SiteComments 2.0 - A Significant Upgrade Has Been Released!
Today we're happy to announce that one of our most highly used, and integral platforms to the website building process has been fully updated and is available now. I'm really excited to tell you all about SiteComments 2.0, the improvements that have been made, and brand new features that we have packed in :)
To access SiteComments click "Websites" from the main menu and you will find it under the "SiteComments" button in the submenu.
At Wealthy Affiliate we have long understood the importance of engagement on a website to not only help with building trust, validity, and legitimacy with your content, but also how discussion plays a huge role in the world of SEO!
In 2018, you want to be writing your content to engage your audience. Questions, discussion, debate, customer reviews, and clarification are a few ways that comments can improve your content and overall publication on the subject matter.
You want to encourage comments on your website - think about the last website where you were researching or browsing something online. Did you scroll down to see what other people had to say about the content? I know that I certainly do. This is a trend that has been here for years and is continuing to be an important element of validity of content. A blog post without comments seems "suspect" these days, and it's much less valid and trustworthy than a similar post with loads of comments and discussion.
We understood this years ago and created a platform called SiteComments which provides a medium for people to spark discussion on their sites from others here at WA. SiteComments was groundbreaking in terms of the technology that was required to pull it off and we were extremely happy with how well-received and widely adopted it was with the WA community.
Part of building an online business and publishing content online is to ask for engagement and facilitate discussion. This is something that we suggest in our training and it's something that 1000's of people do on a daily basis when publishing content through WA.
However, as with any platform there is always room for improvements.
Receiving Comments Took Too Long.
SiteComments is a give-and-take system. It works when people offer comments to others, and in-turn gain credits to request comments of their own. One problem with our initial release of SiteComments was that folks didn't have adequate notifications within the platform. There were also issues with certain types of websites and the algorithms of deciding which websites to display for folks to leave comments on.
This eventually led to the platform taking too long to deliver comments. If you're waiting on comments, you're much less likely to offer comments since you were not getting all the comments you are asking for in a reasonable amount of time, and this cycle continued until the average wait time for comments was unsatisfactory.
So, we went to the drawing board and came up with some ideas to help get people the highest quality comments quickly, efficiently, and within the requested time-frames. Among many updates to the system which will help with this, we came up with two incentives which I'm going to explain below.
Introducing Comment Boost.
First I'd like to mention that there are some incredibly talented authors of comments here within the SiteComments platform. Folks who really offer a lot of awesome comments while waiting for their own comments to be delivered - now we have a system called Comment Boost which gives everyone an opportunity to boost their own comment requests in the queue if they are offering a lot of comments to others. The more you leave, the more you get!
Comment Boost works like this...
For every 10 comments that are offered to others in a 24-hour period, you get all of your requests added to a priority queue. This means that you will get comments that you've requested faster. There is no "Cap" to SiteBoost either. If you would like to offer 30 comments in 24 hours, you would add your requests to the Comment boost priority queue for 72 hours, thus having your requests displayed to others at a higher rate.
For those that leave comments in the platform, you are now rewarded with the opportunity to get your own comments faster!
Comment boost has already shown that many people are working toward boosting their own comments and this is really helping the system tick along and fulfill requests at the highest rate ever that we've seen!
However, Comment boost is not the only incentive that we've come up with. I'd like to introduce our brand new "Certified Commenter" status!
Become Certified & Earn Revenue.
For those that can maintain specific criteria in the SiteComments platform, you can not only earn WA Community credits to put towards requesting SiteComments or SiteFeedback, you can now earn WA Cash credits that have a value of $0.50 each. Maintaining certified commenter status will pay you for comments that you are offering in the form of WA Cash credits that can be exchanged for USD through your credit dashboard!
The criteria to become a certified commenter is based on a 30-day history.
- Minimum of 50 comments offered
- Minimum of 80% approval rate
- Maximum of 20% skip (not interested) rate
Certified commenters offer high quality comments on a wide variety of topics on all kinds of websites. Earn $100's a month by offering comments to others, it's a pretty great way to provide our BEST comm enters some incentive to continue being awesome! We all appreciate your help with sparking engagement and discussion on our websites :)
Reminders.
When you are requesting comments from others, we now have a little pop-up that reminds you that you've got some pending requests and that you could speed up the delivery of your comments by offering some to others. The more comments you offer, the quicker you will receive comments for your website.
It's far too easy to forget that you've even requested comments and it's equally easy to forget to leave some for others. This is one of the reasons why SiteComments 2.0 is going to work much better - we'll let you know with a reminder popup that offering a handful of comments will help you with fulfillment of your own requests!
Have you ever been in the SiteComments platform wanting to leave comments but found that you did not feel you had interest or experience with a topic in order to leave a relevant comment? Well we understand that a great comment can come from someone who is interested or even knowledgeable about the topic. We're really focusing on the alignment of interests as a high priority.
You'll start to notice the odd email here and there letting you know that a fellow member at WA has requested comments on a topic that you have selected as an "Interest" in the system. When you receive such an email it's a great opportunity to leave a comment because it's a topic that you've marked as an Interest from your SiteComment settings.
Requesting "Types" of Comments
One of the most common requests for the SiteComment platform was the ability to specify the kind of comments that you are requesting. We also realize the importance in this and we've updated the process of requesting comments.
Now when requesting comments you can choose up to 4 types of comments.
Requesting a specific kind of comments can give fellow members some more direction with what you are after, and it can really simplify the comment offering process.
Choose any that apply to you, in some cases that may mean choosing all 4 options, and that is perfectly fine. When leaving a comment for someone else, you will now see the types of comments being asked for and you can base your comment on one or more!
** Comment requests made from the old system will not have this "type of comment" criteria, so don't be alarmed if you are offering a comment and you do not see these guidelines.
SiteComments has been improved from the ground up and we've spent a significant amount of time putting thought into how this platform can continue to function and offer the best possible medium for getting engagement on a website.
We love the new UI and the new features are already being utilized. I think that as you use SiteComments 2.0 that you will really enjoy and benefit from what it has evolved into.
There have been a number of discussions already in the past few hours about the updates and feedback has been incredible!
We would love to hear what you have to say, so please leave us a comment below.
Enjoy!
Carson
Recent Comments
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I Carson, this sounds great. To date I have not used SiteComment because I didn't think my site was far enough along to warrant comments yet. I f I go into Site Comment can I take part even if I am not submitting my own website until I feel it is ready.
Thank you for the updates to the platform, it sounds great and I am sure I will begin in the near future using this feature again.
Mary
Hi Mary, every comment that you leave will earn you a WA community credit which can be used at anytime in the future to request your own comments. So, offering comments now is a great idea so that when your site is ready you will have a bunch of credits to put towards your own requests!
Thank you, Carson. I am so saving this. I love the features. Ideally, I 'd like to see a Quora-style selection of comment topics I think this would even rock further! The "my interests list is a great first step. I'd like to type in areas like alternate history or cosmology. While not mainstream they generate a lot of passion and interest for me in Quora!
Hi Carson,
To me this is more than an update. It should be called "The new SiteComments" since it's way more than what it used to be.
The best part about it is the incentive for everyone to participate and benefit from it, and even earn money with it!
Like you mentioned in your post, engagement, trust, validity, and legitimacy with our website content, plays a huge role in the world of SEO!
This "new" tool will give everyone that want to use it a great opportunity that we cannot get anywhere else but here!!!
You guys keep on amazing me every time you come out with an upgrade. Like I mentioned earlier in a post, you guys keep the ball rolling all the time!
Thank you for being such great leaders!
Cheers ! 😃
Denis
Awesome upgrade!
Is there a way to integrate sitecomments 2.0 with sites which are not hosted within WA, Carson?
Well, this is insane!
I started to use the site comments two weeks ago, and I have to say that it is AMAZING.
I can't wait to post more helpful comments in order to get some for my own posts.
But for some reason, when I am asking for comments It takes a really long time, I hope that from now on it will get better because I'm definitely going to get the Comment Boost!
You should most certainly get your comments faster with the new platform, it was one of our main goals with the new platform! Let us know how it works out over the next couple of weeks!
This is awesome! Thank you so much:) I'm really excited about the comment boost. I really like that there's also going to be pop up reminders for us as well. The certified commenter status is something I'm gonna strive for. Thanks!
Great stuff Jennifer! I think that the reminders are going to be a big deal in terms of getting comments fulfilled. It's just so easy to forget once you request a bunch of comments to go back and offer some - it was a hurdle that we're looking forward to overcoming :)
The new updated SiteComments is AWESOME! After using it today, it's just the boost we needed - especially the 2 incentives ;)
However, there's a problem I encountered which could ruin members chances of qualifying for "Certified Commenter".
I came across a few sites that I was forced to skip because one post wasn't even published in English.
And then there were posts that requested me to share "personal experience" which I had none of. For example, I came across a post on breast cancer which I couldn't add any insights on.
If we get enough sites like these that we have to skip, then the percentage rate is gonna be higher than 20%.
It's saying that my skip rate is 100%, which could prove difficult to lower.
Hi Neil,
Yes, we're aware of website not in your language and for those you can "Report" the website. A website Report can be used once in a while to get around such instances. However, we do track website reporting so that it does not get used as a loophole to skip to the next without a legitimate reason.
If you find non-english websites, you may report them to us - we'll update our platform to add "language" related reason for reporting.
Sometimes you simply need to skip because you cannot answer but the more that you DO answer, the more room you will have to skip while remaining at a low skip rate.
A skip rate of 100% when you've only viewed a couple requests is very easy to overcome by submitting a number in a row. Certified commenters have the ability to offer relevant comments on a wide range of topics, and it's something that many folks will be able to achieve.
Hey Carson!
OK, thanks. Never knew I could report foreign content. But do see how the report feature could be abused.
It's great to know that we can still lower our skip rate. I thought it was gonna be a jail thing that we couldn't escape lol.
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I already checked it out and commented, I LOVE it Carson! And now I see that there are more incentives than I thought, how awesome is that?
You guys don't cease to amaze me, every time new, pleasant, bigger surprises 😍
And honestly, SiteComments are a great way for newbies to make some cash while learning.
I remember when I started my journey, I was excited to create WA tutorials to make extra cash but unlike being a Certified Commenter, first I had to be a Premium member of the community for 3 months.
Thank you!