User Generated Content

Another buzz phrase that’s used often online, user generated content, consists of everything from blog comments to articles to forums postings.  I am using “user generated content” to aide in my Google Goals  — Earning $123 per Day Using Adsense.

You’ve already seen my forums  –from FREE Ad Forums to the Utopia Community.  What I have done now is to add an area for anyone with a NEW website idea –I call it THiNK BiiG.  Another area I created is for contests that enables anyone running a contest to post details about it at The Contests Directory.

For both operations I am using a free program from ArticleMS which manages an article directory.  I’ve used the program for about a year at my article directory –ArticleMINT.

With some minor html modifications I’ve turned the article directory program into a setup to handle listings for online start-ups and contests.

More ideas about benefiting from and generating “User Generated Content”…

I believe there are two steps to maximize revenue from user generated content  –following your low-cost business model, use as many free software programs as you can to manage users.  In my case, the only software program that I’ve purchased of any significant cost (relatively) is vBulletin, which I consider the best forum management software.  Just about all the other software I use is free.

User Generated Content –Programs to Use:

You’ll find a list of free software I use here –The list is short, but I’ll keep updating it. Regardless of the need that you have building online content, you’ll find a free software program that you can download and install relatively easily and proceed to make slight ADMIN changes  –then Make Live!

Programs such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Simple Machines, and a host of others can do just about everything that you could possibly want to manage.

All these programs are going to run on your standard PHP/MySQL supported hosting setups, which will cost just over a dollar per week.

Now you’ve got a good idea about the software to use, and content to build.  But, you’ll now run into the same problem that I’ve had  — how to build it.  My solution?  Nothing magical.  Just setup and talk about it…

User Generated Content –Building It:

I’ve seen many offers in forums for “teams” of writers to visit your forum and make posts to the the “activity” moving.  I’ve stayed away from that idea.  I just setup the software and then do the following:

• Talk about it in my posts.
• Write a few articles about the benefits and post to popular publishing sites.
• Make sure the SEO and sitemap features are working in the software.
• Setting up a contest or two  — This is a very effective way to build content, and I am doing just that with my test which I discussed in my contest post.  I’ll follow up more about this as I setup my contests and discuss the results in the coming weeks and months.

At first the traffic will trickle in and then consistently increase as more and more activity in your “user generated content” area.

There is a simple reason why such activity keeps increasing  — Users post “fresh” content which search engines love. As a result search engines send more visitors to the content area as well as catalog the content very often.  That results in more users who generate even MORE content!

Soon, there is a cycle of users and content which result in a lot more activity at your web destination.  What I’ve setup is proof of that, and with my latest additions that cycle continues to expand as does the revenue generated from it.

Carpe Diem,
Rich Sage