I use squidoo to promote clickbank products using the bummarketingmethod and have received a couple of sales so i guess it could be effective in getting a couple of visitors to your website
I started building squidoo lenses about 4 months ago. Overall I'm impressed by the versatility of what you can achieve. I too am looking to make affiliate sales, and for that purpose the lenses I've built so far have done the trick. One of lenses ranks very well in google for the main key phrase, which results in a steady stream of traffic, the trick now is to convert the traffic to sales. My lense can be found here, if you want to take a look: http://www.squidoo.com/wall-mounted-fountains