Web 3.0 - Sharing the profits

quiet weekend - still no Adsense

2007-07-30T13:16:00.001+01:00

My folks were over for the weekend in London, so I have been offline for most of the time.

I'm disappointed that Google still has not approved the Adsense request and does not respond to my emails about it. Just sent another email chasing it.

Plan for Q3 07 online

2007-07-24T15:26:00.001+01:00

I firmly believe that without a good plan it is difficult to focus and achieve objectives. That's why when the project was launched, we published a 12 week startup plan. I'm glad to say that we have (over)achieved every single one of our objectives in 6 weeks instead of 12. Now that the project is firmly launched, we are ready to move into a new phase: Getting the site ready for a big launch. (plan for Q3 07).

So what do we need to focus on to get ready for a big launch at the end of September?

First of all we need to put you in charge. This is a community project, where the members take the decisions. Over the next 2 months I would like the members to elect a management team. Every manager will get complete responsibility over a part of the site.
We will also start using the forum more actively so you can vote on what direction you think the project needs to head into.

The second workstream will be focused on quality. What can we do to improve the site? We have an improvements section on the members forum where you can drop anything that you think will improve the quality. It can be as small as a misspelling in a word or as big as designing a new layout.

Thirdly we need to extend the site to move it from a webmaster dictionary to the ultimate webmaster resource. We also have a suggestions area on the forum where you can drop all your suggestions in.

The fourth workstream is focused on monetisation. We need to make sure we have everything in place before we start properly promoting the site, to ensure we have a good way of converting our traffic into $$.

Finally, we will continue our link building, dictionary extension and referring member campaigns to continue to grow the site.

At the end of the quarter or sooner if we think we have achieved these objectives, we will organise a member vote to see if we are ready to go live and release our project onto the world with a solid campaign

Reports are live

2007-07-23T16:19:00.000+01:00

We have just added a new section to our project: Reports!
This way you can all follow how we are doing. Currenly we only have Google Analytics reports. I will upload a new one every week.

Member Forum online

2007-07-21T15:38:00.001+01:00

I'm glad to announce that the member forum is now online. You can log in using the same credential you received when you registered with webmastervocab.

Currently I have added 3 boards:
- the Bug board: Here you can report all types of bugs, and follow up how they are being resolved
- the Suggestion board: Here you can drop all types of suggestions for improvements.
- the General Chat board: This is the place to talk to other members about anything else.

As you will see the layout still needs some work, but I will work on that later.

Payments Processed

2007-07-21T15:07:00.000+01:00

We have processed all the payment requests this afternoon, so please check your paypal balance and get in touch if you think something went wrong.

Need some help - automatically publish email (with attachment) to a web page

2007-07-21T14:46:00.000+01:00

I would like to automatically share the traffic reports I receive from Google Analytics. I was planning to use the blogger email functionality for this. Unfortunately I have just found out, it does not publish attachments.
Does anybody know any tools that will allow me to publish automatically an email with attachment to a web page?

In the mean time, for people who are interested, I have uploaded the traffic info from the last 6 weeks. Let me know if there is any other info you would like to see as well.

I know I could just give everybody access to Google Analytics as a member, but I would like to avoid this as:
- This is not very scalable, it will become a problem when we continue to grow.
- It shows pages in development that are not properly secured, could create a security risk.

Traffic Overview 7/Jun - 20/Jul

2007-07-21T14:39:00.000+01:00

Over 500 pages indexed by Google already

2007-07-21T13:06:00.000+01:00

The frontpage of Digg and the start of our link building campaign has already resulted in an increase in the number of pages indexed by Google. It took us almost a month to get 100 pages indexed. In less than a week this has now jumped to over 500.

The link building campaign has started off more successful than I imagined. We now have over 15 inbound links already. Most of the pages are pagerank 3 or 4, which means they will be highly effective in getting ourselves higher in the search engine results.

The dictionary keeps on expanding and improving which is great news!
I put ourselves a new target of 650 entries by the 1st of August.

What a week!

2007-07-20T11:18:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody,

We’ve had quite an impressive 7 days behind us. We made it to the front page of Digg, we hit our 500 descriptions milestone and Google has indexed over 200 pages of our site.

Let’s start Link Building
You all know that link building is the most important SEO activity out there. So let’s get our site to the top pages of Google and build some links. Every link you create will earn you credits. Check out the full details on the amount of credits per link on the link earning page. Once the link is live, you can claim it with our claim a link form. After submission, the link will be reviewed and we will add the credits to your account. These credits will stay in your account as long as the link remains present.

Earning Credits
We have restructured the earnings page a bit to make it easier for you to find the information you are after.
There are no major changes in how you can earn credits since last week besides the link building. All the bonuses programs are still active.

Other New Stuff:
- You can no longer add a word without a description. As words without a description do not appear in our dictionary these submissions don’t add a lot of value anymore.
- I published my todo list so you can follow how far I have progressed in implementing your suggestion.

The future:
Now that we have achieved our original plan: more than 50 members and more than 500 descriptions what is the plan for the future?

The next step is to put you more in charge of the project. As a first step I would like to create a management team. Every manager will run a part of the project. For example we will have a ‘Manager of Web Celebs’. This person will decide which web celebs will be added, will be the central point for feedback and prioritise changes and improvements.

As this is a crucial decision for the project, the managers will be elected by all of you. Over the next weeks we will put the functionality (members forum, new plan,...) in place to make this happen.

So have a think if you want to become a part of the webmastervocab management team and let’s go and build some links!

Go Web3.0

Emco

We have hit 500 descriptions!

2007-07-16T14:17:00.000+01:00

Another key milestone for our young project. This was the second major milestone we needed to hit to get things off the ground. Now that we have 500 descriptions, I feel confident we have reached the tipping point and this project will survive and thrive.

I have updated all the bonusses, so check where you are on the ladder

New keyword editor in test

2007-07-13T15:37:00.000+01:00

I received a lot of emails with the suggestion to improve the text editor. We have now integrated a WYSIWIG editor and started a trial.
When you want to add a new word, you can use the new page .

If the trial is successful, we will roll this editor out over the rest of the site.

As always you can also find a link on the member only index page:

A special thank you to alionstarr who was the first to raise the issue and also proposed a free editor to use.

We made it to the front page of Digg!

2007-07-12T12:50:00.000+01:00

With over 80 votes, we made it to the front page of Digg! A big thank you to everybody that voted for us!

Web Celeb section live

2007-07-11T16:24:00.000+01:00

We made a cool top 10 list of online celebrities. Check it out and let us know what you think of it. If you think we should anybody else, there is a submit function as well.

If you like it, don't forget to Digg it!!

Getting ready to start promoting

2007-07-10T12:51:00.000+01:00

First of all thanks everybody for all the emails with suggestions and questions over the weekend. It really starts to feel like a nice community and I'm thrilled that we have now signed up over 120 members.

I've been working hard on the cross linking functionality and although it is not 100% automated yet, it allows me to quickly add cross references. This optimised internal linking was the last key piece I wanted to implement before starting to promote our site a bit harder and start get more visitors in.

Over the next weeks I will build a link management tools so we can start link building.

Back from a quick break.

2007-07-09T20:53:00.000+01:00

I went to Belgium for the weekend to see the family. Although I managed to get some work done I have a backlog with my inbox. I'll try to answer all your emails by close of business tomorrow by the latest.

I'll also do another manual update on the bonusses you have earned over the last 2 weeks, so check out your ratings!

Historic Milestones

2007-07-08T21:13:00.000+01:00

We achieved two historic milestones today.

First of all we signed up our 100th member today. I'm sure that combining the power of over 100 webmasters will enable us to do big things.

Secondly, we made some money for the first time. When we added the affiliate schemes and applied for Adsense, I put a target of $25 for July. I know it's a low amount, but how many sites make $25 in their first month. I'm glad to see that we already made $19 in our first day!! At this rate we will soon be able to share our first cheque.

Let's earn some money!

2007-07-07T20:08:00.000+01:00

I've added affiliate schemes to the site and I submitted an application for Adsense. So let's turn those credits into dollars!

To ensure you can all keep track of how things are going, I have added an earnings section on the KPIs page that is accessible to all non members. To get an overview of all the affiliate schemes in detail, check out the earnings page where you can see everything in detail.

Email update

2007-07-04T12:38:00.000+01:00

This email update was sent out to all members

"Hi everybody,

Another busy week and the site has changed a lot in the last 7 days. We have rolled out a new layout, and we now for the first time have a fully functional site. Check it out : http://www.webmastervocab.com/ and let me know what you think.

We have made good progress in signing up new members and creating more content. To hit our target of 500 keywords by 19th July, we will have to make an extra effort.

Therefore a few new ways of earning credits:

- The bonus scheme for descriptions is extended. You earn 1500 bonus credits for the first 5 and for each consecutive 5, you will earn another 500 bonus credits.
- The bonus scheme for new members is extended, you will earn 1500 credits for every 5 members you sign up.
- Finally for the people who don’t have a lot of time, if you add a link to our project in your Digitalpoint signature, you can claim 500 credits by sending a private message via Digitalpoint to footballboy. (Otherwise I can’t check who is who)

The old credits earning stays in place
- For adding a description, you can earn between 25 and 250 credits depending on the size of the description.
- Similarly for improving a description, you can earn between 25 and 250 credits depending on the size of the description.

How are we doing?
Google seems to like our site already and is crawling and indexing the pages quickly. Currently we already have over 52 pages indexed and a number of terms have already popped up in search results around the 150th place. This proves that are on page optimization is working as it is a good result for a site without internal link optimization, and without any link building. Once we start doing that I’m convinced we will quickly see terms popping up in the top 30, where we will start to see visitors poring in.

New sections
As part of the new layout, we have added a number of new sections.
- Members only page: This page contains links to all the important member pages. I centralized this to ensure members can find all information quickly.
- Kpi page: This page gives you a quick health check of how we are doing. It lists our targets, our performance and our milestones
- How to earn credits: Here you can always find the latest update on how to earn credits. No need to go through old emails, all you need to know can be found here.
- Feedburner: We have added a link to Feedburner in the left navigation section. By clicking the icon, you can sign up to the blog feed. As Google has recently bought FeedBurner, it is important to have as many people as possible subscribed to our feeds. So add the blog to your feeds.

Thank you
I would like to mention two members that have distinguished themselves in the last week for their hard work. Night Owl and alionstarr have done a brilliant job adding lots of high quality descriptions. A special thank you to both of them.

As always if you have a good idea or a question send me an email to contactus@webmastervocab.com

Go Web3.0

Emco
"

The new layout is completely rolled out

2007-07-03T18:47:00.000+01:00

The tedious work of rolling out the new layout is (or at least should be) complete. Let me know what you think of it.

New layout slowly creeping in...

2007-07-02T15:32:00.001+01:00

I finally managed to put some pages live in the new layout. Over the next couple of weeks these will be rolled out across the site. At least we now (almost) have a proper front page to the site.

Let us know what you think of it!

Bonus Time!!!

2007-06-30T12:46:00.001+01:00

Some people have worked really hard to add descriptions over the last couple of days. As promised you get a bonus of 1500 points if you add 5 descriptions. So who are the people working hard? Here is the list of everybody who added 5 or more descriptions:

20 - Night Owl
7 - tlainevool
6- alionstarr
5 - emco

Bonusses have been added to their credits.
To further reward people like Night Owl who continue to add high quality descriptions we are extending the bonus scheme. For every additional 5 descriptions above the first 5 you get an additional bonus of 500.

email update: The next 2 weeks are crucial

2007-06-27T16:13:00.000+01:00

Email update sent out to all members

"Hi everybody,

The dictionary is slowly starting to take shape. We are now up to 85 descriptions. The next two weeks will be crucial in the success of our project. Will we manage to get 500 words so we can take our site live? We now have 73 members so it would only take 5 words from each member to hit our target. Therefore we have added some extra incentives.

Expand the dictionary – add 5 words and earn a 1500 credits bonus!
Starting from today, every member that adds 5 descriptions will receive an extra bonus of 1500 credits. We have also made it easier for you if you are running out of inspiration. All the descriptions that have been disapproved because of copyright violations have been grouped, so you can use these original descriptions as an inspiration.
(http://www.webmastervocab.com/dictionary/copyrightissues.php)
This page loads rather slowly so please be a bit patient and you need to be logged in to access the list.

Members – add 5 members and earn 1500 credits extra!
Although 73 members is already a large success, the more members we have, the easier it will be to achieve success. So we have added an extra incentive. Starting from today every member that refers 5 new members, will receive a 1500 credits bonus. So try to get all your friends, classmates and family enthusiastic or use your online personalities on facebook, myspace, forums etc to draw in more people.

Copyright
Finally, I just want to restate our copyright policy. All our descriptions need to be original and can not be copied from any other source. Although you can base your description on other ones, it needs to be original.
If we do not do this, we are firstly breaking the law and severely limiting our potential for success. Google will see these duplicate descriptions as duplicate content and it will severely impact our rankings in the search engines.

We had some very hard working members that lost most of their credits due to confusion around the copyright issues, so let’s avoid this in the future.

As always if you have a good idea or a question send me an email to contactus@webmastervocab.com

Go Web3.0

Emco"

Copyright Issues

2007-06-23T22:49:00.001+01:00

huenemeca mailed me yesterday with some concerns around copyrights. Unfortunately it seemed like a lot of the submissions from our members were copy pasted from Wikipedia or other online sources.

Although it would be easy to quickly build a dictionary like that, it is not something we want to do.
- 1. It is illegal
- 2. It is not fair to other authors who spent their time writing the original material
- 3. It is bad for our rankings as Google and others will see this as duplicate content

So over the last 24h ours I have implemented a review system to check every submission and ensure it is not breaking any copyrights. You will also have seen this has had a very substantial effect on the member rankings.

Currently we only have 58 keywords left in our cleaned up dictionary, so let's get writing to fill up the dictionary again, but this time with our own words.

We have all continents on board ;-)

2007-06-22T12:23:00.000+01:00

These maps always make me smile. We now have visitors in (almost) every single continent in the world. Now we just need to convince some researcher on the south pole to visit webmastervocab.com. (Click on the map to see a larger version)

Dictionary 8h live and already 144 words

2007-06-21T21:48:00.000+01:00

The dictionary has been an overwelming success so far. In less than 8h we have added 144 words. A special thank you to Vlad, Adze and ahmadjordan who have done an amazing job today.

For those of you that have not yet started adding words, it is not too late to start. The person that has most credits from adding words on 21st July will receive an extra 5000 credits...