Exclusive: SquidFlix Pays Users To Write Movie Reviews

Squidoo has just launched SquidFlix, a new service that pays readers to write reviews of movies or TV shows. SquidFlix enables anyone to create a review page, and SquidFlix will automatically add revenue-generating links to Netflix, Amazon, eBay, and other SquidFlix partners. If someone makes a purchase through links from a movie review page, the person who created the page gets 50% of the revenue (it can also be donated to charity).

When building a movie review page (called a Lens on Squidoo), you have to write a review plus answer questions about the movie including genre, favorite scene, memorable quotes, controversies, and links to sites related to the movie. SquidFlix will then "Magicbuild" the movie review page with affiliate links, stats, and a discussion board.

Here's an example movie review page for Pulp Fiction:

SquidFlix is not without problems, but they might be pre-launch issues. A search for "Pulp Fiction" turned up zero results, but the example lens above is in the top 100 reviews. There are also page formatting problems, but these are minor issues.

SquidFlix is one of the first services to enable users to share the revenue for writing reviews, and I think it was wise move on the part of Squidoo. When you search in Google for a movie, one of the top results is typically IMDB, but if Squidoo can get users to create pages for movies and the resulting pages rank highly in Google, it could be very profitable for Squidoo and the reviewer.