Is Squidoo Selling Out Lensmasters?
Edit: I was extra grumpy when I woke up this morning and made the two cardinal mistakes in blogging - don’t type angry and do your research. I failed miserably at both. Apparently these ads are served by Google and are still CPC, negating my entire argument. Additionally, getting angry doesn’t really solve a lot of issues like this. So, I’m going to crawl back into my pirate boat for the evening.
I was looking at one of my lenses this morning and saw the following:
Lens 1:
Lens 2:
These are pre-populated ads for eBay and Shopzilla items in the sidebar of the Squidoo Lenses.
Why I’m a Pissed off Pirate:
There has been no indication from Squid HQ that they have set these ads up to be attributable directly to the lensmaster who owns the page.
The items and the content in the ads are in direct competition with a TON (over 300) lenses of mine that use the ebay module.
How can I click fraud an ebay item, Seth?
I’m not pissed off that Squidoo wants to monetize their lenses more effectively, far from it. In fact, I would love to split the revenue from those eBay and Shopzilla ads with Squidoo. I already do just that on many, many lenses. I would NOT like to split revenue on those ads with everyone on the site.
Why not? Because it is EASY to set those ads up to be directly attributable to the lens owner and not to the general ‘pool’.
Anything else is simply lazy. And laziness is the first sign of the end of the road.
The way that the system is currently set up takes a huge swipe at the most effective lensmasters on Squidoo (especially ones that make exceptional product review lenses, etc.) by taking revenue that can be attributed directly to them and distributing it to the entire site.
That’s not capitalism, that’s socialistic crap of the highest order.
The pathetic part is, Squidoo won’t make significantly more money because they will just be cannibalizing their own ebay sales most of the time. The only people it hurts are those that do a good job reviewing/promoting/talking about products that are sold on ebay, shopzilla ,etc (so, Everything).
Hurt the best lensmasters to reward the monkey-heads that can put 3 modules on a page, leave the defaults, and hit publish.
Way to go.
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Comments
It looks like these ads are being served by Google Adsense, which means a) all the revenue goes into the pot, and b) Squidoo can’t do anything to change this.
The Glam ads are gone, and replaced by a generic Google AdSense module. Google is able to decide which ads are most relevant to the content, and it seems to be doing a good job.
Thanks for the feedback.
We’ve been consistent in not making the display ads attributable, and the reason is, as you hinted, click fraud. Not by you, of course, but it certainly would be tempting to others to click their own links.
There’s a bigger issue here, which is the idea of internal competition and not your fair share. I’m afraid the numbers just don’t bear this out.
First: The percentage of people who click on these ads is tiny. There’s no evidence at all that someone who was about to click on a direct, relevant link would suddenly change her mind and click on an ad.
Second: the pool gives as good as it gets. Unless you have a reason to believe that you’re going to give more to the pool than someone else (hard to understand how that could happen) it’s not clear to me how you end up getting less back.
As for glam ads, we’re still working our way through the best way to monetize this space working with various partners.
Thanks for taking the time to let us know how you feel.
Seth
The other problem cropping up with the ads showing ebay is the content of some of them. Most google ads are more generic, stores or lines of products rather than specific items which means they are less likely to bring up objectionable results.
For example I have a lens on chickens pulling up ebay auctions for live hatching eggs (meaning eggs that after incubation will hatch for you). I like a lot of other people have big ethical issues with buying animals online. Another person with a lens on prairie dogs was getting listings for traps to kill them.
I’ll try to limit this. My greatest concern with Squidoo is that they may have an early AOL type model, where getting lots of people to start was more important than treating those already committed well.
Squidoo’s very slow turn around on bug reports and bug fixes may be a symptom of this model. I had reported a problem with the Amazon spotlight module directly; and was told to turn in a bug report. Weeks later I read someone else had lost content to the same bug - I have still not gotten a reply. A prior bug report reply came after more than a month. Triage is not that tough to establish or outsource.
Squidoo has a very clever ability to create volunteers to promote their product, these they treat ok. Free work is always appreciated.
They do give to charity; 5% of net revenue, which is 10% of their cut as I read it. They have said they hope to give 200 million to charity - a highly admirable goal. At 10% of revenue, that means 2 billion in revenues; that should yield a huge reward at a public offering or buy-out. Think minimum 30 x earnings. Equity interests will have great value for a few key players. Squidoo could also remain privately held as a purple cash cow.
Their goal is profit, I admire that also. I just feel sorry for those that dedicate themselves to Squidoo with little reward. That is the goal of web 2.0 - and it works well. You get community and recognition - they get (maybe) huge monetary rewards (YouTube).
Squidoo is a great tool and I have a fair bunch of lenses. But we may be best served by asking ourselves if we would do what we are doing if they might disappear or radically change by next week, month, or year.
For now I’ve limited my soliloquy to online relationships - with difficulty. There is broader application to the rule:
Our time is valuable; we should not be more dedicated to any person, movement, organization, or party — than they are dedicated to us and ours.
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For what it’s worth: those ads aren’t appearing on my lenses just yet. I do agree though: affiliate sales should be split with the lensmaster directly, not the general pool of lensmasters.