Comments on: Building A Blog Community Network

By: pfadvice

pfadvice — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:46:05 +0000

Thanks for sharing the sneak peak – it looks like it has potential and travel would be a great site if you can get the user created content.

By: Retireyoung

Retireyoung — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:50:53 +0000

That is good advice. I had another idea to run competitions for the best blogger, amazon certificates and so on. I think it might work better as people love to win things!

You can take a sneak preview here: http://www.passportonly.com/

I am paying someone to do the design to give the site some visual appeal.

By: pfadvice

pfadvice — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:27:43 +0000

I am not sure how affiliate programs would work with a travel site, but I can explain why we banned all affiliate programs on our site. What happens is that when people have affiliate programs, their instinct is to promote the hell out of them meaning that most posts are about how great the affiliate program is. Even when the affiliate program is a decent one (often not the case with money sites) it turns off the real users you want to attract. They are looking for real, everyday content they can use. If the forums or blogs were filled even a bit with affiliate posts, I think it would take away a great deal and we would lose a lot of the members we had.

Tools where people can show off what they are doing (such as travel photos) are great. People love to share these things. I think that is something that we need to work on in our current blog community network format – give them a lot more tools and they will likely grow even more.

By: Retireyoung

Retireyoung — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:42:09 +0000

I wanted to ask you the same thing. User created content is an excellent way to grow your site.

I am planning a travel community with blogs, picture hosting and so on. Your site has definitely given me the inspiration!

I was thinking of rewarding people by helping them to sign up for affiliate programs.

Any thoughts on this?