Content Contributions?

Brain Storming Thread

[Livenomadic]

I was pondering the two brilliant site ideas I posted about here [webmasterworld.com]

It got me thinking about getting other people to make content for me.

I'd love to hear and discuss other people's ideas on ways to do this. Below are some of my own:

Forum: This one is obvious, WebmasterWorld works like this.

Contest: By offering to give away a prize (A book or a Ipod would be good prizes) you could get hundreds of submissions.

On the submission form just have a little form stating that you have the unlimited rights to use submitted content.

Blogs: If you had a site about disneyland, it could be a good idea to give away free blogs to people going on vacation there. A few motivated people could make quite a few pages of content.

Any other ideas?

[edited by: rogerd at 12:30 pm (utc) on Nov. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

[instinct]

Here's one:

user submitted reviews (products, movies, games or whatever)

[edit_g]

Getting Other People to Make Your Content

I've found that sometimes when I give people money, they create content for me. Just an idea. ;)

[Livenomadic]

I've found that sometimes when I give people money, they create content for me. Just an idea. ;)

Sorry, I should of been more clear, I was looking for ideas that arent just paying for articles.

[Asbillszit]

hmmm

[sem4u]

Encouraging reviews is a good idea. It works well for sites like Amazon and Eopinions.

[webmastertexas]

You also have to be careful when you're fishing for "free" content. Sometimes terrible content is just as bad as having no content. I.e. If you fish for free movie reviews, you'll liable to get a bunch, because everyone likes to give their opinions of movies they think either suck/love/hate with a passion, but not ALL of them can write. Keep that in mind.

[edit_g]

Sorry, I should of been more clear, I was looking for ideas that arent just paying for articles

No, I should have been more clear, I was being sarcastic...

My point was that if you want some quality content the best bet is to offer money or something valuable in return. If you get lots of free content, you may get the occational gem, but most of it will be low quality IMO.

[Macro]

>> you may get the occational gem, but most of it will be low quality IMO

Unless you run webmasterworld :)

PS: this don't count as no gem :)

[Marcia]

>gem

Like this thread. And this post - ain't it a corker? Think I should send Brett a bill for it? :)

[edit_g]

Ok, ok... ;)

I don't think Livenomadic was thinking of spending god-knows how many years developing and nurturing a community such as this. I think the original post was more about 'quick and dirty' free content.

But, yes, starting a community like this and making it work is probably the best way to get free content + ranked highly in the SERPs. I'm not sure if Brett would consider it free however, having seen a glimpse the amount of hours the admins, mods and him put in - not to mention building a spiderable bbs in the first place.

p.s. I tried to bill Brett for each of my posts, but he sent me back a bill for bandwidth usage - go figure. ;)

[Brett_Tabke]

>This one is obvious, WebmasterWorld works like this.

I've heard that ill-informed oft-repeated misinformation. Forums are *NOT* about content. They are about conversation and relationship. Any site that puts up a forum for the sake of "content" is a dead-forum-walking.

[Macro]

Hmm, OK, I see your point. But, that's from the POV of selling it or describing it to a third party. As far as the Adsense Mediabot is concerned, this page would be "content". ;)

[kevinpate]

I dunno. If a forum is so benign/dull/etc. that clicking an ad or banner seems even remotely enticing, I'd probably be asking myself ... "is there any reason to come back?" Then again, maybe that's just me.

[Asbillszit]

I was going to post an idea I had, but decided to do it myself. hints the hmm earlier. I think it is a gem. we will see.

[BigDave]

Forums are content, but good ones rarely happen without good content already being on the site as a draw for the initial community. And they only tend to work with communities where there are a large number of people that are passionate about the issues, and tend to be complicated enough so that the answers are not obvious.

Not surprisingly, a lot of these areas are not big money makers when it comes to advertising. And they can be hard to get to rank well until you have huge piles of content and deep links to specific threads.

Those areas that are potential good money makers with forums, pretty much all have forums with active communities already.

And even when you do get something going, you don't get to just let it run itself, or the flame wars start and the SEO version of script kiddies will fill your forum with SPAM.

As for using reviews, you will not get good reviews without an editing process and quality standards in place. That requires work on your part.

You also have to give your "reviewers" good reason to write their reviews. If anyone *really* wants to get into running a quality "user contributed" review site, I will post more on ways to make it work, but you can be certain that after a while you will no longer consider it to be anywhere near "free".

[Macro]

Asbillszit, can I bill you for the idea? ;)

[Macro]

Hey, something funny here.

Using Firefox if I click on the webmasterworld link in the first post it takes me to microsoft.com. If I use IE6.0 it throws up a server error. Neither should happen. Weird.

[rogerd]

There was a double "http" in the link (which I fixed) - do your Firefox settings default 404s to microsoft.com?

To put a slightly different spin on the "forums as content" issue: Forums DO create content. Sometimes this content is good, often it's not. Fundamentally, though, the content is a byproduct of the community. If you build a great community, you'll get content. If you build a forum to get content, you'll almost certainly end up with no community and very little content.

[Macro]

Thanks, rogerd.

>>do your Firefox settings default 404s to microsoft.com
That's strange. It's not something I would have done consciously. Hmmm.