Monetizing Yahoo Answers

You have probably heard about Yahoo answers before, but have you ever heard about making money from Yahoo Answers?

How To Earn Using Yahoo Answers

Using Yahoo Answers is rather simple and can be another clever scheme of promoting your sites and blogs for free and convert targeted traffic from Yahoo Answers into cold hard cash. The goal is to get as many best answers as you possibly can and you may have a chance to be featured on the front page of Yahoo Answers, in the headlines, which means more free spurring traffic to monetize for your blog/site.

Becoming a reputable member of Yahoo answers can be very rewarding especially if you are nominated as best answer frequently. Being nominated as best answer will give your site more exposure over Yahoo Answers. Resulting in adding your best answers to the ‘best answers category’ and giving you a greater, slightest chance of being featured on the front page of Yahoo. There is currently no algorithm that Yahoo answers follows  that I am aware of and if there is an update, I will keep you posted. For now, I believe you just have to cross your fingers and hope that you appear on thousands of peoples’ browsers and hope for the best.

How To Start Earning

• Have a web site or a web page that you can redirect the traffic to your site to monetize with Google Ads.
• Register a few affiliate programs or ads on your site to spark your earnings to a higher extent.

How To Get The Best Answer

• Post quality answers that fulfills the question that is asked.
• Not spamming with useless replies like, “hahaha lol” or irrelevant links.
• Answer questions that you have some expertise on.
• Answer the question and if you can become the over achiever.

What You Should Focus On

• Posting answers to questions relevant to your site that you are trying to direct traffic to.
• You may redirect links back to your site, however it must be somewhat relevant to the topic or it will result in a ban or an account suspension. Yahoo Answers are really strict on people linking back to their sites so, you must consider their rules or your efforts of monetizing new targeted traffic will be in vain.
• Focusing on these steps will generally help you get the best answer.

Also, use the advance search button on the page. It is very helpful for finding unanswered questions that match your search.

Warning Before Taking Advantage of Yahoo Answers

Even though Yahoo answers may be a new gateway for pointing new targeted traffic to your site, it is always better to play it on the safe side and consider their rules and policies. Yahoo Answers is an established community for users all over the world to ask questions and to share knowledge which means no spamming of any kind. They are very strict about spamming as I have said once before and you don’t want to be on Yahoo’s bad side.

This concludes this article on monetizing Yahoo Answers and I would like to hear back from you all, on what you think about Yahoo Answers or possibly share some of you own personal the experiences you have had with us all.

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Six ways Twitter can make money

A web 2.0-sized boatload of buzz has surrounded Twitter, the addictive service that allows its users to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The service has made appearances in everything from your friend's blog to the New York Times, and everyone seems jazzed about how fun tweeting is. While we're all having a good time, however, its creators, Obvious, keep hinting at how many practical uses they have up their sleeve for Twitter. Even though they haven't revealed any of their cards just yet, the rest of us are left wondering: how is such a seemingly frivolous service going to make money?

As a user who has taken the Twitter pill hook, line and sinker, I've been mulling this question for some time now. I came up with a few strategies, but then I figured: why not run them by the Twitter crew themselves? The least they could say was 'no comment,' but fortunately Evan Williams, one of Obvious and Twitter's founders, responded with a few of his own. Read on for my attempts at making Twitter some money (I'm waiting for my job offer Ev), as well as some choice words and ideas of his own from Evan.

• Twitter Pro - This is one obvious move. Twitter Pro could be a paid service that offers more features, unlimited tweets vs. a 'standard' account that receive a daily/weekly limit. It could also include a mobile phone/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry client with more robust tweeting/following tools that use the web to transmit tweets, avoiding those nasty SMS charges. It could also allow tweeting pics and videos from around the web with a Tumblr-like K.I.S.S. philosophy.
• Merchandise - A while back (though I admittedly can't find a link right now), Evan said merch was a big revenue generator for Blogger, and Twitter has worlds more buzz surrounding it right now. Heck, they even rolled out a small batch of shirts for SXSW, over which users seemed to be pretty excited. As ready as we may be to plunk down some cash for the privilege of using a t-shirt to tell people where we waste most of our time, Ev directly replied to this one: "RE: merchandise - It was, at one time, a noticeable part of Blogger's revenue, but that's when Blogger was just me, scraping by; my guess is it wouldn't make a blip in Twitter's costs today. Unless we figured out how to be a trendy new apparel brand." Sorry everyone, but it sounds like apparel isn't exactly on their list of features to roll out in the next update.
• Twitter for Business a lá Google Apps - Customized, secure software that businesses can run on their own intranet. BlackBerry and WinMo clients are a more apparent option here. Obviously, this could become tremendously useful if Twitter built in some hooks that work like Stikkit and Google Calendar, allowing employees to easily tweet appointments and tasks to a centralized PIM system, and automatically be subscribed to their team's tweets without any extra effort on their part.
• Twitter Forums, ad-supported - Finally, an innovation brought to the aging discussion forum format. Sort of a Twitter approach to Yahoo! Answers, allowing users to post questions and follow threads they're interested in, with the Twitter format forcing everyone to keep things simple and on-topic. Instead of ads, this could also possibly be just for Pro customers. One of the catches here is that Twitter users only see tweets from people they are following. When submitting a question to a Twitter Forum, you would be able to see all replies to the question, even the ones from users you've never met and aren't following.

Evan didn't let me have all the fun with brainstorming, however, and he offered two of his own ideas which I would assume are a good bet the company is working on, since he shared them with this lowly blogger:

Two more-straightforward ideas: 1) Ads on the site. We have a little AdSense on there now, but we haven't really tried. As the traffic grows, some tasteful sponsorships might be sellable. 2) Charging companies who are using it for marketing or other commercial purposes. If an organization finds Twitter to be a valuable communication tool with their customers/constituents/etc -- especially if we're sending lots of SMS's for them, which cost us money -- it seems viable to make an offering around that.

So there you have it: six ways Twitter can make money, two of which are straight from the lion's mouth. Judging from the sheer magnitude of buzz surrounding the recently-incorporated company, I wouldn't be surprised if these six are but a drop in the bucket. There's good news for those who fear change, however: no matter which way Twitter decides to start paying their exponentially growing bandwidth bills, Evan assured me that: "Our top concern when it comes to monetization will be to do so in a way that does not negatively impact users." Good show guys; your users will appreciate being able to spend their time tweeting about how they're spending their time, with the least amount of distraction.

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