Squidoo’s New Policies…

June 18, 2009 · Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, inbound links, online marketing · 1 Comment 

Squidoo is changing its policies and what you can or cannot do with a Squidoo lens might make you cringe or jump for joy depending upon how you use your Squidoo lenses.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • No Spam.  Ok, not exactly “new” but they’ve reiterated it…again.
  • No more X-rated material.  So if you’re in that market, you might want to start considering moving your material to a new home or changing the Squidoo content page(s) you are using to comply.
  • No “Junk Topics”.  Now, “junk topics” mean different things to different people.  Just what constitutes a “junk topic”?  Well, here’s Squidoo’s list of them:
    • Drugs/Pharmaceuticals
    • Weight Loss / Dieting
    • Affiliate Lenses promoting affiliate programs.
    • Gambling
    • Credit Card Debt, Mortgages, Currency Trading, Envelope Stuffing, etc.
    • Hate Lenses (now, my question is, why has this not been a “Squidon’t” already?)
    • Ringtones
    • Lyrics Lenses.  According to Squidoo “…a serious copyright issue.”  But, according to an article on USA Today from NMPA not necessarily.  As a matter of fact, she pretty much says “we don’t care if you’re not making any money off of those lyrics.”
    • And a few “…harder to generalize, but obvious when we see them.”  In other words, it’s our opinion what stays and what goes.  (Does that sound familiar to you?)
  • There’s a new limit on overly-promotional lenses.  They state “…this doesn’t mean you’re limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole lens…just 9 to the exact domain.”  However, they also state “any links generated by Squidoo modules (like Amazon or Wikipedia) don’t have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Zazzle module) or modules that your readers post in…”  Do with this information what you will.  They’re practically telling you exactly what to do.They’re also whitelising Allposters affiliates and placing Clickbank affiliate lenses in the middle ground; not whitelisting nor blacklisting.

If  you’re worried about any of your lenses, don’t worry, you still have time to act.  None of this will take place until Mid-July so you still have time to export your content if you feel as if your lens(es) might get dinged.

The entire piece is listed here for your reading pleasure.  Note though that you do have plenty of time before these changes go into effect and if you do read the content (which I suggest you should) also take the time to read what they’re *not* saying.  In other words, read between the lines because you can come up with some great ideas for future use.

And no, I’m not saying to try and “game” the program.  They’re flat out telling you what’s acceptable and what’s not if you want to stay listed but they’re not playing Google at this point and just “doing it” without your knowledge.  As a matter of fact, they even give you some great advice.  I suggest you use the information they’re handing to you.  It’s a lot more than people usually get.

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