Squidoo: Second Quarter Report

1. The Proximity Effect. Being right next to tens of thousands of other pages is like having your book in a big bookstore next to the bestsellers... it brings you more attention and more credibility. People tell us they are getting hundreds of new visitors to their site every week, new sales, new readers and more interactions.

2. Easy to Use Tools. In just a few minutes, you can collect blog posts, Amazon books, eBay listings, Google maps, Flickr images and more, all in one place, all easy to use.

3. To Raise Money. To raise money for themselves (a few dozen--or a few hundred--bucks for a few hours work and promotion isn't bad) or for a favorite cause.

When I conceived of Squidoo in March of 2005, my goal was to build an engine for philanthropy, a self-sustaining website that would make it easy for ordinary folks with passion and expertise to raise money for charity. At the same time, I hoped it would provide a platform for individuals and organizations to expose their ideas, their businesses and their expertise to the world at large.

When we launched the site at the end of 2005, we made a small mistake. We thought that we would need to emphasize the opportunity for personal gain, figuring that over time, people would come around to the idea of donating their royalties to charity. Instead, we discovered right from the start that people were excited about helping their favorite causes. When your lens is earning a penny or a dime or a quarter every day, it's pretty painless to send those proceeds to a charity you believe in.

Our goal was to have 20,000 lenses within a year of our official launch (which was in March.) Instead, we've reached more than 40,000 lenses within six months. And I'm delighted to report that many (on the way to most) of the lenses are choosing to give all or part of their royalties to charity.

As far as I can tell, Squidoo is the most successful fundraising co-op in the world. More people, building more pages for good causes than anywhere else.

At the same time, it seems as though we've paid more in royalties to individuals than any other web 2.0 company that is open to public posting.

We've got a long way to go. We need more modules, simpler tools, easier ways to get started. Our small team is more dedicated to giving you all of those things.

At the same time, we're hoping for even more from our members. I'd very much like to see the percentage of lenses donating their proceeds to philanthropic ventures and we're going to encourage people to beef up their lenses, make the links as fresh and compelling as possible, and give you the modules you need to earn more money.

We ended our beta test in March. We gave all proceeds earned during the beta to three charities. Beginning in March, royalties accrued to our lensmasters. Amazingly, half of our total revenue has been earned since August 1.

I was disappointed with the revenue per page numbers soon after launch, but now that we're gaining a critical mass of traffic, the aggregate numbers are kicking in.

As promised, we've donated 5% of our total revenue to the Squidoo Charity Pool (see below) and delivered/reserved half the total revenue in royalties for our lensmasters. (Money is paid out 60 days after being recorded).

More than 40% of our lensmasters have earmarked their share of that amount to charities. We originally reported an estimate of 60%, but our database showed us our error. My hope is that this number will climb, and quickly.

The top five lenses to date have earned an average of $399 each.

The top five lensmasters to date have earned an average of $467 each.

We have more than 42,000 lenses built by more than 25,000 different people.

Many of those lenses raise money for worthy causes, and even if the money passing through our doors is small, the spirit is right and our growth is astonishing.

We have more than 50,000 people visit us on a typical weekday (more than 320,000 unique visitors in a typical week) and those people are finding what they're looking for.

We're not at scale yet. We're not earning enough to be profitable yet. We're not paying enough in royalties or enough in charity. We don't have all the modules we're hoping for either.

It's early days. Our future success depends on the five amazing people I work with, and even more, it depends on you. Here's the platform. What are you going to do with it?