Initially, it appeared to be just another moonbat, Seth Godin, acting as a dictator who decides what people can write about and what will be censored. Although this was indeed true, Godin built Squidoo so he can pretty much do whatever he wants. However, it doesn’t explain why Squidoo did this.

Squidoo’s censorship policy is really about hypocrisy and greed.

The hypocrisy is that while Seth Godin and Squidoo deride and disparage you as an affiliate marketer pushing weight loss, dieting, health products, card games, cash gifting, credit card debt, mortgages, currency trading, Forex, ringtones, adult lenses, lyrics and much more, Squidoo earns millions of dollars hawking all of these affiliate products (and many more) directly from Squidoo lenses through an affiliate agreement with Google Adsense, Amazon, eBay, Cafe Express, Kontera and others. The behavior of banning certain items with the Squidoo TOS (no lenses on weight loss, Forex, health products, adult products, credit cards, etc.) and then blatantly selling these exact same banned products themselves (through ebay, Kontera, Amazon, Adsense, etc.) on your lenses is hypocrisy on a colossal scale.

So the greed is monopolizing the affiliate income from products you are not allowed to write about. Seth Godin and Squidoo can make money from all the banned topics, directly from ads they place on your lenses. But because of their censorship policy, you cannot even write about these things on a Squidoo Lens.

Squidoo has no cozy relationship with Clickbank. They can’t make a cut of the money you earn promoting Clickbank products on your lenses. Therefore they pretty much cut Clickbank products out of the picture by using their censorship policy. Just more greed.

I know Squidoo donates money to charity and that’s nice. Boss Tweed from Tammany Hall donated money to charity as did Al Capone. Did that make them any less corrupt; any less hypocritical; any less greedy?

But like many here, I am confused because of squidoos new policies.
I am trying to stay within the guidelines at squidoo (I only have 3 lenses) but I’m still running into problems with ‘too many links to same site’ even though they are to zazzle mainly- a whitelisted site.

Of course, I want to sell and promote products, but this surely isnt breaking squidoo’s guidelines, is it? What is the point in a shopping section, if you cant have links to the shops to buy?!

I wanted to invest in the OWM, mainly to help with squidoo,but like a previous post above has queried- will it be updated t reflect the new policies at squidoo?
I see the reasoning with squidoo’s change of policies,(it is their site, fair enough) but it doesnt help answer my question-
‘will I , and should I continue to build lenses to make money on squidoo?’
sorry I’ve rambled on a bit-
Mabel
pink pig illustration

thank you for this post.

It all just seems so woolly to me and that there are not enough ‘rules’ to abide by….just some fluffy guidelines!!

Finally, is OWM still relevant, or will you be updating it to reflect Squidoo’s changes?

I understand what you’re saying and agree with most of it. You’re making a choice that’s right for you. I too will make a choice that’s right for me.

Thanx for your views. Keep’em coming.

“On the flip side, there will also be Blacklisted domains, and that list will be growing as well (but not published publicly). Even 1 link to a blacklisted domain will get your lens locked from view. Sites that consistently show up on lenses that are consistently spam and overt junk and take advantage of readers, domains and programs that have earned a bad reputation because of spammers… we’re putting them on a no-no list. This means: Blackhat SEO sites. Reverse phone lookup sites. Paid people finder sites. Lots of dating websites. Many affiliate websites that have proven to be a community of spammers. Like that. Even 1 link on your lens to those domains, and your lens will get locked. You’ll know it when it happens, and if you’re caught by surprise, we’ll give you a chance to edit your lens and remove the blacklisted promotion.”