The next step to earning more on Gather is creating a consistent, regular experience here. As I wrote previously, Gather members create the conversations that other people enjoy here. We recognize that people who create original experiences on Gather start those conversations and play host to others that enjoy the same things they do. Our Gather Points program is designed to reward members who invest their time to make Gather a welcoming, interesting place for members and potential members alike.
With changes we recently made to our points system, some members have been interested to learn how they might increase their earnings. This is the fourth in a series of posts to Gather's Earn More Points forum, a group dedicated to helping Gather members earn more each day. Please join that group to increase your earnings over time. Prior posts in this series include:
- Step 1: Find Something that You Love to Do. This post suggests finding a subject that you really enjoy as a starting point. In the conversation, many members reflect on what they already share on Gather and consider what they might share going forward.
- Step 2: Evaluate the Appeal of Your Topic: This post looks at tools that help you to understand how many people are interested in the same things that you are. Selecting a relatively popular topic can help you increase earnings.
- Step 3: Consider the Competition: This piece helps members determine whether the experience they want to create meets an unmet need (on Gather and on the Internet) or would compete with lots of other solutions online.
Today, we start to focus on experience creation. Creating a high quality, consistent experience makes it much more likely that people will view your content over time. We consider content viewership/audience as a key factor when awarding points.
Once you have found something you love to do, figured out that there are a lot of people who love it too, and identified a niche that’s not crowded with competition, you are ready to start creating your own experience.
When you sit down to design an experience, consider what best meets the needs of your audience. Is a series of written posts the best option? Would you do better with a video series (perhaps how-to videos or a video blog). Is your passion best captured through photo essays or photo albums? What’s the right core medium for you? What voice do you want to use? How participatory will your experience be? What will the 10th, 20th and 50th installments look like? You can, of course, adjust or augment the core experience over time, but having a consistent way to present is important.
Next, the key is to create an ongoing experience with good quality for your audience. When we announced that Gather had distributed over $500,000 in points to members, we shared the success of two members who created great experiences on the site (with their permission, of course!). One of the members that we mentioned, Monica Kennedy has earned over $2,800 by sharing her crochet expertise with the community. This is a perfect example of someone who found a niche and created a consistent experience for it.
Today I want to call out a few other examples of people creating consistent, good experiences:
- Steve Cabral shares his extensive background on fitness and healthy eating on Gather. I know Steve well because he is my personal trainer here in Boston and have come to really respect the depth of his knowledge. Even though we work out every week, I learn new things about his fitness posts. I also find his responses to member questions particularly helpful as he often addresses topics there that I don’t think to ask about during my workout (when I need to focus all my energy on breathing between sets).
- Kevin Weeks has been another consistent, high quality contributor of food content on Gather. For years, Kevin has been seen as a top chef on the site. He creates rich stories around food, augmenting them with photographs. Kevin is wise to create variety within his cooking theme by looking at seasonal dishes (and new twists on them).
- Carol Roach shares social and political commentary on Gather. Carol writes consistently thought provoking pieces on human rights and equality, with a particular focus on women’s rights. Her work often explores contemporary topics, providing perspective for others who want to discuss current events.
- John Phillip’s Thought Bytes is a place where he presents a humorous take on the world in the form of short cartoons that he shares each Wednesday. The consistency of John's publishing makes it easy for his fans to know when to come back each week.
These members are terrific examples of people creating high-quality experiences regularly on Gather. They pick a theme, create regular content that is focused on that theme, and engage members in a dialog when they respond. And each selected an area of interest that really matters to them personally and that comes across in their passion for their work.
Having this kind of consistent quality and focus is important when you want to build audience. Your audience will be more likely to explore your body of work and return often to see what you create if they know what to expect from you.
Once you have started creating a consistent experience, it’s time to actually grow your readership. We’ll look next at how to do that on Gather, and off, over the next several posts.
Next up: Creating and moderating a group for your topic
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Comments: 69
Thanks for the tips
Great information Tom. Using a Gather group as a conduit for presenting topical content is an important element of successfully marketing yourself on Gather, and outside of the community.
On a related note, aren't at least two of the members you mention above also paid monthly by Gather as correspondents to specifically create high-quality experiences around their respective themes? Will there be additional opportunities for other members to also participate in this program?
Couldn't agree with you more.
Thanks, Tom, for creating Gather.
I enjoy my whole Gather experience... from creating to reading and viewing others creative content. I am eclectic...there's so many things I like: travel, architecture, historical places, and of course my gardens. I try to bring people along as I go into museums, watch artist paint, or wander down empty streets at the break of dawn.
BIG QUESTION: Why do we still have the very abused, overrated, mundane *rating* system? Are you going to consider tweaking That in some way in the near future, or just deleting it?
No matter what, I do enjoy my gather experiences :)
I tried linking to google and yahoo but I guess it is not the type of things others want to see and my views and commenting did not increase from that.
BTW I have been speaking with some gather members by phone and intend to meet up with some. These are the kind of things I love about Gather. Without Gather I would have never met my new friends, so for this I am grateful.
I am not sure what you meant when you say you tried linking to google and yahoo. I will share a number of tips about building audience using those sites and others.
Most importantly, I am thrilled to hear that you have met new friends here. New friends are one of the most valuable things Gather can bring to members. Please let me know if you organize a Gathering. We'd love to help make it a more special event if we can.
The linking that I was referring to was a post on earn more points. I copy and pasted it for you to see....
Please everyone take note this was not from me but another member. I am only copying and pasting for Tom. This is what I tried with a number of my photo essays and it did not increase my outside views.
Rather than wait for Google and Yahoo to find you, you can submit your new content to them by going to http://www.google.com/addurl/ and http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit. It's very quick and easy, just paste your url into the space they provide and press a button.
Two of the members here on gather and I are trying to get together. It is not that we are planing a big get together at this time. But if we do we will let you know. Maybe we can have a big gather picnic some year.
BIG QUESTION: Why do we still have the very abused, overrated, mundane *rating* system? Are you going to consider tweaking That in some way in the near future, or just deleting it?
Mr Gerace, why do you consistently answer a few questions, but don't address ALL the questions? It's been stated that many want to hear the answer to the above questions. Either address NO questions, or address ALL please.
Of course it's true you can't respond to every note... I was just referring to posts like these where people are really looking for answers from "THE MAN"...that would be you... or other Staff that posts.
For fantastic rantings, drop by Rant Aerobics - your home base for Macaroni and Cheese debating.
My poetry column has been a monthly deal, but maybe I'll push myself to make it weekly or bi-weekly.
I appreciate these posts, Tom.
I would like to second Susan's lament! It's a thankless job, to say the least. I have tried to take the editing part of the position seriously. Watch for the complaints from people who think I am rude for expecting them to know where they post.
I'm sure I gain more from the experience than I give. Thank you for the opportunity.
That’s still true for me, even with these latest posts. In this one, you mention quality but I still read (between the lines and behind the scenes) that to mean quantity or hits. While you’re over here doing this, you have other staffers (?) posting celebrity gossip, encouraging members to harass others with advertising pings, and promoting chats. Meanwhile, quality content is buried in the little cubbies we have been sent to live in and anyone who complains about drivel invading those cubbies is portrayed as an evil person.
I understand the importance of advertising, and that the chats are probably your way of introducing members to one another since you have removed the ability for us to get to know others through their work. This has been most confusing for me. I think what I see, finally, is your admission that writing will not and cannot be a focus. Those of us who are not interested in a specific topic like crochet, food, coupons, alphabet games, or celebrities will always be floating without a raft. Unless I create personal essay, humor, and fiction groups, market them myself on the internet, and find a way to bring 5,000 people in to read, my work and my presence here will not meet quality standards?
I came here thinking the site was content driven, and that I was to provide content and you would provide readers who were interested in reading and discussing that content. Do I understand correctly that now I am to define a special interest and bring in my own readers who will only want to read my content since there is no way for them to really find like writers?
The more I type, the more confusing this gets. To the person who wanders in off the street, Gather will be a chat room, and buried in little corners behind the scenes, there might be some great writing -- if we are lucky enough to know where to find it -- and some very specialized content that will be considered great if it draws enough hits and is possible to find through tags although you’ll have to sort through a thousand things that were tagged incorrectly to find it?
I am not trying to be difficult and I am fairly certain I am not dense even though I feel that way at this point. If you can talk me through this, I will appreciate it.
We do, economically, need to consider popularity too. One of the reasons I am writing this series is to teach the great contributors on the site how to build audience. Even bestselling authors need to market their work (it's the dark side of art, but artists have to sell). And for Gather to continue to offer what we do to a growing community, we need to be aware of commercial success as well.
That said, I want people to be able to find what they want. I spent this week in Pittsburgh considering different "discovery" and access methods for content. The challenge you mention is exactly the one we are considering: how do we let people who love poetry or fiction find that, while permitting gossip lovers to chat about gossip or astronomy lovers to talk about stars of another kind. We have some big ideas in this space, but need to test them internally and with members before deciding which way to go. Please do know, though, that we recognize this need and are working on a way to allow you to have the Gather you want, while other members will experience the different parts of the community they might enjoy at the same time.
Thanks again for raising this. It's an important topic and one that merits a lot of work and conversation.
Thanks for the explanation. I do understand the need for quality and quantity.
I understand about needing to promote work. My books didn't do as well as they would have if I had done my part, so I learned that lesson through experience. I think I also learned that it would have been foolish to think I could encourage many readers to attend a book signing at the BINGO or in the elementry school cafeteria during lunch hour.
I also have a tropical garden I write and do photo-tours about and I can tell you that I am drawn to Elizabeth E.s writing and photography on sights, art and architecture and nature - because that is what I enjoy and write about as well.
It's what makes gather great!
Looking forward to your article on groups - I've been thinking about having my first group.
I delight in the quality of the commentary interactions and not the quantity~
peace
When I first joined I started a group related to a special interest of mine about which I'm reasonably knowledgeable. I posted a bunch of stuff to it and still do occasionally. It has 24 members, some of whom are no longer active on Gather. I guess I chose a niche that's too narrow. :) The good part is that almost no off topic content is posted to it.
At one time I joined groups based on the number of members in order to post to the widest possible audience. One thing I've learned is that groups are like restaurants. They have a finite and, probably, predictable lifespan. I'm not sure anyone really looks to groups as a source of content.
I've been told several times that people consider The Surreal Circus (especially the features) a source of high-quality writing. However, it took about six months of careful moderation before this began to occur.
Although biased, I can say with confidence that the work at my group is excellent. Not without exception, but the quality of poetry is also subjective. I definitely don't care for all of the poetry written on Gather (or anywhere), but some of it gets high marks from others as well as many views and comments.
This month's poetic form is the ghazal and the group has received some stunning work in that form. We have 83 members and growing.
last time things changed, I got the feeling that only quality articles, made rewards, that did not work either. So I just went back to my fake Cafe I post daily and the points started moving again. Since everyone loves to come there and take a break, I guess it is appreciated more than I thought. Come let me buy you a cup of coffee.
I have a masters in counselling psychology and often write personal stories with a psychological component added.
Again thank you.