Hi Folks!
Here is another off the cuff idea to help your networks succeed. We know contests can really engage your members, such as "Best Photo" "Funniest Video" or "Add-A-Caption", but I've never seen anyone suggest this idea......
A SCAVENGER HUNT! Here is my quick take on an idea. Randomly hide something, say, a picture on your network (best if it fits your niche so it doesn't stand out. For example, Brian K. of Cakes We Bake wouldn't want to hide a picture of a hammer on his site, too easy to notice), and then give a daily clue of what to look for. do this for a time period (say every week) or until someone gets it. I personally would do it every week, to keep people engaged. Say your prize was a 25.00 gift card, and no one got it, after the week (say from Sunday to Saturday) disclose the answer, start a new one, and roll the unwon prize into the next week's hunt! this could seriously increase page views for most any site, but very active ones would be GREAT to keep engagement going. As they look for the hunted item, they may come across content they want to comment on or share. I'd love to hear some other people's ideas on how to run these, too, so share your ideas! Hope you like it, if you use it, let us know how it worked!
Regards,
SR
Replies
1 issue
adsence takes into account the traffic type
organic traffic that comes from search engines have real value while direct traffic thats your members wandering around your site reading pages has far less value
so yea yoir increasing page views, but not really add clicks or money
in addistion this might increase page views by a few hundred if your lucky..maybe making you an extra 50 cents a day..if your lucky
compare that to the 10,000 or so pagviews you ned to make 5-10 dollars a day
its alotta effort and expence for very lil value returned
instead id recomend suplimenting your ppc with something like a affiliate ad
heres the 1 i added
you probably would want something more fitting to your site
look for 1 with a high percentage payput (this 1 starts at 10% for 1st 10 sales then goes permenantly to 20%, plus can have 5% from anyone who gets an affiliate from your affiliate link)
theres lots of options i had 1 for solar panels on another site
you can find affiliate programs for anything they are not ppc but pay per sale so your daily earnings \ight not be great on some days tll u gwt some sales commissions but the payoffs far greatter when you do
oh but another problem with your scavanger hunt idea.. your putting 1 picture with clues butrried in 10,s of thousands
and if your as you said..adding a picture instead of choosinmg 1 then your picture will be inthe most recently added so the last 100 pics or so
a better idea as i seee it isnt to try to get yoir members to browse around more doing nothing helpful but instead expand he scope of the forums
if you have 6 catagories adding 15 more , all related but varying
like ok lets take the cake site as an examo]ple
if the forums now has baking decorating and recipie share
expand it with new catagories like
vegan alternatives
food alergy substitutes
calorie curtting suggestions
and so on
more catagories encourages more posting of a bra]oadrer range
that creates more search traffic
more pages listed
more chances at top possitions
take advantage of the expanded groups o expannd the trafic beyond the scope of the main site theme
the cake site can have a excersize and fitness group a bicicling group a weight loss group an animal lovers group whatever that all can bring in some traffic unrelated to cakes
the wider the range the more trafic u get
soaringeagle,
Thanks for the response! you can still get page view income from people surfing around your site, and you may get some clicks to boot. You can't get a click without first getting a page viewed that has an ad on it to click. Sure, there may be better strategies for per page view or per click income, but we are running a social network, too, and engagement is paramount to the success of the network. If during the search for the scavenged item a member comes across a blog post, forum discussion, picture, video, etc. that interests them, and they reply to it, the scavenger hunt directly created engagement in that case. This could lead to an in-depth discussion that creates an increase in your network activity. With that said, it may not be for every network, but networks looking for ways to get people engaged in activity on the site could find this a successful idea. if you are running advertisements of any kind, people need to see them for the network to gain income from them, so this can only help in this area as well, there's no possible way it could hurt.