Squidoo
What a generous chap Seth Godin is. He founded Squidoo - a community website that boasts membership of Top 500 most visited sites in the World (July 2008). Seth launched Squidoo in March 2006 to allow users to create pages about which they have specialist knowledge. Squidoo grew quickly as experts and laymen alike jostled to add their 'lens' for the world to view.Only a few months following launch thousands of lenses were available covering subjects as diverse as Motorhead to Blood Pressure Monitors to Laptop Bags
Lensmasters are encouraged to add Squidoo Modules to monetise their lenses - revenue is split 50% to lensmasters (an option is for this to all be donated to charity) 5% charity and the remaining 45% to fund Squidoo.
The opportunity to create highly relevant pages soon attracted the attention of online marketeers and spammers. Following a noticeable drop in the strength of squidoo links and the diminishing impact of these links on search positions Squidoo introduced a 'freshness' requirement in the hope that fly by night chancers would let their page gather dust resulting in it no longer being publicly displayed.
Squidoo remains a valuable source of information albeit commercially orientated currently consisting of over half a million hand built pages - every day a lens is selected as lens of the day and announced by email to all members.
A recent mailshot focused on the lens Littmann Stethoscopes and offered help for medical students looking to buy their first stethoscope. Combining product information about Littmann Stethoscopes along with contextual adverts for e bay and Amazon visitors were able to compare prices and choose a Littmann Stethoscope that would be acceptable for medical training.
Squiddylicious.
