Another Monday, another review (For a minute there I confused myself and thought this was the last one but no, I have one more next week).

What it is: Squidoo is a site where users can create pages (called lenses) where they can talk about just about anything (As far as I know some adult topics are allowed like say dating or romance but nothing regarding pornography and the like). Users are ranked on a level system in which users earn points for the things they do on Squidoo. Users with higher levels (the highest is 80) are able to access more features to create or upgrade their lenses (I'm also going to use this review as shameless self-promotion so I'll be sprinkling some all of my 7 lenses in here...like now. I've been working on an 8th one for ages but I've been busy so maybe one day it will get done).

Who can join: To join Squidoo users have to be 18 years old (younger users can join with written parental permission) and be able to write in English regardless of the country they live in.

What you need to sign up: All you need to sign up for Squidoo is an e-mail address and a Paypal account.

Cost to sign up: It is absolutely free to sign up to Squidoo and there are no costs involved with using the site.

How much you can make: Squidoo has 5 different minimum payment thresholds ($1, $5, $10, $20 and $50) that you can choose from. Squidoo pays once per month so as long as you reach the minimum threshold that you chose you can get paid (You can also alter your minimum threshold for each lens you have and you can also decide to donate all of your lens earnings to a charity).

Ways to get the payout faster: There are actually 4 different ways in which you can make money through Squidoo but none of them are easy so unless you’re committed to doing some work don’t think that throwing up 3-4 lenses will help you all that much.

The first way and the hardest way to make money through Squidoo is through your lensrank. All lenses are ranked by a special algorithm created by Squidoo but to get paid your lens has to rank within the top 85,000 lenses on Squidoo (sounds simple until you realize that there are more than a million Squidoo lenses and it’s much easier to move down than it is up. Also know that if your lens moves down in rank for more than 7 consecutive days it can be locked or disabled from Google's search engine. Any minor alteration will get it unlocked the next day). The Top 85,000 lenses then split a share of Squidoo’s ad revenue with the top 2000 lenses receiving the most (about $35) and the bottom paid tier (lenses 10,000-85,000) receiving the least (a few cents). This is also paid per month but lensrank changes every day (My highest on 6/25/12 is 166,668) so this can be a difficult feat.

The second way to get paid from Squidoo is through eBay and Amazon. On most lenses, (see this lens as an example) people choose to highlight products from eBay and Amazon as it relates to the topic of their lens. These direct links to eBay and Amazon are called modules and if anyone clicks on your module and buys anything (even if the thing is completely unrelated to your lens) then you get a 50% share of that sale (Note that you can’t buy stuff from your own modules. Squidoo will consider that as cheating).

The third way is similar to the second way but this one has a more personalized tone. A lot of people like to use Squidoo to share or showcase their own products (T-Shirts, Mugs, Art, Jewelry….whatever). Squidoo has modules for Cafepress, Etsy and Zazzle where users can link their own accounts and create a lens promoting their own products (as opposed to the hassle of trying to create a website to do it). People without those three accounts can still promote their own products as long as they have a site to link back to (Squidoo will let you link back to personal sites but not spam or affiliate sites).

The fourth and final way is through referrals. Squidoo won’t let you create an account for the sake of referring other users but if you are established (And I’m not. I just started using the site a few months ago so you won’t get a referral link from me today) you can refer people to the site and if their lens makes $15 dollars then you will make $5 from that referral.

Sign Up to Squidoo Here (Or see my other 3 lenses here)