Visitor Supplied Content

Can this add sparkle to your site?

[cyril kearney]

Many interesting sites or parts of sites contain visitor supplied content. This forum is an expample of one type. Many development sites ask for submissions. There are lots of Javascripts, Perl, PHP and ASP sites where how-tos and scripts are accepted from visitors.

This same can approach is used on any hobby or special interest site.

Is anyone doing this? What is your experience? Is it a killer idea or just so-so? Can you make money on this or is it more a labor of love?

[martin]

Depends on your existing content and your traffic.

You should get more of these before adding this option for visitors.

[cyril kearney]

It depends isn't much of an answer. If a site has enough content then clearly they don't want to add content. But if they don't the question is: Can visitor supplied content be used? Would the effort to use this kind of centent make it as attractive or more attractive than site developed content. Does this kind of free content pay off?

[rcjordan]

It can work, cyril, but commercial sites quickly find themselves confronted with a need for a human editor or be willing to accept content of, ummm, questionable value.

[paynt]

Hi cyril Kearney,

Can visitor supplied content be used?

Sure, I don’t see why not. And as martin suggested it does depend. I would say it depends more on what the site is about, how much time you have as the webmaster to either moderate or edit if need be the submitted content as well as the time needed for spam patrol. Strong guidelines and perhaps a time delay to check that the content submitted meets those guidelines.

Would the effort to use this kind of content make it as attractive or more attractive than site developed content.

Again, I have to go with the, “It depends” qualifying that with what the topic of the site is. If the site is about fishing and there’s a blog or a message board or something set up so folks can contribute tips or resources then yes, that could add lots of interest and be quite attractive as well. I think it also adds to the sites freshness to have new information added regularly.

I think I would start small, with maybe a request for people to submit tips and then see how that works before working into a system that requires tighter controls or more management and maintenance.

Does this kind of free content pay off?

People will tend to link back to the content if they have their own tips included so that could be an additional benefit.

If the content changes regularly and folks have a way of knowing that then they’ll probably bookmark and return often.

Did you have specific ideas for building on this cyril Kearney? I’m always interested in new ideas on building content and especially content that brings visitors back.

[ScottM]

Yes,

It can be done. It's a little more work, but you'd be surprised at the number of returning visitors.

Money from it? Of course. The best money comes from advertising products that are related to the hobby site.

A weekly column helps, daily is better. (But I run too many to have daily columns.)

Just make sure you don't jump at the first whiff of money. Hold out till the traffic is large, and repetitive and THEN go for the big advertisers.

Just make sure the advertising is secondary, otherwise it begins to taint a 'pure' site.

It also takes time to weed out obnoxious posts/content. Such is life. Nothing is perfect.

I tend to run sites with no sign-ups. Drive-bys are fairly infrequent, surpisingly. I AM convinced that the 'no sign up' aspect grabs readers immediately. They can immediately participate. Other websites similar to mine with sign-ups tend to be declining in traffic...mine's increasing steadily.

I hope this helps:>)