Online Communities | Articles

If you are like me, you tend to procrastinate instead of working through that ‘to-do list’. Motivation can be a problem that affects us all from time to time - it often takes me a good few hours each day before I get started on anything productive.

Repetition is something that drives me crazy; if something involves some kind of repetition, I am loathe to get started as I know just how bored I will undoubtedly get!

Monotonous tasks are often the most important

What does your daily routine involve? If you run community websites it is likely you check your forums or blogs, respond to emails and approve and moderate members at least once each and every day.

How often do you repeat these same tasks? Many times, I am sure - and if you do not maintain this routine your community will suffer.

An example of monotony

One of the most popular sections at Just Chat is our free email penpals service. Rather than offering a dating section (there are too many competitors in this field doing a great job already) we decided to establish a section of the site dedicated to those looking solely for friends.

To reduce spam, each account is manually approved before a user can gain full access. Unfortunately manually checking each profile is extremely monotonous and laborious, but it is an essential task if this section of the site is to remain useful and attractive to our members.

Use advertising to motivate

Epals does not currently generate significant revenue for Just Chat. Rather, it is an additional service which encourages members to become more involved in the community and stick around. The reduced financial motivation consequently resulted in me falling behind in moderating new members.

Speedy moderation is extremely important - if members are waiting around before they can interact, your community will suffer and you run the risk of losing that member for good. Therefore I needed to address this issue.

Recently I added a corner ad on the epals pages advertising dating sites, as I felt this would be a relevant service that epals users may be interested in. This is flash animated, so it catches the user’s eye without distracting from the content. Once this was installed, revenue generated through my dating partners increased.

Now I am far more eager to speedily moderate all new members as I know they have a greater potential of generating money.

The hidden advantage of advertising

This article has shown that apart from the obvious advantages of publishing advertising on your site (to generate revenue!) it can also be used as a motivator.

I am pretty sure most of us are eager to carry out a task when there is a financial reward upon completion. You can offer yourself this reward by adding advertising in the areas of your site that you struggle the most to maintain.

This advertising has the potential to motivate you and consequently further benefit your online community.