Unlike traditional websites, where information is passed from the webmaster to the visitor, Squidoo is more interactive, encouraging the public or community members to provide exciting content for the site. Squidoo was established to help develop knowledge rich communities on the Web and to give more people some clout on line. Best of all it's a free service that actually pays you to participate.

Squidoo was launched in 2005 as a way for to allow individual users to create single web pages on topics they are passionate about, interested in or have expert knowledge about. Of course, some pro marketers saw another vehicle to make money with minimal work on their part.

Squidoo users claim it is "The World's Most Popular Site" not just because of the number of users it has but because it allows anyone interested in building pages to promote their passions, interests, books, videos or any other material for that matter, without much censorship. As long as the content is clean and not overtly offensive, illegal, or hateful, just about anything goes.

Many Squidoo publishers use the site to promote their organization, their charity, their favorite book, a book they wrote, promote a a pet peeve and more. At the same time many others use Squidoo as a money making vehicle to drive targeted visitors to their website or offers. Users call these pages, "Lenses," which are single page sites on a topic a user is interested in promoting.

All you need to do is post a few provocative lines of information highlighting some passion or product and include a link to your web address for people to go and read more about it. This is where the Squidoo traffic generation magic really pays off.

Another great use for Squidoo is to get to know other people interested in the same subject as you. One of the primary reasons for the advent of Web 2.0 is to allow users who have a common interest to form online communities rather than just creating static web sites controlled by single webmasters where information is fed to viewers and there is no interaction. Squidoo allows that missing interaction.

Yet another great use of Squidoo is for increasing one's web presence, and to gain credibility as a master on a certain subject or information.

We all know that it has become increasingly labor intensive to promote our website on the Web. For those reasons, more and more smart marketers are turning to new forums and platforms, such as Squidoo, to boost traffic and gain credibility and sales.

To help boost traffic to their home pages or offers, marketers are building more than 100 Squidoo pages each pointing to the users other web pages or blogs. You see, you can build as many Squidoo lenses as you like. There is no known limit. Plus, most of the posts on Squidoo.com are easily picked up by Google and other top search engines, so Squidoo provides an excellent method for building targeted traffic.

A very nice bonus is making autopilot money. A lens publisher can earn commissions for their company or favorite charity because Squidoo offers a built-in system allowing shared compensation paid directly to owners of lens pages or to charities designated by lens owners. One can even designate a percentage to charity with the balance going into the user's bank account. Nice, eh?

There is no cost to set up a page with Squidoo.com which is one of the main reasons this new technology is so popular.

Here are just 9 reasons you should start using Squidoo, today!

1. If you have a product offer, you can use your Squidoo "Lens" to attract visitors to your lens and in turn send some of those visitors to your website and increase your PageRank in Google. Increasing Google PageRank is one of the most challenging aspects of Internet marketing. Squidoo helps many people overcome this barrier. And, as Squidoo becomes more popular, so too will your site.

2. You can use Squidoo to highlight your favorite blog posts, accepting comments on them, and providing more information about services or other information you offer on your blog.

3. You can use your Squidoo lens to help promote or earn money for your favorite charity or other nonprofit group.

4. For audio lovers, Squidoo allows users to post details about their upcoming podcasts and point links to transcripts of podcasts the user has available online.

5. For those people who are avid "fans" of writing about people, places, or things, Squidoo provides an ideal platform for sharing personal insights on your area of interest.

6. New authors can use Squidoo to promote their works, providing links to all of their works for sale on Amazon.com, for example.

7. Entrepreneurs can earn affiliate income by promoting products or by building MLM downlines.

8. You can easily research other people's passions and interests to get an idea of what is "hot" on the Web and what to write about or sell on line.

9. As a social medium, Squidoo allows users to share many different positions, often on the same subject, so you have the opportunity to get a diverse view by collecting, gathering and sorting the information provided from other users.

As you can see, Squidoo is an excellent platform for just about anyone interested in promoting their passions and interests. Now that you know a little bit more about what Squidoo is, don't you think it's time to learn more about "how" the site works, and how you go about creating your own dynamic lens pages?