Bonus Time!!!

Some people have worked really hard to add descriptions over the last couple of days. As promised you get a bonus of 1500 points if you add 5 descriptions. So who are the people working hard? Here is the list of everybody who added 5 or more descriptions:

20 - Night Owl
7 - tlainevool
6- alionstarr
5 - emco

Bonusses have been added to their credits.
To further reward people like Night Owl who continue to add high quality descriptions we are extending the bonus scheme. For every additional 5 descriptions above the first 5 you get an additional bonus of 500.

email update: The next 2 weeks are crucial

Email update sent out to all members

"Hi everybody,

The dictionary is slowly starting to take shape. We are now up to 85 descriptions. The next two weeks will be crucial in the success of our project. Will we manage to get 500 words so we can take our site live? We now have 73 members so it would only take 5 words from each member to hit our target. Therefore we have added some extra incentives.

Expand the dictionary – add 5 words and earn a 1500 credits bonus!
Starting from today, every member that adds 5 descriptions will receive an extra bonus of 1500 credits. We have also made it easier for you if you are running out of inspiration. All the descriptions that have been disapproved because of copyright violations have been grouped, so you can use these original descriptions as an inspiration.
(http://www.webmastervocab.com/dictionary/copyrightissues.php)
This page loads rather slowly so please be a bit patient and you need to be logged in to access the list.

Members – add 5 members and earn 1500 credits extra!
Although 73 members is already a large success, the more members we have, the easier it will be to achieve success. So we have added an extra incentive. Starting from today every member that refers 5 new members, will receive a 1500 credits bonus. So try to get all your friends, classmates and family enthusiastic or use your online personalities on facebook, myspace, forums etc to draw in more people.

Copyright
Finally, I just want to restate our copyright policy. All our descriptions need to be original and can not be copied from any other source. Although you can base your description on other ones, it needs to be original.
If we do not do this, we are firstly breaking the law and severely limiting our potential for success. Google will see these duplicate descriptions as duplicate content and it will severely impact our rankings in the search engines.

We had some very hard working members that lost most of their credits due to confusion around the copyright issues, so let’s avoid this in the future.

As always if you have a good idea or a question send me an email to contactus@webmastervocab.com


Go Web3.0

Emco"

Copyright Issues

huenemeca mailed me yesterday with some concerns around copyrights. Unfortunately it seemed like a lot of the submissions from our members were copy pasted from Wikipedia or other online sources.

Although it would be easy to quickly build a dictionary like that, it is not something we want to do.
- 1. It is illegal
- 2. It is not fair to other authors who spent their time writing the original material
- 3. It is bad for our rankings as Google and others will see this as duplicate content

So over the last 24h ours I have implemented a review system to check every submission and ensure it is not breaking any copyrights. You will also have seen this has had a very substantial effect on the member rankings.

Currently we only have 58 keywords left in our cleaned up dictionary, so let's get writing to fill up the dictionary again, but this time with our own words.

We have all continents on board ;-)

These maps always make me smile. We now have visitors in (almost) every single continent in the world. Now we just need to convince some researcher on the south pole to visit webmastervocab.com. (Click on the map to see a larger version)

Dictionary 8h live and already 144 words

The dictionary has been an overwelming success so far. In less than 8h we have added 144 words. A special thank you to Vlad, Adze and ahmadjordan who have done an amazing job today.

For those of you that have not yet started adding words, it is not too late to start. The person that has most credits from adding words on 21st July will receive an extra 5000 credits...

Struggling for words

In case you struggle for words, I have uploaded a text file with a lot of webmaster/technical terms.

Dictionary 2h live - 57 words added already

Glad to see that the members have not lost their enthusiasm over the last couple of weeks, waiting for the dictionary to go live. After 2 hours we have already 57 new words which means we have 11% of our target of 500 keywords before properly launching the site.

email update to all members

Find below update that was sent out to all members


"Hi everybody,

It’s been a busy couple of weeks as you could follow on the blog. I am glad to announce that the dictionary section of the site is now live

The dictionary
http://www.webmastervocab.com/dictionary/. When you login using the details that were sent to you on signup a number of member only options will appear.

You have the option to add a new word (and earn 25 credits)
Add a new description (and earn between 25-250 credits depending on length & quality)
You can improve a description (and again earn between 25-250 credits).

As we now need to get 500 descriptions as soon as possible we will start a 4 week competition that ends on the 21st of July. The member that adds most words and descriptions will receive an incredible 5000 credits extra! Good luck with the writing!

Other methods to earn credits

You can still earn loads of credits by convincing people to sign up for our project. I’ve improved the site (Stirfryguy’s suggestion) to ensure you can send potential new users to all areas of the site, but your nick will automatically be selected when they decide to sign up. Just add ?referring_member=yournick at the end of the url. yournick is the nickname you signed up with and can be found in the original registration email.
For every new member that signs up you will receive 100 credits and the new member will receive a sign on bonus of 25 credits.

A few suggestions how you can convince people to sign up:
- email your friends, remember you don’t need to be a technical talent to join.
- are you spending a lot of time on forums? post it, add it to your signature, etc.

The design competition for the design of our site is still running, so keep sending us your designs.

The Plan
So how are we doing against the plan? We are ahead of schedule!
We planned 4 weeks to sign up 50 members, it took us 1 week instead
We planned 8 weeks to get a prototype live, it took us 2.5 weeks instead

The next big milestone is 500 webmaster terms, so let’s make sure we overachieve this one as well.

As always if you have a good idea or a question send me an email to contactus@webmastervocab.com


Go Web3.0

Emco"

Updated the refer a new member section

StirFryGuy suggested over email to give members the freedom to redirect potential new users to other pages of the site, but without losing the automatic refer signup bonus.

I'm glad to say this is now implemented.
Whenever you send a user to our site and add "?referring_member=yournick" at the end, your nick will automatically be selected when they go to the signup page.

Thanks for the idea Stirfryguy

Dictionary content creation piece live

I'm glad to announce that the content creation section of the web site is finally live. On www.webmastervocab.com/dictionary/ you can start to add new words and improve the explanations of the exisiting word. Behind the scenes there is an approval process that I will be managing to avoid that good content would be overwritten.

Before you can start to create content, you need to login with the details that were emailed to you. Once logged in, you will see new options appear on the dictionary pages to add or improve the current content.

This new section is plugged into the members credit system so for every action you take, one it is ok'ed, you will earn credits. You can track everything in the members section. Check out our credits section to see how many credits you will earn for your work.

So now I can't wait to see us pulling together to create the best online webmaster dictionary.

Do not worry about my (emco) credits

Just wanted to let everybody know I'm working hard on the dictionary functionality. Part of this is a system to award credits for new words, new descriptions and improved descriptions. I'm testing using my live account and that is why you can see some weird credits in there. Once I have completed all the testing and development I will remove all credits that I have earned that are related to generating content.

Just wanted to let everybody know to avoid misunderstandings...

Issues with the member section - 3 x signup bonus

We had a small issue with the member sections. The first 50 members all received 3 times a signup bonus of 25 credits. I have left it this way to reward the initial members for their confidence.

Member section

For those who wonder what the little stuff is at the top right of the pages,
I wanted to let you know I added basic member functionality.
We need this to ensure we give the members who generate good content the credits they deserve.

I am now working on the content generation piece so bear with me in the next few days.

email update

Latest update that I sent out over email to everybody

"Hi everybody,

 

We’ve made a lot of progress since we first launched last Thursday. Despite a few unexpected surprises (e.g. DP removing our threads), we have signed up over 50 members at a record pace.

 

I’m really excited with so many enthusiastic and talented people on board and I want to thank you for signing up.

 

New Sections

 

You will see that our site: www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/ has changed quite a bit over the last 5 days and we have added a number of new sections:

-         Blog (http://www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/blog/)
Besides a good tool to rank high in the search engines, it also enables me to give updates without filling your inbox everyday with emails. If you want to receive every  update, you can always subscribe to the RSS feed from the blog. I check the blog on a daily basis, so feel free to leave comments here as well.

-         Members Section (http://www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/members/)
In the member section you can see how many members have signed up and how many credits every member has earned so far. You can click through to every members detail page where you can see what they have done so far to earn credits.

-         Earn Credits Section (http://www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/earncredits.php )
In this section we list how you can earn credits at the moment. As we are still in the startup phase it is mainly focussed on site design, content generation and increasing the number of members.

 

Earn credits

 

Site design

Our site design will be decided by member vote.

We are looking for a one page template html page (including graphics, colors, etc) for our webmaster dictionary. For example one page that explains CPC.

Everybody that makes the effort to submit a proposal and gets 2 votes, will receive 100 credits. The winner will receive, besides the honour, no less than 1000 credits and we will use that design for our site.

 

So let your creative talents go and send us your page design before 25^th June in one zipped archive by email to contactus@webmastervocab.com. We will organise a vote after the 25^th to determine the winner. If you feel very creative you can of course send us more than one design.

 

New Members

I am really happy that we have signed up so many users so quickly. However the more we can convince to join us, the more chance we have to make this a huge a success. So for every member you encourage to sign up, we will give you 100 credits. All new members will also receive 25 credits as a signup bonus.

 

You can include your nick in the signup url so that new members automatically select your nick. Replace emco with your nick in the url below to configure the signup page correctly. http://www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/signup.php?referring_member=emco

 

Content Generation

I’m working hard to get this part of the site up and running. As soon as it’s up, I will update you how you can earn credits with it.

 

Good ideas, Questions

As we are trying to set up something new, all good ideas and questions are extremely valuable. I’m amazed and excited about the quality of people we managed to get together. I’ve rewarded some of the best ideas or questions with an extra 25 credits. Go and check out the member section if you are one of them...

http://www.webmastervocab.com/the_project/members/

 

So if you have a good idea or a question send me an email to contactus@webmastervocab.com

 

Go Web3.0!

 

Emco"

New sections live

The project is quickly taking shape.

I've updated the site with 2 sections that are vital for taking the next step.

First of all the members section
In this section you can keep track of the number of members we have signed up so far.
In addition you can also see what members have already contributed and how much credits
they have earned for that.

Secondly the Earn Credits section
Here you can find what you can do to earn credits. As we are in the startup phase it is mainly around signin up new users, design the site and generate content.

If you have any questions or suggestions please let me know. All good ideas, questions will be rewarded with 25 credits

51 Members!

We have achieved the first objective.
51 people have signed up for our project, although we have been removed from DP after about 4h.

Thank you everybody that has sent me emails as
I've been amazed with the amount of good questions and excellent advice that I have received over the last couple of days.

I was counting on using DP as a forum to discuss our project, so we will now have to a little bit more flexible. Therefore I have started this blog, so we have a means to communicate without spamming everybodies inbox.

So what do we do now?
- I have started building the prototype of our site and I hope I can put some elements live fairly quickly.
- The first new pages will contain all kind of activities to earn credits with, so we can start to generate content, links, good designs, more members, etc.

Thanks again everybody for all the enthusiasm and energy. From Australia over India to Poland, the UK and the US.

DP removed post again

DP has removed the post again...

No answer from DP

It's been 12h since the thread was removed.
As I did not receive any answer, I have reposted the initial message with a small message to the moderators at the top of the post.

Let's see what happens - maybe I'll get banned...

Thread removed from DP

We have just come across our first obstacle.
DP seems to have removed the thread from the forum, a bit disappointing.

I refuse to believe this is on purpose, so I have contacted the webmasters.

On the positive side 42 members have signed up so far.

4h live - 39 members

We're making good progress.
A lot of good questions are coming in on the forum and by email.

The big issue remains trust, but I don't think there is a magic solution
to it.

One hour live - 17 members

It looks like it is going well, after 1h we already have 17 members signed up.