More on Making Money with RateItAll

Some of us are starting to make some decent money on RateItAll via the RateItAll Economy Program, just for doing what we were doing anyway - making lists, adding items to other people's lists, and writing reviews. My personal account is now getting a check every couple of months from Google for more than $100.

Yesterday, I posted a series of reviews sharing my tips for how to maximize earnings. These reviews can be found within the Maximizing Revenue list.

From my experience, the two best ways to make money on RateItAll are by 1) Building quality lists; and 2) Adding high profile items to existing lists.

Both in these activities result in a 50% ad rotation share on the pages you contribute.

In terms of lists, it's all about getting Google to notice the list, and send it traffic. Here are the important things in making this happen:

1) Link to your lists from other sites. If you have a blog or MySpace page, make sure to link directly to your lists using the proper keywords in the link itself. For example, if I was promoting the list Dog Food Brands on my blog, I'd want to make sure to link to the list using the appropriate words: in this case: Dog Food Ratings

I wouldn't want to link like this: check out my list about dog food. The words "my list" doesn't describe the page, and make it harder for Google to know when to display your list as a search result.

2) Use the list widgets on your blogs or profile pages. These list widgets send both traffic, and give you links.

3) Write unique content for your list descriptions, and individual item descriptions (with generous use of the list / item's keywords). If you don't write your descriptions, your list will appear to Google to be too similar to every other list page, and not worthy of sending search traffic to.

4) Title your lists and items appropriately. If your list is about country music songs, call it "Best Country Songs of All Time" - don't call it "Stuff You'd Hear at the Farm." If you use colloquial language, Google will have no way to figure out what the page is really about. Try and title your lists and items with words that people are actually searching for.

5) Seed your lists with reviews. This gets to the unique content mentioned in item 3. Also, items with reviews are much more likely to attract more reviews - making it that much more likely that Google will send you traffic.

6) Target niches. The serious web publishers try and target verticals for which there is an ad market.

Remember, lists that duplicate other lists will often be put on "invisible" mode. Be creative, create unique resources, write unique content, and send your pages external links when possible.

Top Ten Ranked RateItAll Members

1. MADuron
2. Vudija
3. Jamie McBain
4. Indierocker
5. Ridgewalker
6. Numbah16tdhaha
7. VirileVagabond
8. GenghisTheHun
9. Magellan
10. Jed1000

What are these rankings for you ask? These are the top ten contributors of new item suggestions (you have to use the sort tool at the bottom of the page) - folks that are helping to make existing lists better.

If you've published a weblist before on RateItAll, there's a good chance that one, if not more, of these folks have suggested new items for your list.

In my opinion, this is one of the unsung activities of the site. Cooperation makes for better lists, and as someone who's made more than a few lists myself, it is a huge help to the publisher.

And don't forget - if you suggest a new item for a list that gets approved, you get "credit" for that page for the purposes of the RateItAll Economy Program. What does that mean? It means that you share ad revenue on that page for as long as the program continues.

YouTube to Emulate RateItAll

At a recent conference in Davos, YouTube founder Chad Hurley announced that soon, YouTube would begin allowing contributors of video to share in the advertising revenue associated with their contributions. This sounds a lot like the RateItAll Economy Program, right?

And I think it's great news. Back in August of last year I wrote a long rant on this blog about how I felt that too many sites were exploiting the contributions of their members. Here's an excerpt:

Now big companies and venture capital firms are realizing that people are happy to work for these Web sites for free. Thousands of new "user generated content" sites are launching. Thousands hoping to be the next YouTube, the next MySpace - thousands hoping they can slap together a site, and have volunteers make it worth millions.

It ain't right, and it ain't sustainable. It took me a while to realize that revenue sharing is the only possible direction for RateItAll, but I'm happy to say that we are still one of the only sites on the Web to step up to the plate on this.

I'm thrilled that YouTube has come around, and I hope that others will follow.

I hope that the primary reason to visit RateItAll never becomes money. If that happens, something about our community will have been lost. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do things the right way and reward contributors.

Sharing Revenue on RateItAll

Has anyone checked in on their Google AdSense earnings via the RateItAll Economy program recently? Mine are showing a bump. RateItAll has posted five straight months of growth, and it makes sense that all of us should be seeing more traffic to our lists, listing suggestions, and profile pages.

Here's one glitch that started for me yesterday, however - because I never verified my AdSense account with Google (put in my SS# and address so I can be paid) - they started running Public Service Annoucements on my pages (not ads). I went in yesterday to verify my account, and they asked me for a pin number that they had supposedly mailed me. I never got it, and had to request a new one (which takes 2-4 weeks). I'm trying to get in touch with Google to see why they are showing PSA's now while I wait for the new pin... it doesn't seem fair. I'll keep you posted.

But in the meantime, if you are participating in the RIA Economy program and have not yet verified your Google AdSense account, I recommend that you do so by going to the AdSense site and signing in.