What to do if Your Squidoo Lens Gets Locked and Your Article Gets Unpublished

Let me make your day with the help of an online writer’s scenario.

You sit down at your computer and glance out the window.  The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day.  

Despite the call to abandon yourself to nature and head outdoors, you power up, log in, and sign on to your account on the writing platform Squidoo. 

Today, however, is not a normal day on Squidoo.  Today you find yourself looking at a Squidoo Dashboard which states that you’ve been issued a WARNING.  

Squidoo is no longer indexing one of your articles on the website, and when others try and access it they’re receiving a notice that it is currently unavailable to read.   Your article is in limbo-land. 

What Can You Do?

The first thing you’ll do is yell at the computer screen, I guarantee you.  Most assuredly, you’ll be angry. 

But now is the time to be reasonable because you now have to decide just how much time you’re going to devote to the problem.

The folks at Squidoo Headquarters will tell you that you have 30 to 60 days to rework your article, contact them for a human review of your revised work, and hopefully work things out and move forward.  This is true in theory, and you can give it a try. 

The reality of the situation is really quite a bit different.   Here’s what I mean.

First of all, your WARNING will give you no clue to what’s wrong with your article.  Squidoo will not detail why their algorithm is unhappy with your article.  You’re going to just have to guess, and guess again, and again.  Many, many, many writers never figure out how to revise their stalled article enough to satisfy the platform again.

But you give it a try anyways.  And you go down the list of suggestions Squidoo often writes about and you add more content, try another Amazon module, check links, and downgrade your marketing techniques.

You contact Squidoo after you rework your article.  Again, however, they won’t send a response or a notification to you to tell you what they’re thinking.  So you can wait and wait, and never totally understand what the problem was with your article in the first place. 

Squidoo HQ states in their tutorial articles that they rarely go back on their WARNINGS.  So even when you revise your work, it may not be enough.  And after 60 days of trying to right a problem that you can’t identify, your article will be now be both unpublished and deleted from the site.

In the end, you have 2 choices.  You can try and fight the system because although rarely, every once and awhile they do reverse an original decision.  Or you can take your article off the site and put it elsewhere.   

We’re back to the question I posed earlier.  How much time do you want to put into solving your Squidoo problem?

Let’s look into moving on.

How to Export your Article off Squidoo and onto Your Computer

The first thing you’ll want to do to claim your work is to Save an XML copy of your article to your computer.  To do this, go into Workshop and look for EXPORT in the right hand sidebar.  Click on EXPORT.   The XML Export contains all of your text and your configuration settings that you have in your article.

Another option for saving your work is to save using your browser.  You do this by choosing your browser’s File -> Save Webpage.  This function will even save your images to a directory.

After saving and storing your content to your personal computer or to your storage, you’ll want to DELETE your article from the Squidoo platform.  This procedure is done from your Squidoo Dashboard. Just locate the article on your Lens List, and click DELETE.

Once you’ve exported your work you’ll have time to make a decision on what you want to do with this former Squidoo content.  You may choose to rework it for another online writers platform.  You might decide you’re ready to experience writing on your own website.  Or you may decide that you will simply delete the material and call it a day.

Whatever you decide with your work, try and give yourself a little time and space to make a good decision.  Don’t make the choice when you’re angry or feeling rejected.   

This is just one article, the others may be fine.  Then again, the issue may help you decide to move in another direction.  You may find you want to take control over the direction of your work and choose to move all your articles to another location at this one time.  There's no one good answer.

Squidoo changes their rules all the time and what was a good match for your talents at one time may turn out to simply be a stepping stone towards something you find better or more fun. 

Enjoy writing on Squidoo for as long as you can.  Just know that at some point things may change, your involvement with the website may end, and you may find yourself moving on like many writers before you. 

It’s fun while it lasts.

Using Photos and Images on Squidoo and Other Online Sites

Using Photos and Images on Squidoo

as well as Other Online Sites

There are many ways to find images you can use in your Squidoo articles and in the next two articles, we’ll discuss some of the ins and outs of using images online.

The first thing a new writer needs to know is that even though there are many great images to look at online, using them in your own work might be copyright infringement if you don’t have permission from the image’s creator.  That means it’s technically illegal to place the image in your work if you haven’t asked.

So how do you illustrate your article.  Let’s take a look at some options.

Free Images You Can Use

Your Own Photos

First and foremost, take your own photos.  People love looking at real images.  Why not take your own and share.  They needn’t be professional grade to be interesting.  Using your own photos can a good choice in many circumstances.

Want to crop your photo taken from your phone into a square image?  A great option for iPhone and Android users is the free app at Instagram.   It automatically resizes all of its images into the square format you’ll want for your introduction photos.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is one of the best place to find photos that artists are willing to share.  Use the Creative Commons search engine to find a suitable photo that you will be using for commercial use.   

Amazon

If you want to use a product image or a logo, sign yourself up to become an Amazon Associate.  You can then not only use the image, but can link to a product .  If your reader clicks the link and buys the product, you’ll also earn a commission.  Now that’s a double duty image! 

Allposters

Allposters is a great way of obtaining photographs or artwork for articles.  Allposters  has a huge array of images that they sell on posters, pictures, cups, tee-shirts, etc.  Sign up for the Allposters affiliate program and you’ll be able to use the image.  In addition, if your reader would like to purchase an item with this image on it, you again receive a commission. 

Art.com, Zazzle and others

There’s a good amount of affiliate programs out there, so go and explore.  Check out the sites to see if you’d like to belong and if you do, suddenly you’ve got art.  

Other Trusted Sites  - Free Images Direct from Copyright Holder

The following sites allow commercial use within an article or website.  Some allow other use.  Always check the Terms of Use for revisions.

BigStock Photo

Microstock site which has some good free images.  Always check the licenses agreements. 

Crestock

This stock-photo site has a free daily photo from professional photographers/ artists.

Dreamstime

Free images from professional stock photographers.

Free-3d-Textures

Free images for many, many uses

License Terms are liberal.  Email with questions. 

Free Digital Photos

Free image site for stock photos.

Free Pixels

Free photos and images site.

Kozzi

Recent newcomer offering free stock photos

morgueFile

Free images for use directly from their creators. Images from professional photographers and amateurs.

Photopin

Searches for images licensed under Creative Commons.

RGB Stock

Free stock photos

Shutterstock

A professional microstock site where one can obtain free images weekly for a variety of uses.   Read the terms.

Seven Oaks Art

Wonderful artist providing free animated gifs he creates. 

RGB Stock

Free stock photos.

 

There you go.  Plenty of ideas.  Now, go out and get creative!

How to Promote Your Squidoo Lens or Article

You’ve heeded the call to action, written a few articles, and then published them on Squidoo. 

How do you now promote your new articles efficiently?

There’s basically two ways of getting readers to your work.   

The first is by advertising your article, and the second is through networking.

When I speak about “advertising”, I’m not suggesting you spend money on ads.
Advertising, in this sense, means to let the world know your article exists and to invite others to find and enjoy your writings.  

Let's go promote!

How Do I Advertise My Articles?

The first step is to “ping” your article every time you publish or update it.  Ping.In, Ping.fm, Ping-o-Matic, or Feed Shark are some good pinging sites.  Join Squid Utils, and use their Squidoo specific ping service.

Next, bookmark your article on Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, RedGage and Best Reviewer.com.  These services bring readers from areas you’ll not reach using other sources. 

Use Craigslist’s Community Page to place and a short storied advertisement / link to your lens where your subject matter allows it.   Craigslist will run your ad for 30 days for free.   Keep a calendar to track your ad and place it in different parts of the country. 

Use Squidoo keywords to link as many keywords as possible to your article.  Squidoo will allow you up to 40 keyword phrases.  Make sure you use all of those spots.  You can always modify your choices later.

Update your work frequently.   Updating doesn’t have to be time consuming.  Add a date line if needed and change it a couple of times each month.  That’s enough to have the search engines revisit you.  Every time you update you can re-ping your work.  That keeps things fresh and moving towards the top of the chart.

Networking for More Readers

The first thing you want to do is engage with other folks on the site you’re publishing on, and in this case it’s Squidoo.   Read articles, check out the forum, join a club. 

But if you’re like me, you don’t always have a lot of time and some of these options take plenty of that.  So here’s how you begin to find folks to read your work by working within the community.

Sign on to Squidoo and let’s find an article to read. 

I don’t want you to choose something that’s currently running on one of the main pages.  Those are too busy. 

So let’s go to the search box and find an article on a subject you’re interested in.  Let’s say “rabbits”.   Type in rabbits and up comes all the articles where Squidoo lensmasters have used the keyword “rabbits”.   Pick one that sounds good and go check it out. 

Be sure to choose one that has been either published or updated recently.  This tells you the author is still quite active on the site. 

Now, read the work, comment on the article, take polls and quizzes, and finally be sure to “Squid Like” the article, if you enjoyed what you read.  Squid liking is important.  Do that for your fellow lensmaster where you can.  Doesn’t this feel great? 

Now pick another one of this author’s articles and do it again.  I usually try to read 3 articles that I think I’ll enjoy from each author during each visit to his site. 

If you’ve done this much, most people will respond in kind and visit your page and read your work. 

That’s why you want to make sure you’re reading articles from an active author.  In most cases, if you take the time to read 3 articles, they’ll do the same for you.  Any more than 3 and you’re probably pushing it. 

As you gain more articles, you can take this a step further and maybe read some of their less popular articles listed towards the end of their list.  Most will then do the same for you.  If you’re interested in having people read your most popular work, read and like their most popular articles.  Be nice to the world, and they’ll be nice to you.

So picking an interesting subject gets you started in finding an author to read, but after that a lot of good authors are found from the comments they leave on others’ work.  What do I mean by that?

Look at the comment section of an article you enjoy.  Do you see active commenters?  We’re talking about comments from the last 6 weeks or so. 

Those people are authors you’ll want to check out.  It’s an easy way to find active Squidoo lensmasters willing to engage and critique your work.  Go down the line and visit 5 or 10 people.  Read, comment and like.  You can also comment on their profile page which is a good way to getting yourself known throughout the community. 

Log on to Squidoo every day.  Look to see who’s visited your page.  Make sure you go back and visit that author’s work too.  They may have found you before you found them and you certainly want to thank them for their visit.  If they’ve been kind enough to read several of your articles, make sure you do the same for them.  It’s only neighborly. 

Keep a list of lensmasters whose work you like.  Visit them often.  Keep a list of lensmasters who visit your page and visit and re-visit them.  This builds valuable friendships.  Networking can be a wonderful thing!

Visit, participate, and pay it forward.   You’ll find you find friends, mentors, and interesting articles this way.

Lastly, try using social media to provide a network of readers.  Start a Facebook page for your work.  Set up a Twitter account.   Blog.  Share every article you write on these networks.  Not everyone will come on by, but you’ll find a few and you know they’ll love your work.

What Not to Do in Promoting Your Work

There are a couple things you don’t want to do to promote your writing because these tactics are against the Terms of Service of either Squidoo or Google.

First, do not pay folks to come and like your article.  Don’t hire folks from Fivrr or anywhere else to Squid Like your article.  It will get you thrown off the site. 

Second, don’t come out and ask someone to like your article on Squidoo.  They don’t want you doing that either.

Third, don’t join exchange sites.  These are sites where members visit each other’s pages to run up their visitor numbers.  This practice cheats the advertisers.  Google will penalize you and so will Squidoo.  It’s not worth the chance to do this.

@SanneCollins