A little clarification about Squidoo and Zazzle.

I've been watching a post on Squidoo about the zazzle rating manipulations that are going on. Most people probably don't know that what they are doing is against the TOS of Squidoo. There's quite a few threads at the zazzle forum that are all about getting favorited and rated. This is called rating exchanges. You're not suppose to go around asking people to do this. You can get banned from Squidoo for doing this.

Why are they doing this? Well because it's believed that if you get a added as a favorite or get a rating on your lens then the lens rank will go up. No one knows 100% what makes that rank go up. Asking people to do these things is ratings manipulation and Squidoo doesn't want people doing this. It's unfair to the people who are honest and not breaking the TOS.

Another reason why people are doing this is that the lensmasters are telling the artists that they will sell more items this way. Well that's not true. The lensmaster will be getting paid more while the artists will most likely get nothing. Google is the main breadwinner when it comes to getting people to buy your work. You need it to bring buyers. Google doesn't care what lens rank you have. It only cares about your content. So if you're a lensmaster will a bunch of stuff pasted on your lens then most likely Google will ignore you page. It may not happen right away, but eventually all that hard work will be for nothing.

All I ask is that you read the TOS thoroughly and ask someone at Squidu.com whether or not this is ok before you go risking your account over a few dollars. Keep Squidoo clean and the money will come.