VigLink

TextureMedia’s story – How a Forum Blossomed

May 15, 2013

By Crista Bailey, CEO Texture Media

Cross-posted from the ForumCon blog. ForumCon is the only conference dedicated to the business of forums and is held this year in San Francisco on June 13.
Registration is now open

The ForumCon team asked me to participate in a panel on “Forum Monetization” this year. I’m grateful for the opportunity and look forward to June 13th.

I was also asked, for purposes of this blog post and for context at ForumCon, to share TextureMedia’s story and how a forum blossomed into a brand connecting a community of beauty influencers with global and domestic hair care companies.

Full disclosure, first things first, before I am asked the inevitable question.

I have straight hair — naturally straight.

And I work with a company all about curly hair attitudes, purchasing behavior, discussions, products, stylists, salons, care, styling… you name it. I have learned a lot and continue to be in awe of the engagement of this community and their real life tales previously unbeknownst to me.

I embrace my naturally straight texture while appreciating what we offer, which is a forum for people to tell their stories.

Stories of straight-haired moms adopting children with curly hair and having no idea how to care for it
Stories of being called names as a child or not being taken seriously at work by bosses who equate curly hair texture with unprofessionalism
Journals of lifelong product journeys in search of the “Holy Grail” product that will finally help someone love their curls
Transitioning tales told by women who have used chemical relaxers their entire life and who have made the big decision to “go natural.”

These people talk about real and important experiences to them. People with wavy, curly, and coily hair spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to wear, care, style, condition and showcase their tresses.

TextureMedia’s members across NaturallyCurly and CurlyNikki help people better understand their hair texture, to make more informed purchasing and stylist decisions, while also giving them a forum to support, share and learn.

I’ve attached our infographic, albeit almost one year old, that scopes the “textured hair” population and why it’s important. Hair care is a big market (tens of $Billions), but as mentioned earlier, it’s not just about product. It’s about self-esteem and empowerment. There are good hair days and bad hair days, and that impacts how you carry yourself throughout that day.

How did all this start?

In 1998, Michelle Breyer and Gretchen Heber, two curly-haired Austin American-Statesman journalists, decided to take online their angst over the lack of hair care products and services in the market for people with curly hair.

1998. 15 years ago.

No mobile. No Google or Google Fiber. No blogs. No Internet access in cafes or in many households.

“You’ve Got Mail” was a big hit in 1998.

It was early Internet days, and a great time to start a website — being first to market with an idea and concept. Michelle and Gretchen’s intent was more altruistic than business-focused. They desired to create a place for people like them – curlies who were all but ignored in beauty magazines and salons. As far as revenue, they thought they would make a killing selling curl empowerment t-shirts.

The result was NaturallyCurly.com, the first online hair community via a v-bulletin board for people to share favorite products, ingredients and hair stories.

And it grew.

People from all over the world discovered NaturallyCurly via organic search and shared their hair stories too! The early fans told more people about NaturallyCurly, and word-of-mouth marketing virally spread the word.

CurlTalk on NaturallyCurly became a true forum for discussion and genesis for other brand extensions.

Members discussed favorite products and ingredients, and even shared recipes for products they were creating at home.

The community and grass-roots product manufacturers eventually encouraged the two co-founders to sell products with limited to no distribution but that everyone was reading about — early “cult favorites”. CurlMart became an e-commerce site that moved from a co-founder’s back bedroom to the thriving business it is today, a curated boutique where products are vetted and endorsed by community before hitting its shelves.

NaturallyCurly grew beyond a v-bulletin board, adding community-generated product and stylist databases, articles, photos, eventually videos — even a Frizz Forecast that predicts a customized frizz forecast dependent upon hair type, location and weather.

An earlier member of CurlTalk and 2013 author of Better Than Good Hair, Nikki Walton, separately created her NaturallyCurly-inspired natural hair blog, CurlyNikki, which became part of the TextureMedia family in 2010.

In 2011, TextureTrends was born, annual market intelligence that truly leverages real people insights around hair care, attitudes, products and behaviors. It was the result of the dozens of questions we were fielding from brands about the what, why, how much and drivers to purchase for our community. I especially love TextureTrends because it is 160 pages of community feedback that we can share with our hair care brands and partners to create products our community wants, with ingredients they trust — and helps these brands understand where, why and how our community is influenced to buy. We truly are a community of experts and influencers.

Our big decisions and organic growth stem from listening to our dynamic community, which has pushed above 2.7 million uniques in size this year.

It’s 2013.

And there are hundreds of hair care brands and thousands of stylists out there specifically targeting this market — the world of curls and texture.

We talk internally about “engaging and empowering the beauty influencer” as our mission and role.

What role does your forum play or what community does it serve?

I would love to hear your examples of organic monetization and successful features or ideas generated from community feedback.

More on the panel topic and how we’ve monetized our forum in this recently published interview with Murray Newlands of ForumConTV (thanks Murray!)

I look forward to more discussion on June 13!

Posted in Guest Post

VigLink Insert: Now Earning More than Ever

May 8, 2013

Here’s a recent info-graphic we put together. The old world of manual linking is looking a bit long in the tooth. VigLink Insert is applying cutting-edge technology to improve the process of linking, and the links themselves. Scroll down to see just how far we’ve come in the last few months.

This Old Hyperlink | Create infographics

Posted in News and Updates

4 Reasons Why You Want To Be Taking Advantage of Forum Postings

May 3, 2013

by John Rampton, Editor Search Engine Journal

Cross-posted from the ForumCon blog. ForumCon is the only conference dedicated to the business of forums and is held this year in San Francisco on June 13.
Registration is now open

The internet is filled with forums. People go to forums for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons include: SEO purposes, JV parnters, driving traffic, and information. In this post I will examine each of these areas.

1. SEO Purposes

You’ll want to learn a little bit of how the search engines work and html to understand how you can use forum postings for SEO purposes. Search engines index information on websites to store in their index.

You can apply a bit of html code to tell the search engines whether or not they will index the links on the page. You do that by using either the ‘no-follow’ attribute or the ‘do-follow’ attribute. The no- follow one tells the search engines not to index the links. The opposite goes for the latter.

To determine whether or not a page is do-follow or not, then you just simple ‘view page source’ while on the page you’re analyzing. Many forums are no-follow, but that doesn’t prevent you from obtaining the other benefits of forum postings; JV partners & driving traffic.

2. JV Partners

JV stands for joint venture and many entrepreneurs start them to leverage someone else’s skills, leadership, and resources. As you become a regular participant in the forum of your choice, you’ll undoubtedly make connections.

I really like to use the internet as a spring board to a real friendship or connection. To do this, you have to elevate the relationship beyond just words. When a connection is made, I’ll set up a meeting on skype to get to know the person and see their face. Take the opportunity to get to know them. Ask them about their goals and what they’re trying to accomplish.

You might just find out a JV with this new connection will help you both reach your goals and objectives. No JV is the same. Some will be good, while others will be a miserable experience. Do your due diligence before you start a JV with someone.

3. Traffic How do you use a forum to drive traffic?

You’ll be wise to get to know the forum’s guidelines. Some will allow links in the posting itself, while others will not. More often than not, forums will allow for some type of a signature.

Many marketers neglect to take advantage of the signature box. Everyone can improve what they put in their box. Just like you’ll spend quality time crafting the perfect title for a blog post, you’ll want to take some time to create a sentence that will motivate someone to click through and visit your website.

If the website is do-follow, then I would recommend linking to your main blog or website. If it’s no-follow, then I typically recommend you using a capture page of some sort so you can build your email list.

4. Information

If you’re looking for an answer, you can browse the existing threads on the forums. Even I spend time reading forums to learn more information. (Side note: you can use forums to get ideas for blog posts and other content.)

Another option available to you is to start your own thread asking the forum members a question. You’ll find that many forum members will participate and offer up their advice. Make sure you signup for email updates so you know when people have commented on your thread.

Conclusion

Forum postings are a great way to build backlinks to your website, drive traffic, obtain information, and find potential JV partners.

Posted in Building Communities & Forums, Guest Post

VigLink: Monetizing a Musician’s Expertise at Menga.net

April 30, 2013

This post is part of our Customer Showcase series, where we profile successful online publishers. Our goal is to help publishers learn from the experts and grow their business.

In an effort to make guitar playing accessible to everyone, Rich Menga launched a blog of music information and educational articles for the budget-minded player at www.menga.net. Like many bloggers, Rich was challenged to find the time and motivation to keep his site content fresh and flowing. When he discovered VigLink and realized he could earn revenue from exactly what he was already doing – recommending the best guitar-related products and sites – Rich was reinvigorated. As a result, his content and fan base grew and he was able to build a brand, bond with his audience and ultimately drive real business accomplishment.

Building his brand

Through his blog, Rich has built a brand as an honest, straightforward voice for a focused, niche audience: readers who are just as passionate as he is about guitar playing without breaking the bank. “Compared to a few years ago, it’s a great time to be a guitar player. Leading guitar manufacturers – like Fender and others – have so many great models under $300. They are accommodating to the fact that people don’t have a ton of money these days. So my goal is to help people understand that they don’t need to spend $1000 on a guitar anymore – it’s cool to be cheap!”

Rich also credits VigLink for his inspiration to build such a strong brand. “Because I knew I could earn money through VigLink, I was blogging more often and producing more quality content. This enabled me to establish a strong site and a community that trusts my judgment.”

Bonding with his audience

For Rich, developing a follower base is not just about hitting “post” and closing down for the day. He not only responds to all reader comments, but truly encourages ongoing dialogue and sharing. “It’s so important to thank readers for contributing and support their guitar efforts.” This secret to his success goes beyond the blog to his Facebook page, where nearly 800 fans are regularly commenting and even sharing videos of their personal guitar performances – a sign of great trust and the audience bond.

“VigLink is also an important part of building my audience. Readers appreciate that I don’t need to beg them to do anything – buy a membership or click on spammy links – in order to sustain the blog. If they like the product I’m writing about and want to check it out, they can do just that through the link. No pressure at all.”

Driving business success

While Rich does maintain his “day job” as ghost blogger for a professional music site, he uses his VigLink earnings to pay the blog-related business expenses (such as web hosting) and advertising campaigns to expand his reach and revenue. Menga.net’s primary revenue source is VigLink and Rich has opted to personally build his links using his own domain and also uses VigLink Anywhere (which monetizes clicks from Twitter, Facebook, emails, RSS feeds, or the Tumblr dashboard) on Facebook and Twitter. “I find VigLink and overall fan engagement to be very successful on Facebook, where it seems people are looking for trusted advice about purchases. It’s more personal and linking to an amp or guitar with an image typically piques fans’ interest and garners at least a few comments.”

Offering some advice for bloggers just getting started with native monetization, Rich explains that it takes time to learn how to maximize revenue from your content. “Monetization is not a way to get rich quick; you have to work at it and learn what sort of merchants, products and link placements work best. I’ve tried AdSense and other earning methods, but VigLink is the only one with a good success rate. It’s so easy to use and the model of interest-based clicks just makes sense for today’s audience.”

Posted in Customer Showcase

Effective Strategies for Forum Moderation

April 26, 2013

by Dave Cayem, VP Delphi Forums

Cross-posted from the ForumCon blog. ForumCon is the only conference dedicated to the business of Forums and will be held this year in San Francisco on June 13. Registration is now open.

The good folks that run ForumCon have asked me to lead a session on forum moderation.

My session is entitled “Effective Strategies for Forum Moderation,” and we’ll be focusing on ways to keep the peace in your forum.

When resolving sticky situations in online communities, it’s vitally important to choose your words with care. When you can’t convey your meaning with body language or facial expressions, it’s easy for your words to be misconstrued. That’s especially true when communicating with an angry member. So I’ll be sharing some of the language I always turn to in these situations, and asking session participants to share their ideas.

We’ll also spend some time talking about forum rules. Forum rules are a tricky topic, because few visitors take the time to read them. But when a forum member starts causing trouble, you still need a set of rules that you can point to when calling out an infraction. Forum rules are not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The topic, membership, and sensibilities of the forum should dictate what the rules are. But there are still some concepts that apply to any forum, and we’ll discuss them.

There are certain types of people that seem to turn up in any forum. There are helpful types, troublesome types, and those that are merely an annoyance. I’ll talk about the five types of people I often see in online communities, and I’ll ask the group to share stories about forum participants they’ve run into.

We’ll also open up the conversation and swap stories about difficult situations we’ve faced in our forums, and discuss how we resolved them.

Finally, I’ll be sharing the online community management resources I turn to for advice and ideas, and asking the group to share theirs.

Are there topics related to forum moderation and management you think we ought to include in this session? Do you have any questions that we can answer during the session? Please join the conversation via #ForumCon, the official twitter @ForumCon, via their Facebook page, or add your thoughts below.

Posted in Building Communities & Forums

Mother’s Day is May 12th – Let’s Make the Most of it!

April 25, 2013

Cross-posted from the VigLink Insider Blog

With Mother’s Day around the corner, we wanted to alert you to some spectacular commissions, including a recent doubling for Saks Fifth Avenue. Recent research from shop.org tells us that, online, the average Mother’s Day shopper spends well over $200 on Mom. Cards, flowers, jewelry, clothing, and accessories all top the list of what makes for a truly special gift. What’s more, online shoppers are about twice as likely to shop at department stores than specialty retailers — good thing we’ve got great commissions to help you make the most of it!

We’ve recently doubled commissions for leading upscale retailer Saks Fifth Avenue - up from 3% to 6%. Don’t miss their Mother’s Day Gift Guide.

We’ve tripled rates for 1-800-Flowers to a whopping 18%. With free standard shipping and no service charge (see here) this is the one to link.

Our 12% commission is more than twice what most folks get by signing up direct. Nordstrom has thrown together a great set of picks from Mom – even some for under $50.

Sephora has great Mother’s Day Gifts from Philosophy, Dolce & Gabbana, Clinique, and more – plus 3-day free standard shipping (details here). The VigLink commission is 10% – yup, doubled.

Get more inspiration and boost your earnings by staying up to date with all our latest offers, newest merchants, and commission increases by visiting viglink.com/insider, subscribing to the RSS feed, and following us @VigLinkInsider on Twitter.

Posted in News and Updates

Google Affiliate Network to Shutter. Keep Calm and Carry On.

April 16, 2013

Today, Google announced their affiliate network will be shutting down. Google “made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.” For VigLink publishers, this news is nothing to worry about. However, if you’re not using VigLink, well, this news could mean lost revenue and a lot of headache.

While affiliate marketing might not be the right business for Google, their advertisers haven’t necessarily come to the same conclusion. We fully expect the over 1,000 GAN advertisers to open new affiliate programs, either directly or through another network. Premier GAN advertisers such as Target.com, Diapers.com, Barneys New York, and Nike.com enjoy significant value from sales driven by their affiliates. VigLink publishers, in particular, are a meaningful source of new customers and increased transactions as they share unique finds and great deals with their loyal followers.

For VigLink publishers, as long as these merchants participate in an affiliate program, our pledge is to continue to monetize their links and, to the extent possible, without interruption. VigLink publishers can just keep focusing on what they do best – making great content and building their audience.

For affiliates who work directly with GAN, this could cause a major disruption. Old links could break and revenue could drop. It will likely mean keeping an eye on each advertiser, finding their new program, applying, and then finding and swapping out all the old links with new links. If that sounds like a pain, we understand. The good news is it’s totally avoidable. With VigLink, links automatically affiliate, whatever the new program or network happens to be tomorrow, or five years from tomorrow.

If you’re interested in moving from manual to automatic link monetization, we’d love to hear from you.

Posted in News and Updates

10 Things Most Forum Owners Don’t Know About Community Commerce

April 11, 2013

Cross-posted from the ForumCon blog. ForumCon is the only conference dedicated to the business of Forums and will be held this year in San Francisco on June 13. Registration is now open.

When Rachel Blaustein wanted to improve the buying and selling experience in her forum, Bhuz.com, she turned to Panjo. “Before Panjo, we tried a mix of rules and plugins. Sellers were getting buried in a confusing pile of emails and private messages. Buyers suffered from poor search tools, terrible product presentation, and lackluster communication from sellers. As the community owners, we got sucked into dispute resolution. Panjo helped us improve the classifieds for everyone.”

Increasingly, forum owners are turning to Panjo to help grow revenue, increase engagement and reduce the administrative burden of running a community. Panjo makes a free marketplace plugin for popular forum software platforms. Panjo also provides payment processing solutions that allow a forum to optionally collect listing, promotion, and final value fees.

Exclusively for ForumCon, Panjo opens the kimono to reveal fascinating statistics that are coming to light based on Panjo’s partnerships with forum-based marketplaces.

Sellers successfully sell 45% of the items listed for sale in a forum.
Fellow forum members buy 75% of the sold items. Neighbors, eBay shoppers, and members of other forums purchase the remaining 25% of the items that sell.
Slightly more than half the sellers list just a single item for sale. The other half of sellers list two or more items a year.
Nearly 90% of the listings come from the minority of sellers who list more than one item for sale a year.
Excluding items that cost over $5,000, the average sales price of sold items is $200.
It takes 15 days on average to sell an item. After 15 days, an item’s chances of selling drop precipitously.
40% of community members buy, browse, or sell in the marketplace.
Including payment processing, eBay’s average take rate (the percent of revenue they make on the gross value of a sale) is 11.6%; Etsy’s take rate averages 9%.
23% of forum members browse marketplace listings on a mobile device.
Each monthly active unique forum user exchanges $10 in gross merchandise volume a year with another forum member. In other words, if your forum has 50,000 monthly active uniques, your members will sell $500,000 of goods to other members of your forum.

panjo_infographic_forumcon

All the statistics above reflect averages across Panjo’s network of partners. You can partner with Panjo to unlock a treasure trove of commerce data for your community. To learn more about Panjo’s classifieds plugin for forum software platforms like vBulletin, XenForo, SMF, and phpBB, contact info@panjo.com or call 1 (424) 272-0291.

Posted in Publisher Best Practices

Helping Money Crashers Earn Some Well-deserved Money

April 8, 2013

This post is part of our Customer Showcase series, where we profile successful online publishers. Our goal is to help publishers learn from the experts and grow their business.

Driven by a “passion for learning how money and our society work and an interest in helping others with their finances,” twentysomething Andrew Schrage co-founded the informational website Money Crashers as a resource to guide readers to make financially sound decisions. Combining his knowledge gained as an Economics major at Brown University and experience acquired while working at a hedge fund, Andrew and his team strive to educate individuals about credit and debt, investing, education, real estate, insurance and spending.

It turned out his site idea was a good one: Money Crashers now has nearly 20,000 subscribers and has been featured in national media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, Yahoo Finance, MSNBC, Business Insider, CBS News, NBC News, and Forbes. So how did he do it? By focusing on the three Bs that drive success: building a brand, to bond with the audience and ultimately drive real business accomplishment.

Building the brand

The team at Money Crashers has a concrete and unique goal: to provide readers with high-quality, factual content based on 11 principles meant to guide financial decisions. They also ensure that guidance is truly part of the brand by focusing on the readers and their needs. “One thing that I believe sets Money Crashers apart from other websites in our niche is that we take a genuine interest in our readers and do our best to respond to each and every comment. Many other websites proclaim to do this, but we feel we do a phenomenal job of connecting with our readers.”

Bonding with the audience

By making comment responses a priority, the team at Money Crashers not only connects with readers, but also encourages further discussion that is often initiated and sustained by the readers themselves. Facebook, Twitter and video posts provide additional means of bonding with the audience, as do contests and giveaways that essentially reward readers for their engagement.

The site’s most popular articles include a feature on extreme couponing and a list of the best new bank account promotions. Because these topics are clearly important to the audience, Money Crashers publishes an update of the bank account promo article each month and tries to integrate coupon advice in other articles whenever it makes sense.

Making it a business

Hard work, focus and audience engagement has paid off: “Money Crashers is a full-time gig for me and I feel lucky to be doing it as my job. I truly love what I’m doing each and every day.” The site’s primary revenue sources include banner advertising and VigLink Insert (which inserts new links when VigLink technology detects a merchant, brand or product reference in content across the site).

For Andrew, VigLink not only provides an additional source of earnings, but it also helps his readers who are seeking more information or details about products mentioned in Money Crashers articles. “It seems as though content-driven commerce is the wave of the future. As long as the content is factual and the consumer is directed to a reputable e-commerce website, it’s only natural to blur the lines between content and commerce. In fact, we’ve had positive feedback from our readers about the direct product links inserted by VigLink because it helps them find exactly what they are looking for without spending additional time on a web search.”

Posted in Customer Showcase

Introducing the New VigLink.com

April 1, 2013

You’ve probably noticed we’ve added a fresh coat of paint, and a few new pictures to brighten up the place. We’re proud to welcome you to the new VigLink.com! Allow us to show you around.

Our goal was to make it easier for everyone to understand what we do and who we do it for. We now have new pages dedicated to the many different kinds of publishers that choose to work with us. Whether you’re a blogger, a forum owner, or a mobile app developer, we’ve got a page explaining how VigLink works for you and a tool to let you preview VigLink on your site without an account (find this by scrolling down to the bottom of the How it Works page).

Meanwhile, the new VigLink works just as it always has. We’ve just created some new product names to help make what we do a bit easier to understand. VigLink now offers three products:

VigLink Convert automatically converts existing links into monetized links.

VigLink Insert automatically inserts new links when our technology detects mentions of products, brands, or stores. This can be enabled by visiting your settings. When turned on, publishers typically get more than half of their earnings from VigLink Insert.

VigLink Anywhere, previously known as the link wrapper, allows anyone to post a link that earns anywhere on the web, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

You can always sign in to adjust your settings, check your dashboard, or edit your account information. Don’t forget to stop by the new referrals page to grab some new banners and earn 35% of our commission for the first year with any new account you sign up.