Squidon't even go there (squidoo.com)

Member Name: rabidbadger

Product:	squidoo.com
Date:	22/10/09 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keeps you occupied

Disadvantages: For very little gain

Squidoo.com is a site where you can write articles, or "lenses" as they are known, on any subject (within the site rules) and they each have the potential to earn you money via the Google Ads scheme or by specialist tools that you can include that link to commercial sites such as eBay and Amazon. Money earned by the Google Ads is pooled and then a percentage of it is paid out pro-rata to the contributirs based on the average rank of your lens. I believe the split is 50% to Squidoo, 10% to charity and 40% to the lens owners.

I would be the first to admit that I am no William Shakespeare; I like writing articles and I like to think that I have a reasonable grasp of the English language - so I thought I'd give squidoo a bash. I was so appalled by the returns that I am almost embarrassed to share it with you. I wrote 48 articles in the first month - on a variety of subjects - and this earned me the grand total of $0.21, which equates to about 12 pence.

These were not articles that rated at the lower end (800,000), a lot of them were hovering around the 30,000 mark and were attracting readers.

There were a couple of things that raised my suspicions about how the "lenses" were ranked from the start. The first one was the fact that, for over a month, the "lens of the day" was the same one about making Punch & Judy puppets. Now, forgive my cynical nature, but I find it hard to believe that this is the hot topic on everybody's lips. Maybe I'm wrong and I haven't seen the appeal??? The second one was the fact that many of my "lenses" were ranked concurrently. I would have lenses ranked 35504, 35505, 35506, 35507, etc - a huge coincindence that my works appeared next to each-other in their league table.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was when I wrote a "lens" directing fellow anxiety sufferers to useful non-commercial sites where they could get advice about the condition - and this fell fowl of the squidoo rules on advertising pharmaceuticals????

I always try to keep an open mind and I'm sure I will get comments from people who think the site is great - but it is not for me.

Summary: Anyone who works for nothing will always have a job