Big Bad News that Just Can't Wait...

I wasn't going to post again until the stumble function on our lenses was finalized and decided on.

However, this just came to my attention and it is EXTREMELY WORRISOME for me, as the Mall groupmaster, as it SHOULD BE FOR EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!

The duplicate lenses are now being singled out by Google and assigned SUPPLEMENTAL STATUS in that search engine, which means that any lens that is buried in that way isn't even worth the paper it is written on.

We have SO MANY COOKIE CUTTER DUPLICATES on Squidoo now that we are running the risk of having some serious problems with more and more lenses being diverted to supplemental, and Squidoo becoming less and less favored in the Google search rankings.

If that happens, the whole benefit of Squidoo is OVER.

So, aside from the issue of the stumble arrow and its effects on the groups and the lenses, this issue will be FRONT AND CENTER for the Mall group.

If you have a lens that is duplicated or has been duplicated and you have no original content, then please consider the following for your membership in any of my groups:

1. Do you have good, original content?
2. Is your lens focused on a topic?
3. Have I seen you anywhere around??? Guestbooks, email box, forum?
4. Can anyone contact you?

Those who have all FOUR will be featured lenses and I will promote you as much as I can.

Those who don't will be booted from my groups. If you have more than one lens, I will look them over too, and make my decisions.

Groupmastering & The Mall Group #1

Remodeling

I have been remodeling the Mall Group, as I have announced here. It is a VERY BIG PROJECT for me.

Growing Fast!

The Mall group is growing faster than I can get the remodeling done. We now have over 500 members and getting close to 50 applications per week for membership.

Gaps

There are clearly some gaps in our 'shopping coverage' which I am interested in suggestions about how to fill.

Duplicates

There are also an enormous number of duplicate lenses applying. This should be of great concern to every lensmaster in the Mall, and yet the participation and interaction between Mall members is almost non-existent.

Serious Business People

Having FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE as a small business owner, with the ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE Squidoo can make with the success of a business or a project, it seems to me that it is only the serious business people who should be supported by the joint efforts of an active and vibrant Mall group.

I will discuss these things in ensuing posts. I am very concerned that much of your hard work is being duplicated and plagiarized. I believe that serious people who want to make the most of Squidoo, and the groups they belong to, will be able to brainstorm ways of dealing with this problem and still succeed.

I expect and anticipate your suggestions and comments.

Participating in Squidoo- Duplicate Lenses

There is a dramatic surge in duplicate lenses. In a big way, this is because of the increasing number of affiliate programs that are doing 'mega marketing' to get loads and loads of people who are willing to set up websites for free just to get a commmission on their products.

Here is a blog post from Bum Marketing about how to duplicate the higher traffic affiliate lenses, primarily offering click bank products. Recommending the 'Squidoo Tricks' ebook shilled by Tiffany Dow, and 'Squidoo Secrets,' these combine to guarantee that anything you do can and will be taken and 'rewritten' in order to copy and perhaps 'improve on' your performing lenses. This could indeed be done for any lens that doesn't have original and difficult to duplicate content.

This is also what they teach others who are new to Squidoo but coming in based on their 'outreach.' These new people form groups having 'contests' to vote each other's lenses 'up' (and other's down? its happened before, but I haven't seen these folks mention that as a strategy yet), and these contests primarily vote their OWN things up FIRST, others after, and repeated contests, repeated new people desperate to make a living on the internet, all come along happily for the ride they're being taken on.

Along with the spam lenses (splenses) that this approach creates, which groupmasters see, it poses for you the difficulty of creating the types of lenses that aren't easily duplicated.

As I cull the Mall group, I'll be looking for the telltale signs. I also won't be able to serve lensmasters well if there are too many duplicates of the same type of lens.

While these lens duplicators are coming in by the thousands to supplant the work you have done, consider ways that you can make content the king of your lenses and make things difficult to duplicate. It will help you very much.