YES - Long tails! I dont try to make money off of squidoo it's self, or even affiliate links off of it. I send traffic to a lead capture site and have built a 2500+ member opt in list in just a couple months with Squidoo and that was just a test of one lens. Long tail keywords are the key! Find a good keyword that gets tons of traffic but not competition. Load it up with good content (think long article), unique of course. Link out only to a lead capture page, build a list and market via autoresponder series to the list. Rinse, repeat. Not useless, just not often used to it's potential, IMHO.
On the 28th April 2007 I had the Number 1 Lens on Squidoo and that brought in a few hundred dollars of work. Let me share with you how I did it. My lens was nominated Squidoo Lens of The Day and over a period of a few days my lens had over 3000 visits. Unfortunately my autoresponder on my main site that I mention was not working so no-one could sign up for my newsletter (so don't go with any lesser autoresponder then Get Response or Aweber). So don't make that mistake! But I have made over $400 (potentially over $1000 if I do well on a particular research project I have received). 22 people have bookmarked my lens and hopefully will refer back to me. My advice in this position would be to write an original lens, write about what is closest to your heart and what you know about. Be yourself and you will be unique. Provide helpful and useful information and if you are selling anything do it discreetly. You may have read that you must use Plexo links and make your lens interactive, while this may help, I personally have not included anything except Amazon links, a couple of RSS feeds and a guestbook that at the point of it becoming Lens of the Day - only one person had signed it. In my opinion the ultimate key is submit your lens to be reviewed by the Lens of the Day team here: http://www.squidoo.com/lensoftheday/ (there is an email address to send your lens to in the "About Lens of the Day section) Note 1: You will never get lens of the day status unless you submit your lens in this way or you have to do something mad or noteworthy to get your lens in front of the right people Note 2: I receive the Squidoo Lens of the Day newsletter and a lot of lens are often topical news items. Latest fads and trends, something out the norm tend to do very well. I submitted my lens 3 or 4 months before it became Lens of the Day, so it was a waiting game. It was a lovely suprise to get Lens of the Day Status and see my lens go from position #37,000 to #1! It is one of my proudest moments and I wanted to share it with you!! This is my lens if you are interested!: Is www.squidoo.com/confessions-of-an-internet-researcher I'd also agree with the earlier post that is a numbers game. The more lenses you have up, the more money you will make. Helen Doherty Ghostwriteranon.com
I've made close to 500 dollars worth of sales in the years I've been using it. I haven't made many lenses, probably 5 or so, and the information in these hasn't been of a very good quality, was mainly 'let me type whatever comes out of my head for 5 minutes and see if I get any traffic' - worked though. I only really started using it because it's founded by Seth Godin, which is also why it's such a good website in terms of design and usability, he knows the fuck he's doing.
I'm not too experienced with Squidoo yet, but I think the key is lots of lenses for long tail keywords, but without spamming. I know Squidoo is working much harder to clean up the poor quality spam lenses that dominated the site for a time. There are plenty of people who have found success with Squidoo, so it is not a waste of time.
Add a poll module on how long they have known about the product. Good keyword blogger blog + web 2 submissions + Squidoo = decent jack.