A stepping stone? Yes, definitely. Who doesn’t love a few extra bucks coming in every month? In fact, it’s possible to make several hundred bucks a month this way.

Why is it not worth worrying about using lensrank to earn money? Because the amount you will earn tops out pretty quickly. Getting a lens in the top 10,000 or 15,000 lenses is HARD.

The top payout tiers are competitive. In fact, I would venture to say that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something where people spend so much time trying to make an extra two dollars.

There are a lot of people out there that try to ‘game’ lensrank with rating swaps or traffic swaps or exchanges or multiple accounts or whatever. I’m not really surprised that people try to game or optimize their rankings. What just shocks me is the amount of time people are willing to put into it.

Think about it. It’s easy for a small item sale from amazon or eBay to add up to more than an entire month’s of effort on gaming lensrank ($2).

Conversely, if you are really worried about lensrank or people trying to ‘game’ it. I wouldn’t be.

Be grateful that they are wasting their time doing incredibly unproductive things.

If you run across one, report them. No need to crow it to the rooftops or go on witch hunts across the interwebs trying to find pepole who are gaming a ranking mechanism on a medium size website…

Instead of responding to them or worrying about them, go build your next lens that’s going to make some real money.

I have a feeling that lot’s more is to come. Squidoo, like everything else in life, has grown in fits and spurts over the last 20 months I’ve been a part of it. I really think that another tipping point is coming and that this fall we are going to see a significant number of new people coming to Squidoo to learn, give, and earn. 

Not to be a grouchy Captain, but I have a feeling that if you didn’t get your Giant Squid application in by the end of September, you will be facing some stiff competition come the next round.

I’m already starting to see it show up in the daily rankings. There’s been a steady upward creep in the amount of traffic/sales/ratings it takes to get a lens up to a certain rank, much less stay there. I say that not because LR matters from a monetary standpoint (It really shouldn’t, there’s other money to be made) but just from an analysis of the data I have at my disposal.

What does this mean? There are going to be a lot of new tribes and communities popping up all over Squidoo. Find one you like and become a part of it. It’s amazing what happens when you work at something.. nearly always the effort put in reflects the reward taken out.

With these new Community actions Squidoo’s vets and HQ are doing everything they can to empower people to create something worth talking about.

It’s going to be an interesting fall