Following up on our request for blog input 

Two weeks ago we asked for suggestions on how we can improve the blog. You told us that and more. Below we give you our feedback on some of your feedback.

Gary asks:
Why not more posts about helping us improve our earnings? We have heard from others already about their success stories (which really does us no good unless they give advice within the column like Shoemoney did). Give us more on ad placement, categories and other strategies. Let us hear more on how to improve our earnings, not just the features YPN puts out.

Good points, Gary. We’re always looking for ways to help you earn more money. Sometimes that’s straight-up optimization tips like ad placement and color matching. Other times it’s helping you build better experiences for your users and offering techniques for driving traffic. We will explore a lot more of these strategies in detail in the months ahead.

Frank asks:
Concerning announcements: What about something like a rollout-plan for other countries then US?

Good question, but here’s the deal: There are some things we just can’t talk about, as much as we’d like to. The reason for this is pretty simple—stuff like this is proprietary strategic business information. If we offered up a solid roll-out plan to the public before all is ready, we’d be tipping our hand to the competition. If you were an auto manufacturer and had plans to debut a new line of cars that ran on air, you wouldn’t phone up the competition across the street and give them the details, would you? It’s a lot like that. Sorry. Believe me, when the time comes for new regional roll-outs, blog readers will be the first to know.

Dkearns asks:
I’d love a discussion of whether Yahoo plans to bring YPN to Yahoo360. It’s impossible to use there now because YPN uses a Javascript widget. I assume the main issue is as with all social networks– the possibility of advertising being tied to inappropriate content. But it would be good to discuss ways to police that kind of problem.

 D, this is a request for a product enhancement, not a blogging topic. We at the blog don’t make business or technology decisions, but write about them once they are ready to be made public. That’s not to say our product folks aren’t reading your comments on the blog and working on your suggestions. They are. We can tell you that there is a 360 solution in the works, but it probably won’t be available until we’re out of beta. And, no, we can’t give that date away, either. Yes, the suspense is killing us, too.

CrazyEngineer asks:
I’d love to see a post on YPN being integrated with Yahoo Small Business services. Moreover, how about a post on integrating YPN with Yahoo Messenger to give real time stats.

Again, this is a request for a product enhancement, not a blogging topic. These are, however, compelling suggestions for enhancements and we’ll pass them along for our product people to take into consideration. No promises at this stage, though.

CrazyEngineer continues:
It would be great if you setup a system where the regular YPN blog visitors can interact with the YPN team. It could be a chat by invite only. This way, we can interact closely to improve YPN & also benefit the publishers. And of course, more posts on tips, tricks & success stories are welcome!

We’ve been thinking a lot about how we can facilitate closer communication between our team and our publishers—and among our publishers—via the blog or an ancillary to it. There are several ideas on the table. Stay tuned.

Uttoransen asks:
What we all want is search engine ranking better for your sites, we pay a lot for sources, for videos, and all that, yahoo is one of the best search engines, we want to hear that how can we make it to the top of the ranking, for free, shair with us the secrets, the simple tips we already know.

Good point, Uttoransen. We like to help publishers drive traffic as much as we can on the blog. We need to be careful, however, when offering SEO tips, as a few very naughty people use them unscrupulously and spoil it for everyone. And when they do, who gets the blame? Take one guess! There are plenty of sites, books and consulting services out there that can help you get better rankings.

Njnightsky asks:
How about lowering the $100 payout.

Yet another product enhancement suggestion, not a blog topic suggestion, but we’ll pass your feedback along to our product people. Can’t make any promises!

Guido asks:
Maybe I’m old-fashioned webmaster, but instead of focusing on my earnings with YPN, I’m pretty much trying to figure out what can be improved, and I’d like to hear back from the YPN team about it. For example, ad targeting on static html pages is an easy j job, doing the same with dynamic content is another story. I can be wrong, but I believe that instead of a blog, 99% of YPN testers would love to have a forum.

Guido, your idea speaks to CrazyEngineer’s earlier comment above. I guess great minds think alike, eh? Yeah, we’re bandying a few ideas around about how we can get some useful chatter going among our publishers. Once we’ve got a solid and secure solution in place, blog readers will be the first to know!

Lastly, but not leastly, Ben asks:
How about the ability to report people who are [abusing] the system?

Ben, we will have good news to report about this very soon :-). Stay with us.

Poll Figures

We also ran a poll that asked the question: “What kinds of posts do you want to see on the blog?” Sixty-one people responded. Here’s how the responses break down:

1. How-to’s: Using and optimizing Network features, Yahoo! products, etc: 31%
2. Network product updates & enhancements: 25%
3. Yahoo! announcements: news, policies, planned outtages, etc: 15%
4. Did you know?: Explore features you might not already know about: 11%
5. Publisher spotlights and interviews: 10%
6. Guest posts by industry leaders: 5%
7. General industry news: 2%
8. Industry events: 2% 

Thanks to everyone who helped us out with suggestions and feedback.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor