Why I Love Squidoo
If you haven’t come across it yet, check out Squidoo. It’s a new, very Web 2.0, site that allows users to create their own “lens” on a subject of their choice. A lens can be anything you like and is intended to be a guide to other users (for instance, I created one called My Top 5 Business Books). Creating a lens is very easy, and there’s already a strong community building of “lensmasters”.
There’s a hook though: what sets Squidoo apart from other community-created sites (like Wikipedia or MySpace) is the ability to generate affiliate sales. Squidoo is aimed at creating income: either for the lensmaster or a charity (and always for Squidoo). A lensmaster adds links to purchase products (such as books, as I did, from Amazon) and upon referring a customer who makes a purchase, the online merchant has agreed to pay an affiliate fee to Squidoo. Upon receipt, Squidoo then allocates a part of that fee to the lensmaster to do with as s/he wants (for instance, claim it for themselves or donate it to charity).
I love Squidoo for two reasons: it embraces the read/write web using slick Web 2.0 visual technologies, and has a workable business model. In fact, following the cash flow through Squidoo is simple: viewers can turn to customers when visiting a lens, and sales are sent back to Squidoo and its lensmasters. The company wins because it inherently creates a community that wants to drive as much traffic to Squidoo as possible (thus further growing its community – and making critical mass relatively easy to achieve).
As a final note, I’d like to point out the uncluttered interface of Squidoo. There are targeted text ads on the pages, but nothing that distracts the eye from the content. And lensmasters are the ones with control over the content section of the pages – no annoying “inline” ads that many media organizations love to place in the middle of an article.
So, if you haven’t seen Squidoo yet, check it out. And create a lens for yourself – it’s surprisingly addictive.
