Many people who join Squidoo looking for a forum to share opinion and links to interesting resources they might have come across on the internet soon realize there is more to it than that. As it turns out, Squidoo offers its members numerous money making opportunities that are simply not available elsewhere.

– For those who don’t want to strain too much for instance, there is Squidoo’s own automatic revenue sharing program – and to benefit from this, all you have to do is create some lenses on the site, popularize the lenses – and then supply Squidoo with your PayPal ID for them to be sending your share of revenues from the ads placed on your Squidoo lenses.

– For those who are willing to go a step further in pursuit of money there are other even more exciting opportunities on Squidoo. The site, for instance, allows you to post links to your affiliate marketing programs. If people read your lenses and decide to follow the links to your affiliate marketing sites, you earn your money and Squidoo charges you nothing for this favor.

- And if you feel affiliate marketing is too much of a hassle, Squidoo offers you another opportunity to make money more easily on the site. For this, all you need to do is to post various E-bay and Amazon auctions on your lenses – and if someone buys the stuff you post on your lenses then Squidoo gives you half of what it gets paid for facilitating that sale.

Squidoo is a web 2.0 site which is almost completely made up of user generated content. Users, known as lensmasters, create single page websites called lenses which can be customized with the addition of various types of modules such as video, Amazon, and voting modules. Lenses are given lensranks by a proprietary algorithm which is obviously kept under wraps, much like the Google algorithm is kept secret. The factors which are generally understood to have a positive impact on a lens’ lensrank are things like traffic, quality content, lens ratings, how often users share the lens with others, and more.

Unlike many other social media sites including Digg and Twitter, Squidoo is more receptive to promotional content as long as you provide valuable information such as a review of a product in your lens. Twitter is a social networking site and Digg is a social news network which is why marketing does not fit in with those sites. However, Squidoo acts as a kind of search engine of user generated content where people can find lenses on virtually every topic imaginable as long as they comply with Squidoo’s terms of service.

You are allowed to simply use a lens as a review page and to send your visitors through your affiliate link. This works great if you do not want to set up your own website or if you do not know how to. However, if you don’t mind setting up your own website, then Squidoo can be a powerful tool to help your main website rank higher in the search engines and to provide some traffic for you.