I used to like Squidoo.

I used to admire Seth Godin.

But the way Squidoo has been killed off by him leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

Squidoo used to be good: it featured user generated content and was founded by Seth Godin, who preaches that you should build a tribe of customers. It was reasonably customer friendly and often used to get good rankings in Google.

I’m a big fan of watching what people do more than what they say to do.

What Seth’s books carefully don’t mention is that it appears his real view is to build a tribe of customers and then do something rather unpleasant to them, probably from a great height.

Tiffany Lambert has a similar view (warning, some strong language in that post).

Seth has sold out for a nice chunk of money.

Nothing wrong with that – it’s the aim of most businesses to have an exit strategy,

It’s how he’s done it that I don’t like.

The first announcement I heard wasn’t from Squidoo themselves – it was from Tiffany.

That in itself is exceptionally poor – this wasn’t a denial of service attack, it will have been planned for some time.

The absolute least Squidoo could have done was send out a bulk email (yes, I checked my spam folder, it’s not in there either).

Especially when they’re giving a very limited amount of time to do anything.

They’ve sold out to arch rival HubPages.

Not a site I like and not a site I want my content on.

But that’s their choice – I guess HubPages were the highest bidder.

Next up, they can’t be bothered to tell people who’ve spent time and effort creating pages (lenses in Squidoo speak) which – if any – of those pages will be transferred.

There’s nothing in the main dashboard to indicate this.

Just a vague line that says they’ll transfer the best lenses.

Given the quantity of lenses to transfer – Google show over half a million pages indexed – that won’t be done by hand. So their computer already knows but they can’t be bothered to tell people.

From my point of view, I’ve not been using Squidoo in any big way for quite some time. Their ever increasing rule changes meant I couldn’t be bothered to keep up.

And, since I really don’t like or trust HubPages, I won’t be doing anything with regard to the transfer.

If the computer transfers some or all of my lenses, so be it.

If it doesn’t, so be it.

So, goodbye Squidoo. It’s been nice knowing you.

And goodbye Seth Godin. You won’t be on my radar any more. I won’t read your posts and I won’t contribute to your future income because I won’t be buying any more of your books.

Not as he cares – he’s demonstrated that amply with the way this has been handled.

What can you do if you’ve got a Squidoo account?

Don’t jump ship to HubPages!

Their rules are totally different.

And they make Seth look as though he treats his customers with respect.

Instead, if you haven’t already got your own domain name and hosting, do so.

Now.

Because the clock is ticking and Squidoo will delete any content that hasn’t been transferred to HubPages.

Nice move there – even Yahoo did better than that and they’re not renowned for doing a good job when they buy another website.

Then set up WordPress on your new domain.

If you don’t know how to set up WordPress, here’s free access to the videos I normally sell. They’ll show you everything in detail.

Once you’ve done that, transfer your content across to your new site.

If you copy and paste from Squidoo, you’ll need to check that any links in your content are changed as well. Otherwise they’ll break once Squidoo stops working or stops that part of the site working.

Remember to copy any images across as well.

Once you’ve published the page, work out where View Source is in your browser and search the HTML gobbledegook that pops up for Squidoo just to double check.

Do that for every lens you’ve got.

If you’ve got quite a few lenses that will be a pain in the neck.

Sorry.

Don’t expect Seth to apologise – he’s headed off into the sunset with a large suitcase full of cash.

Next, get as many of the links that point to your old Squidoo lenses changed to your site.

Depending on where the links are located this could be easy or it could be impossible. Or anywhere between those two points.

Your Squidoo dashboard will tell you where those are (maybe – the stats weren’t working when I tried early on 16th August)  but you’ll need to find out fast because they’re moving everything across at lightning speed and since they no longer don’t care about their customers you can’t rely on anything being kept for any length of time.

If you’ve got articles at sites like EzineArticles then you can change the versions there but if anyone has re-used your content then that is likely to be more difficult to get changed.

The same goes for YouTube.

Use the 80/20 rule for this: get the easiest links changed, let the rest rot in peace.

Then create a few videos and other content to promote your new site.

Finally…

Use this as part of your internet marketing learning experience.

Don’t rely on third parties where you don’t have control.

Keep as much of your content on your own site, your own domain, your own hosting, as you possibly can.

Sure, use other sites to feed that content.

But don’t use them for your main income stream.

And don’t treat your customers with contempt either. It’s bad karma!