What’s My Opinion of the Lens Creator Tool?
I got bombarded by emails and private messages yesterday about a new Squidoo lens creator tool being sold. Everyone wanted to know what I thought about it, so here goes:
Although I like the idea behind it, I wasn’t impressed.
Nothing against the creator. I think his vision might be a good one. But it shouldn’t have been released in its minimal state as it is. It wasn’t a time saver to me and I felt like it was more of a hassle than a blessing.
The tool lets you enter your Squidoo login information.
Then you either type in a title or let it create one based on your file name (for the Txt document you’re going to pull content from).
Next, you choose if you want it to prompt you, stop creating the lens, or just add some digits onto the end of the URL if the one it wants to create isn’t available.
(So let’s say your Txt file name was “how to train dogs.” It would try to grab squidoo.com/how-to-train-dogs and if that wasn’t available, it would tack on a few numbers or letters to the end of it, like how-to-train-dogs8s6dn or whatever.)
Then you either Max the lens or not, choose to publish or not, and categorize it. (See to me, it’s not a shortcut – you’re still doing much of the same work).
Then you go to the right side and choose the file you want it to get content from. Click continue and it creates and publishes the lens.
But it only supports Write/Text modules. Nothing else. So you’re going to have to go back into Add modules and add more anyway. It’s not going to wear me out clicking Add to 1-2 more Text modules, so this tool, while the idea is okay, isn’t something I’d spend money on again.
Another drawback to this being released is “here we go again!” We just got over a big smackdown from Google about spam and what do you think is going to happen with this tool?
Some idiots are going to use it to flood Squidoo with their PLR content that’s not altered and then we’re going to have lens after lens of rehashed material. By the way, Squidoo headquarters already knew about the tool, so you can bet they’re going to be watching for cookie cutter lenses and they’ll shut them down without warning. Be VERY careful if you DO use this tool and alter everything and make it unique.
Just a warning and my $0.02.
And hey – if you bought it, give your own accounting of what you thought here.
I’d be interested to hear varying opinions. No one person knows everything, and maybe I’m missing something crucial with this tool.
Tiff 
Written by tiffadmin on January 18th, 2008 with
5 comments.
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#1. January 18th, 2008, at 12:45 PM.
Hi Tiff, the tool can actually be a time saver, since I know how slow the Squidoo interface is. If the author adds some other modules (there are on the way anyway), it can be pretty fast to create the lens.
Of course, someone may abuse the tool - but it’s the same with every other tool made primarily for good purpose (especially time saving)…
I’d give it a try..
Marian