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.

This one is a little bit less demanding than the eBay contest. Simply build 5 lenses about regular everyday superheroes that you know who make a difference. I believe the deadline is June 30 (?).  SuperGiant Squid Jeff Wend has already got his SuperHero Squidoo Project off to a great start and the Giant Squids Mentor Blog has some more information on the SuperHero Project as well.

Seth Godin defines what a true SuperHero is in his mind. Pretty interesting paradox of impatience and patience..

I was discussing different challenges from Squidoo with a few people in the Chat Room today. Between all the people talking there were hundreds and hundreds of lenses that we had all built. Some of the things we were talking about:

• a giant stream of traffic is a great measure of success (obviously) but it doesn’t necessarily make you a ton of money. Some lenses get a lot of lookers and no buyers. While this is a problem I would like to have with more lenses, it’s still annoying when you are getting several hundred (or thousand) hits a week with no money ringing up on your Dashboard or in your CJ or Amazon accounts.
• A lot of lenses are not focused or optimized enough for your target audience. For example, a lens on ringtones is competing with an insane amount of sites, many of which are run by people full time trying to climb in the rankings.
• On the other side, if a lens is too focused your potential pool of visitors may be too small to really earn you any money or fame. I think I’ve made this mistake in the past.
• Getting ego-centric about your lens can hurt it. ‘My lens is the best resource out there, why don’t people just find me?’. Getting the word out about your lens can be tough (In fact, it’s probably the hardest part) but if you don’t tell people about it, how can you get all that fame and recognition you deserve?
• Content is in the eye of the beholder. A lot of times you can create a lot of value by combining information from a lot of sources. However, you still need that twist to get people to visit your lens..

What does this all mean? Squidoo is not a magic bullet. I want to emphasize that. There are a lot of people that say you can’t make money with Squidoo. I think that those are the same people that said you can’t make money with eBay… At the same time, building a portfolio of lenses that rakes in the cash does take time, trial and error, and creativity (like most things in life).

To take a page out of Seth’s Book The Dip, I think there are a lot of ‘mini-dips’ in Squidoo. Making that first sale, making your first $10, $100, $1,000 in a month. At each of these levels, more and more people quit because what they are trying isn’t working so they figure nothing can work. And you know what? Time and time I see the lensmasters that power through those dips make more and more money. By pushing the boundaries of what is possible, you can teach yourself a lot about business, life, and getting ahead.

My current Dip? Squidoo doesn’t currently have a way that makes it exactly easy to manage 270 lenses in one place. Does that mean I’m going to stop building lenses until HQ can build one? umm…no.

What’s your current Dip with Squidoo? What ‘Dips’ have you had in the past?