Aku rasa mesti ramai lensmaster yang dapat komisen kurang bulan nie...betul tak? Salah satu sebab mengapa Squidoo letak 'P.S' kat bawah tu, pastu letak link ke Payment FAQ diaorang. Adakah Squidoo menghadapi masalah kewangan nak bayar komisen ahli-ahli mereka? Harap-harap tak kot.

Ok. Kat bawah nie ialah cara-cara bagaimana Squidoo mengagihkan komisen dari iklan (adsense dll) kepada lensmaster.

PAYOUT, TIERS, AND LOTS MORE This is a long description about how money is
earned and paid out at Squidoo. I hope you'll take 4 minutes to read it.

As we've explained in painstaking detail in lots of places, we at Squidoo pay our community 50% of all our revenue. Yes, half! We give 5% to charity, take 45% for our own operating costs, and give 50% to our lensmasters as a royalty for their good content.

You, the lensmaster, could earn royalties two ways: 1) through moneymaker modules (like eBay, Amazon and CafePress) and 2) through Google ads and other display ads that run on your lenses. The moneymaker modules are the easiest to track: whatever sale you make, we give you 50% of our referral bounty from that affiliate. You don't share it with any other lensmasters; it's all yours. That's called a "directly attributable" royalty.

So how do we pay the second part, the community's half of our Google and display ads? As you know, we put 50% of our earnings from those ads straight into a bucket just for lensmasters. We pool that money in order to prevent click fraud -- this is a pretty common solution.

Then, we divide that pooled ad money based on the "goodness of your lenses" -- which in our economy means LensRank. The earning number that we calculate according to your LensRank is called PayRank, or, as lensmasters have popularly started to call it: the "tier system."

The first thing to know about tiers is that not all lenses are created equal. We work in a meritocracy, where lenses earn royalties based on how well they perform. We believe in paying our best people, who make the best lenses, more.

The second and perhaps most important thing to know about tiers is that they can change at any time. The percentages are constantly changing based on how many lenses there are on Squidoo and how much money is in the ad pool each month. So while reading the tea leaves and trying to predict your ad pool share can be fun, all you're really doing is guessing.

The third thing to remember about tiers is that they only affect your cut of the ad pool. Whatever you earn via moneymakers on your lenses, like Amazon or eBay modules, you always get a straight 50% cut.

For even more specifics, here's how tiers work: Lenses with higher average lensrank for the month get a higher percentage of the ad pool than other lenses. Lenses that perform poorly in LensRank, after a certain threshold, get no percentage of the ad pool.

So for example, if your lens is has an average LensRank of #100 for the month, that's really good! (Important to remember that we count the average, not just the LensRank of the lens on payday). That lens would be in Tier #1, and would get the highest percentage of the ad pool possible.

Now imagine you had a lens that has performed well, but not as well in LensRank as in the scenario above. That lens would get a smaller percentage of the ad pool.

And if a lens has an average LensRank of #400,000, let's say, well, we're making the bet that lens needs some work and isn't that useful to readers on the web. It probably didn't get much traffic or contribute a whole lot of goodness to the whole Squidoo community (and didn't drive any ad clicks, either), so that lens gets 0% of the ad pool.

In an effort to illustrate this more clearly, here is the working data for the month of December 2008 on tiers. We reserve the right to change this at any point in the future, to recalibrate the tiers as the site grows. Our goal is to pay out best lensmasters, the most. As more lensmasters make better and better lenses, it might make sense to shift the tiers in the future. So please read this scale as an example only, and know that it can change from month to month.

On the December 2008 payday:
--Tier One: Lenses with an average LensRank of #1 to #2,000 get 25% of the ad pool.
--Tier Two: Lenses with an average LensRank of #2,001 to #10,000 get 17% of the ad pool.
--Tier Three: Lenses with an average LensRank of #10,001 to #85,000 get 8% of the ad pool
--Last Tier (the Zero Tier): Lenses with an average LensRank more than #85,000 get 0% of the ad pool. (But are, of course, still eligible to get 50% of any directly attributable sales they make. Just not a cut of the community ad pool).

So that's it. No hidden tricks.

The point, the whole point, is this: Make good content. Make useful pages that help people learn or interact or connect or buy. The better your page does, the higher a royalty you earn from it.

P.S. If you're only going to read a little, read this:

There is absolutely no value to you in trying to figure out details of next month's tiers, or to guess or to count on how this money is allocated. We say that not in order to obscure data, but to save you time. Lensrank and Payrank changes all the time. One thing you can be certain of is that while it can seem a little random, it's always as fair as we can make it. We always pay out 50% (which is more than we promised, because while we have the right to apply this money to overhead, we never have) and we never make side deals or special payments. That way, you can spend your time and energy building and promoting great lenses instead of worrying about the system. To be fair to everyone, the Squidoo team won't engage in any special correspondence about the tier payouts... we'll post updates here from time to time, but that's it.