rms

      Off the top of my head, who, what, when, where and why are always good places to start. Who would the shower curtains be unique to? Someone decorating a red bathroom might like some tips for choosing a unique red shower curtain that matches instead of clashes. What is unique about them? Are they unique in how they are made, the designs on them, where they are manufactured? When, could be answered by sharing unique “seasonal” shower curtain and bathroom decorating ideas. Where, wouldn’t apply because we already know where to put a shower curtain but why could be answered by sharing tips for inexpensive bathroom redecorating with a unique shower curtain.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Flynn_the_Cat Flynn_the_Cat

        In other words, write three other lenses? I’ve found it works much better to separate the ‘informational’ stuff from the ‘straight shopping list’ stuff. It works best of all if you write both and link between them, but whenever I put everything on one page (which I:still do!) it tends not to do so well.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

        And there lies the problem….that would mean that some people would actually have to use more than a template to make a lens.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

        Also….since HQ has pushed the quests and new lenses for shopping, and content lenses drop like flies in rank….who do you think the new people copy? They see what makes money, what makes rank, etc. So, if we are going to clean up the site…then some serious work needs to be done with the lensmasters that have been reported over and over for violations and junk lenses that are worse than the one given here.

        We have said many times that this was going to happen when the Giant program lowered the standards (25 lenses) and it appeared everyone and anyone could be an Angel. All these things go hand in hand with “quality”. If we want quality then we have to be able to tell others, “that needs improvement”….instead of “nice lens” or highlighting lensmasters that are known to plagiarize others, get all their info from Wikipedia, etc. If you want original content…then the rewards should be for that.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/SkinCareExpert SkinCareExpert

    Content, personal story, recommendations and images can be a very powerful tool, in the write hands. The hard part is to convey a sort of purpose to the community, I think.

  • Pingback: Thin Content on Squidoo Is NOT a New Problem; Something Else Is – Squidbits – Greekgeek's Squidoo Blog

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/keepingscore keepingscore

    There is little doubt that Squidoo has lost some of it’s shine over time. Spam like lenses are indeed proliferating and the system does seem to favor spam.

    Rather than just rant why don’t we offer suggestions for how the system could be improved upon? My thoughts on where to start improving things would be as follows.

    1. Have a spam button on each lens. Any user can click on it and remain anonymous. If say a lens gets five spam votes then have a live person look at it and make a decision. If certain users are consistently marking lenses as spam and those suspicions are consistently shown to have no substance, then disable the spam vote for that user- they could click away but it does nothing.

    2. Limit the number of ads or products that can placed in a lens. Require a certain ratio of content to commercial pitch. Example 200 words in order to place an ad.

    3. Give points for linking lenses. Think of this like Wikipedia, you never just read the article you start with. To many lenses are designed to just try and keep people on that lens or on lenses written by a particular lens master. What if extra points and ranking was given to lenses that had more links to other sources of information? The goal is to create clusters of information that can offer more as a package than a stand alone product. Look at a Wikipedia article and think of lens written in the same manner.

    Whining is fun, but creating something really incredible is even more fun.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

      The problem with 1 is that people have multiple accounts and are in link-exchanges (against the TOS or not, it keeps happening). I have no doubt that they would use that to “spam”-vote down lenses out of spite if they felt so inclined. Angels used to be able to “ding” lenses that weren’t worthy (in their eyes), but that was being abused by some, and eventually was taken away. The control over spam has to really start at the top…so why not moderate new lenses by new lensmasters, until they prove they are creating quality content?

      2. There are limits in place already. But, I would like to see something like a word count minimum increase per sales module added. Certain other content-sites already follow this policy (I won’t name names). That is, for every Amazon module you need to include 50 or 100 more words of written text (and then make sure that text isn’t just plagiarized from elsewhere!)

      3. Points used to be given for liking. I think a bigger problem here is there are too many people playing like-for-like, bless-for-bless right now. They have both become abused and almost meaningless as far as real quality measures go. For likes and blessings to have true meaning, the recipient should not be able to see who gave them a like or blessing – that takes away the incentive to like/bless lenses that don’t deserve it, just to try to game or get reciprocal likes/blessings.

      • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw

        This whole thing is something we all talked about a couple years ago….all those likes and blessings, way more than a normal person could give in a day. Nothing was done..and we know what happened with that. So, now it’s time to pay the piper….let’s just hope HQ doesn’t fool themselves into thinking that our problems are only from the “unknowns”, “spun content” “fiverr likes and blessings” etc.

        Like I have said many times, the fox in the hen house is homegrown. Letting people get by with crappy work because you like them doesn’t help anyone here! I hope that we really are going to clean up the site now, and am willing to do whatever it takes to help. Including not transferring lenses if that is what they want.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/GetAcneFree GetAcneFree

      Great ideas!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/patgoltz patgoltz

    Actually, I agree with Bonnie’s assessment. While singling out someone may not be pleasant, she has to find an example to make her point, and the one she chose was a good one. Chances are, if she hadn’t used it as an example, it would have been deleted as spam. Her other two choices also illustrated her point nicely. Since Bonnie is staff, the rules that apply to us don’t necessarily apply to her. The purpose is educational. I’m not troubled by her using the lens as an example, or the low key way in which she does it.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/patgoltz patgoltz

    It’s amazing how many of the COMMENTS here act to shame Bonnie!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/NuttSoRuff NuttSoRuff

    Yes, I see what you mean

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/pero-peri pero-peri

    spam

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/peterduck peterduck

    As a newbie, I’m really confused now. I’ve seen quite a few highly favoured lenses, on the front page for example that fall into the category complained about here. And also lenses which look like they were written in a foreign language then put through an internet translator, that can’t be read because they don’t make sense yet are highly placed. Meanwhile, I’m trying to write good informational lenses, granted with some sales links, trying to master keyword search and get some traffic, have had some nice comments and likes/blessings yet am nowhere near the ranking where these other ‘dodgy’ lenses are. It’s a bit disheartening, especially to read on here about the internal traffic rigging that apparently goes on which I was completely ignorant about. I’ve been spending a lot of my meagre spare time on Squidoo and it is making me lose faith a bit.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/attitudeforlife attitudeforlife

    I just checked out the lens in question here and I’m with Victel. Has anyone read the profile of the lensmaster that’s ON that lens? She’s new to Squidoo. She’s 71 years old. And her content about why she did the shower curtains and such is IN her profile where most of us (with a bit of Squidoo experience) would have put it within the lens itself. Had she done that, I’m guessing it would look VERY well done and thought out. If this is considered spammy, it may be time for me to move my content anyway guys. I love Squidoo but I’m still learning too and this is just a bit beyond in my opinion.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/burntchestnut burntchestnut

    In the past few months I have seen more and more sales lenses with little or no content. I was becoming worried that these type lenses would become the majority and readers might start thinking less of Squidoo. I appreciate all the informative pieces you put out about improving our lenses and am glad you’re looking at the ones that are totally sales lenses. But I do feel you shouldn’t have showcased a real lens from one of the lensmasters. It would have been better to create a sample lens for illustration. One lensmaster gets humiliated and all the others that have similar type lenses don’t. I also read the lens on the link listed in the comment below and I agree – it certainly is a sales lens with no content.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/FranTollett FranTollett

    Surely the “bad” lens doesn’t belong to a real person! Or does it?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sherioz sherioz

    You cannot compare a sales lens featuring an electronic product to a sales lens featuring shower curtains. There are definitely poor and thin sales lenses on this site but organizing a great selection of products where visual impact is the major selling point does have its place.

    When I first joined here I was quite put off by what seemed to be thin sales lenses. I have since learned that there is quite a difference between spammy sales and legit sales lenses.

    I wish this site would develop a system for true quality control. The “squidlike” system is not adding anything of value to the site. I am an angel but I have even been turned off by the angel programme. I do not do quest lenses anymore. So much of the current hype that is created here around contests and quests and such I think is detracting from the more serious engagement of lensmasters who learn and increase their skills.

    It also doesn’t help when we are told not to do something and then we see others being rewarded for doing those very things.

    I’ve been worried about the direction things are going for quite some time and the current attempts to fix things up have not yet alleviated my concern.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/debtfreeguy debtfreeguy

    I hope that the spirit of the original post is not lost in the spate of discussions about the letter of the post. I did not condemn the lens from reading this post I also like to believe the writer of the post was just setting markers for a spectrum, so that we know the elastic limits on both ends.

    I do not have any claim to producing perfect lenses and I have had a couple locked lenses, I did what I advised other lensmasters to do – move on. When the material was outright violation I destroyed it and when all it required was human eyes, I published it on my blog.

    Let us not forget that Squidoo does not have the manpower to eyeball all lenses selected by a program, and Google often will not discuss a lock-down with you.

    Okay, I think I said too much, am heading back to making lenses and fine-tuning the crappy ones I have.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/CuriousBoy CuriousBoy

    Good or Bad – it seems a tricky and controversial subject…

    Yesterday I posted here my comment but I see that it does not show up.

    I have a doubt…
    Has it been censored?
    or
    There was a glitch at the moment of posting?
    (I noticed that there were some problems with the Squidoo servers over the last two or three days.)

    Any way to know?

    In the first case, well I’d like to know why…
    In the second case I might re-post.
    (but not to risk to be censured again…)

    May someone from the Squidoo Team may help to know?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/amy-trumpeter amy-trumpeter

    Now I am confused and concerned…I am a Giant Squid and a Squid Angel and I have around 50% full personal creative lenses, but the other 50% could be classed as ‘spammy’ according to this given example (even though they are within Squidoo guidelines). The problem is, many spammy sales lenses are outranking my good quality lenses. In fact my own spammy sales lenses are outranking my own quality lenses. Obviously, I am going to reamp my sales lenses, which are currently work in progress anyway. But I am not getting the lensrank or guidelines at all at the minute…

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/linsm76 linsm76

    Tons of lenses are sales pages. The one here about the shower curtain, I just shake my head. But, I also read her profile which says she is 70+ grandma. Maybe she needs a little help to do it better than what she did. She has never done this type of thing before, from what I got out of her bio.

    Too bad the friend who got her to start with Squidoo did not help her to her lenses correctly.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/fireflies7 fireflies7

    I’m unable to see the “bad” lens as it has been taken down. As a new lensmaster, I’m trying to figure how how “links” get put in the lenses to begin with. I don’t see an editing tool to create a link with. Any info on that? How do I create a link within my lens.. thank you.

    • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Flynn_the_Cat Flynn_the_Cat

      Several ways!
      If you want to create your own links to other places, you can:

      1. Add a link list module, or a big link module or a Links plexo. Those are all ‘link’ modules! Or a module that links to a specific site, like Amazon or eBay. The most basic way to create an Amazon link is to add an Amazon module and find products through it (or copy links to products from Amazon and paste them in).

      2. Use HTML code to create a link (just type the basic code into the text area of a module and save it). There are quite a few good HTML lenses on Squidoo, if you search for them. The code for a link is one of the most commonly used ones.

      I’m not sure if the code will be stripped out or not if I comment here; I’ll try it anyway. If it doesn’t work, you’ll need to find a tutorial lens or a forum to help.
      Words that show up for readers

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LifeCoachEdgar LifeCoachEdgar

    I wonder what Squidoo’s thoughts are on Content Curation. I enjoy using Scoop.it for content curating. I know that using the same methodologies from Scoop.it would get my lens locked. As content curation becomes more and more understood by online users, I wonder how Squidoo’s Algorithm will adapt to not penalize those people whose content is not using spamming, or duplicate tactics, but is simply curated, whilst still acknowledging the source from which the content has been curated. In the same ways when one uses Zementa

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/wordpress101 wordpress101

    I too create lots of lens based on wordpress themes and plugin, but I usually write my personal thought on what I feel about them. Along with it also share what real designer/developer wants to speak. Untill and unless you make your reader feel comfortable, you will hardly see any conversion. Whether its your own personal blog or your squidoo lens.

    Check out my lens : Best WordPress Magazine Themes

  • elynmac

    I have an idea. What if you had to put your first 5 lenses (or 2 or 3 or X number of lenses) in another spot, and then be accepted to Squidoo after you had proven yourself? If you were making lenses that were quality lenses, then they could be “pulled in” to the Squidoo site itself once you were accepted. That might stop the spamming stuff.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/michalk michalk

    The world works differently now – people like to shop on line – People have less time for shopping and online is great for a lot of people. My teenage son buys his sneakers on line – He knows what he wants (the popular ones) He goes on line looking for prices and really isn’t interested in reading about the history of rubber.

    The poor guy who just wants to sell sneakers has to make a tremendous site of unnecessary info just to rank with Google so that people can ever see what he’s selling.

    The problem that google has is how will they decide whose site (ad) gets top billing – They tried the backlinking method but it was so fake – All those spammy comments with links on your site – A real headache! You could pay people to place backlinks for you.

    The only thing that quality content gives is at least google could reward the person who worked harder (even though that may actually be a dis-service to the buyer (my son who only wants sneaker prices) – Each thing needs different type of content. (and I don’t want to read the whole history before I get to the buying link)

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/christy_rose christy_rose

    As a newbie I’m just becoming more and more confused. A lot of thin content sales lenses are ranked high and I’ve seen ones with very little written content or photos that have received purple stars. I’ve noticed some absolutely amazing lenses that aren’t ranked very high. Confusing but I’m hoping I’ll figure it all out eventually.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/superbros superbros

    selling

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/michaelborell michaelborell

    Its quite interesting when the first lens you create gets locked down, yes policies have to be followed? I can not understand many publishers copy and paste content and give credit to that person the next best thing is Viper the Anti Plagiarism scanner, need to keep to policy and procedures. thanks for the tip.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/completelysideways completelysideways

    Hmm. I didn’t get a chance to see the “bad” lens but it’s really interesting to see more than one viewpoint about it being discussed.

    I’m new & still trying to figure out what Squidoo is all about. I didn’t originally see it as a way to review products. I’m no salesperson and only a “writer” in the sense that sometimes I randomly blog about stuff, so I’m not really interested in trying to make money from writing reviews about collections of stuff. I would be happy to make some money, sure, but I’m not counting on it.

    My second ever (and most recent) lens was a way for me to try and give some tips about photographing kids. That’s something I do for a living, and I just enjoy doing it for friends & family. After my tips I threw in a link for Ebay camera auctions (with 5 bids already, to make sure the auctions were worth something to someone) and a link for a few good portraiture books on amazon. That seemed to me to be a way to write about something I like, that people might find enjoyable or maybe (just maybe) even helpful. And hey, everyone needs a new camera every now and then. The idea of trying to just review and suggest certain camera models makes me feel a bit queasy, though!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mermaidsbite mermaidsbite

    This week I learned to “save” my lens as a draft, not publish, if I’m not through editing a lens. Distracted by my son’s needs, I hit publish by accident and got a lock placed on my review because I quoted (and cited) a recipe. That was a terrible, rotten, very bad, no good following morning for me.

    I come here for fun waaaaay before profit (as an entrepreneur, I own 2 companies, and am a marketing VP in another). I come here to write what I want instead of all of the focus of every word being on marketing.

    While trying to be generous and buying from other lensmasters’ links, I’m running into politics? There are zero politics for me on pinterest, and my blog posts get read from my links there. Original content has made me a little money through pay-it-forward efforts there, too. But I think squidoo holds so much more potential for relationship building.

    I want to feel and share love. I want to think I know you and get to know you and laugh and play. Don’t worry, I’ll shop with you and read your reviews. This is an awesome and honest place. Besides, spammers are everywhere.

    Relationships create warmth, but not always profit. That’s just our current world. What we’re doing is a long term art project, perhaps?

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DAEdmonston DAEdmonston

    Finding this balance is very important to me. I don’t like feeling manipulated or spammed. I don’t want to do that to others either. So, finding meaningful links for my readers to use is what I am trying to learn how to accomplish.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/brunetteva8 brunetteva8

    Thanks for these tips. Very helpful to me.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/commandolockusa commandolockusa

    It’s taken me a few posts to get from trying to page rank to actually enjoying adding new content rather than just blasting the web with links. I hope it works because it’s more gratifying to add value than spam.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/AnaHoffman AnaHoffman

    I see the bad lens example is down already — too bad, I could use a little laugh… or not.
    I’m new to Squidoo & experimenting at the moment with the right balance of useful content and promotion in a lens. Fantastic software to work with!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Israelapt Israelapt

    Yep!

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LTykarski093 LTykarski093

    I was originally put off by Squidoo because I felt the lens were no more then back-drop for marketing Amazon /e-bay products. After taking the time to look through different lens I have since changed my mind. There are gifted writers producing good work here which is why I decided to also throw my hat into the Squidoo ring.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/shannonwrites shannonwrites

    The link to the example of the lens with just links isn’t working.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/WebLori WebLori

    The bad lens link – http://www.squidoo.com/unique_shower_curtains – had no result.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/linsm76 linsm76

    Dead link.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/DiddydelDesigns DiddydelDesigns

    Hi, I can’t seem to access the lens link for the ‘lens that has nothing to offer’ has it been taken down?

More Lensmaking Tips

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Quality content is more important than ever.

What to do with a locked lens and more advice about content.

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Getting a handle on high keyword density.

Getting a handle on high keyword density.

Official news and updates from the Squidoo Team

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