Handling Newbie Questions on AdsenseExperts?

Hello

I spend a lot of thought on how to handle the inevitable newbie questions that will pop up in the future.

My best Idea was to create an extensive AdSense FAQ to be able to point them to the right answer and then close the thread.

What are your thoughts on this matter? Any good Ideas?

Regards

admin

This entry was posted in Chat Corner and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

19 Responses to Handling Newbie Questions on AdsenseExperts?

  1. JamesColin says:
    My suggestion would be to delete any new member who ask too basic questions.

    But it depends what you want, if you want traffic then obviously you will need members to talk about everything and then you'll have beginners, a lot.

    But if you don't want adsense beginners, my solution is ideal.

    I do it on my own sites, before when I saw a new member doing something a bit stupid, I contacted them and explained their mistake and how to do it correctly on my site.

    Nowadays I simply delete the user account and all attached content submitted (badly) by the member.

    That way I have only correct content and users smart enough to at least post correct content.

    Note that my site doesn't require a Phd in anything, so I'm not being elitist, just I don't want to waste time on real beginners who will not bring anything to my sites anyway.

    Same can apply to your site. You can direct new registered users to the faq and warn them that any too basic question will lead to banning.

    But it's up to you, what you want to do with your forum.

    Personally I wouldn't mind not having any beginner here and only have a few hundred inactive members with questions a little beyond basic.

    Beginners can learn from other forums online, and when they want more they can come here :-)
  2. admin says:
    One day some of the newbies will also be advanced Adsense publishers. I am not sure yet.

    I thought about creating a Newbie forum but that is against my initial idea of this forum.

    Simply deleting Beginners would be rude and unfriendly and the success of all my forum is based on my communities being very friendly and open minded.

    I have to spend a lot more thoughts on this.
  3. BirdOPrey5 says:
    I would just make a newbie forum, might as well have the traffic if you can get it.

    As they learn more they can move on to other sections of the site.

    If you expect them to learn the basics elsewhere they will likely just stay at those sites and never move on.
  4. admin says:
    That is a valid argument. I'll think about it.
  5. JamesColin says:
    If you think it's rude to delete beginner account you could make it a requirement at registration time to have an active adsense account for at least 2 years to be allowed to register.

    Well, it's just my opinion about it since you asked it, but I admit you can do whatever you want :-)

    well, where did you learn the basis?

    Where did I learn the basis?

    So why are we here?

    I'm sure it's the same for other adsense publishers who are a bit fed up to read about too basic adsense questions.

    Don't tell me we don't have to read them, often the title of the thread is not clear, and then when we read the post, it is yet again a basic question.

    Perfect example for this is DigitalPoint AdSense forums, there is a lot of activity, but you need to see which activity!

    For me I don't care too much because I use this forum to find recruits for my adsense revenue sharing sites, but still I have been looking for adsense-only forums before, so there is a space for a forum dedicated to adsense.

    Yes, having a beginner section could help, but don't fool yourself into believing beginners will stick to their section, otherwise they wouldn't be beginners :-)
    • admin says:
      If you think it's rude to delete beginner account you could make it a requirement at registration time to have an active adsense account for at least 2 years to be allowed to register.

      Well, it's just my opinion about it since you asked it, but I admit you can do whatever you want :-)

      We could use infractions for beginners asking beginners question in the advanced forum.

      Every question that is answered in our FAQ counts as beginners question.

      Just as one possible way.

      I am still not sure yet though.

      admin
  6. BirdOPrey5 says:
    I'm not sure I've had my adsense account 2 years... it's close... maybe I should leave? Honestly I never thought or cared much about adsense to think someone would make a forum dedicated to it, let alone "advanced" adsense. I simply read the rules and terms of service, in full, and started using it.

    You guys certainly seem to be taking it to another level, which is fine, if you think there are enough people to support another forum... there may be, I honestly don't know. Sorry for not being a self-proclaimed adsense master.
  7. JamesColin says:
    I'm simply expressing my opinion following a question. But I'm not the webmaster here, so I have no decision to make.

    Personally I wouldn't create a forum because I tried a long time ago and it's so much work, that's not my ideal, not my goal. The worktime/earnings ratio is way too low for me. :-)
  8. admin says:
    So far I nicely suggested that we are the wrong forum and pointed beginners to digitalpoint, sitepoint and webmasterworld

    After spending a lot of thought on this I don't want AdsenseExperts become just another forum filled with thousands of those beginner questions.

    There are bigger forums for that.

    Let's keep the niche small and the content high quality which is what will make the difference.

    I for once already was able to improve my earnings quite a bit from a tip here on AdsenseExperts. This tip alone will finance this forum fully :p So I don't really care about becoming the next big Webmaster forum.

    I want AdsenseExperts to be a resource for new ideas which you can't find elsewhere.

    A small community of people who take their advertising business seriously.
  9. Dogs and things says:
    I definitely agree on the fact that it has to be avoided that this forum becomes a place full of newbee questions.

    Apart from reading the nice FAQ you put together people asking very beginners' question could be suggested to go and have a good read on the AdSense blog and forums.

    I am a beginner too, although I have an AdSense account for seven years now. I just never paid much attention to AdSense, so I didn´t learn a lot.

    Anyway, over the years on the www I have noticed that there are several kinds of beginners. The ones I find particularly annoying are the ones that ask very basic questions that have been answered a zillon times in millons of places all over the www.

    People that don´t bother to use Google and start shooting of straight away with all sorts of thingies without being able to find their way even after having been pointed kindly in the right direction are not just beginners...

    Another annoying specimen of AdSense user, for me at least, is the one that is the quick money tips and tricks type of person. Digitalpoint is plagued by them. They make reading a forum very hard...

    Speaking for myself I dedicate lots of time to reading, trying, trying a bit more and searching answers. Thus forcing myself to learn. If I get stuck I ask, and try to do something with the info obtained.

    Surprisingly I have found myself asking less and less, simply because the answers to virtually all my question are already available, just a few mouseclicks away.

    But hey, let me ask a question: What would you consider an AdSense expert?

    Greetings.
  10. admin says:
    The AdSense Experts private forum is for premium publishers, Google AdSense Employees (if one ever finds his/her way here) and people who contributed a lot of ideas on a high level.

    I know that premium publishers are not always experts in AdSense, but they certainly are experts in their field otherwise they would not have reached premium publisher status.

    I try to create a very small, secure and elite circle of those who are known for protecting their business ideas and "secrets".

    A safe harbor for sharing ideas without the fear of your business ideas being spread all over the web in a day.

    We'll see if this works out :)
  11. Dogs and things says:
    It would be very nice if that works out, I guess it's pretty hard to find a safehaven where one can talk on a decent level and in "private" with likeminded people on this www full of "leechers" making f.i. websites spreading others people's know-how.

    I for one am very happy with what I learned reading here and there and am "suffering" an important learning curve working with the acquired knowledge.

    I wish I had had the interest I have now seven years ago, when I started using AdSense. But fortunately it's hardly ever too late to start new projects.
  12. JamesColin says:
    For me AdSense experts is not to be taken litteraly, it isn't an "expert" per say, let's just say it is someone who don't need to ask the very basic questions, someone who knows the answers to more or less at least all the questions in the FAQ of this forum.

    It doesn't matter how long he/she has been an adsense user, but rather how much he experimented with ad placements and spent time studying its adsense stats and already applied successfully changes to ad placement or format in order to generate an increase in earnings.

    So for me AdSense experts should rather be called AdSense professional, but the word expert has been used I guess after seeing the level of those on DP forum we call "beginners" and who obviously haven't begun anything, so "expert" definition also took a hit. :-)
  13. Dogs and things says:
    In that case, applying your criteria, I shouldn´t consider myself an absolute beginner anymore.
  14. admin says:
    I just had an idea for later when the forum is much more active and I want to note it down because I tend to forget such ideas :)

    We could make a small AdSense test that users need to pass in order to be allowed to register an account.

    This way we would ensure that only people with at least basic knowledge of AdSense can register.

    However before the forum is much more active (and attractive to more advanced publishers) I wont work on this idea.

    Thoughts about this idea are appreciated.
  15. JamesColin says:
    That's an excellent idea if you can implement it, make a quizz to allow registration will make membership to the forum that much more valuable.

    When implemented, this fact should also be advertized somewhat in the forum template.
  16. BirdOPrey5 says:
    May I suggest you allow all registered members to register normally with forum viewing rights, but they must past this test in order to post.

    This will help you track how many people might be visiting who aren't "experts."

    Are there really any questions you could ask that can't be answered by Google in 5 seconds?
  17. admin says:
    It is not so much that I want to ask questions that you can't Google, in fact there are little to none.

    However if someone Google's all the questions I might going to ask, he will most likely not ask beginners questions because he googled the answers already :p
  18. admin says:
    Like you may have noticed I have implemented the "AdSense Test" idea.

    We'll see if this will help with newbie questions.

    So far it looks quite good :)

    What do you think?

Leave a Reply to BirdOPrey5 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*