Don’t rely on Squidoo and EzineArticles

EzineArticles and  Suidoo lenses are sure great free sources of traffic and you should publish your content there. Squidoo is also amazing when you are staring your online business on a budget since you do not have to pay a single penny to use it, however, I suggest you build your own websites as soon as you possible can afford it. Owning a website is not completely free but it’s VERY cheap. You can grab a .com domain name for $8 and a hosting plan for about $5/month (Click Here to use 25% OFF coupon code “EXTRAPAYCHECK” with Hostgator)

Here is what’s been happening in the last months. EzineArticles and Squidoo have been both losing credibility in the eyes of Google. I am sure you noticed that Google shows less and less results from both of these sites. It’s not the first time that Squidoo gets punished by Google but I believe it is the first one for EA. As you know, Google’s main goal (besides making money) is user’s experience, they want their users to get the best information available but unfortunately EzineArticles and Squidoo carry too many low quality articles. There are “marketers” who do not care for quality much and post horrible articles to many online directories, then search engines punish these directories. EzineArticles’ blog even had a post about the niches in which they [EA] will not accept any more submissions, I guess they want to clean up their act for Google.

Now my point is this: You build your business on a free platform for years, you make money, you put in the effort and the time required and then one wonderful day everything just disappears! When you post your content elsewhere you have no control over it. Heck, forget about google – if Squidoo decides to shut down a lens of yours (has happened to me) or if they decide to shut the whole site down – they certainly wouldn’t ask if that’s okay with you… and this is when you lose money.

Building your own site is not just easy and secure, it could also be very profitable. In the long run. Owning a website means owning a piece of online real estate. Just think of the most expensive domain names;

1. Insure.com, sold to QuinStreet for $16 million in 2009.
2. Sex.com, sold for $12-$14 million in 2006.
3. Fund.com, sold for $9.99 million in 2008.
4. Porn.com, sold for $9.5 million in 2007.
5. Business.com, sold for $7.5 million in 1999.
6. Diamond.com, sold to Ice.com for $7.5 million in 2006.
7. Beer.com, sold for $7 million in 2004.
8. Israel.com, sold for $5.88 million in 2004.
9. Casino.com, sold for $5.5 million in 2003.
10. Toys.com, sold to Toys ‘R Us for $5.1 million in 2009.

Sure, it’s impossible to grab such short domain names anymore but you can certainly develop an authority website over time that could potentially be worth millions of dollars/ However, without making plans about our million dollar websites – your website is your own property where you have all the control. If you work so hard to develop original content, you might as well publish it on your own site. I still encourage you to post some articles to ezine, squidoo, hubpages and so on – you need the backlinks and potential exposure but DO NOT rely on these free services. Build your business the smart way.

Making a website doesn’t cost a lot and it could be very simple;

1. Buy a domain name for $1-$10 (I usually use GoDaddy and NameCheap)
2. Get unlimited hosting (I have been with Hostgator for 3 years, love them. Don’t forget the 25%OFF coupon code: EXTRAPAYCHECK)
3. Upload free WordPress to your site.
4. Add content to your site – Now you’re an official website owner.

Once again, no one knows what Squidoo or Ezine or Hubpages or even Google will do next, don’t gamble with them. Build your own site, produce quality content and make your money 🙂

To Our Success

Alex