Free custom text method that boosts your CTRs
Noob overview:
You need to freshen your pages - hourly if possible. Comments are a great way to do this because they are short and simple. But the deeper you get into it, you find that formatting grammatically-correct text that reads perfectly and relates to other comments opens up a huge can of worms.
I looked at WordNet, spinning and the other text tools out there but found that they weren't easy to adapt to my specific use. I needed something simple that I could control, and I am a php noob.
But when I launched it I got a rather wonderful surprise. When you do this a certain way - in conjunction with an aff link - I got at least a 5X improvement in my CTRs. I have had a 46% CTR week on CJ. So following are examples and tutorial of how to build this technique that delivers two benefits; It freshens and builds your pages constantly, and it provides a very high-response place to put an aff link.
Requirements:
1. The basic php skill of grabbing random text and echoing it to a page.
2. You can do this with either flat files or mysql.
3. A cron event. More on that later.
Here is example output for a page on 'Dinosaurs':
12:31 HurrDurr said: This is a sick page on Triceratops. Does anybody know where I could buy a damn Triceratops?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12:45 OmNomNom said: The best place I found is at <retailer>: <aff link>. They were the cheapest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12:50 Homer said: Thanks for the tip OmNomNom. I picked it up. Rep points for you.
This is just the start. You can make as many comment types as you want, with infinitely random text. And all related to each other, never fucked up. As simple or complex as you want. Have different pages grow at different rates too.
Here are fragments for the first sentence of the first comment. Pick a fragment randomly from each of the 4 columns:
| . . . <1> . . . | . . . <2> . . . | . . . . <3> . . . . | . . <Keyword> . . |
| . . This is a . | . helpful site .| . . . about . . . . | . . Triceratops . . |
| . .Wow, . . . | . good page . | . talking about . | . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Totally . . | . nice info . . | . to learn about .| . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Pretty . . | . sweet tips . | cluing me about .| . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Thanks- . | . great blog . | that clued me on| . . Triceratops . . |
Non-noobs will be very familiar with the above. The difference of this particular technique is that by creating specific sentence types you can control their meaning, and therefore match them up perfectly with the next/previous comment. That is the whole goal here. It's also why I couldn't use most of the text generator tools out there.
To noobs, each column goes in a separate text file and a php random function grabs it. Then echo it to your page combining them into a sentence.
The username is done the same way. And you guys know how to slap a timestamp on there. Then format the comment with divs and css and it will look as good as it reads.
Here is how to keep going after the first comment:
If you're doing this in flat files without mysql you'll have to echo all the related comments at the same time. The three above, for example. Notice that the first comment is a request for a keyworded product, the second comment is the aff link, and the third is an implied validation that the second comment is really the one you should click on, Mr. Visitor. You'll have to print all 3 comments at the same time if you are using flat files because:
These comments have to occur in order. If you wanted to print one at a time, first you'd have to determine what the last comments is so you know which new comment to answer it with. Maybe some of you php gurus know how to do this - but then you might as well do it with mysql the right way.
1. Label each comment type. Example names for the 3 comments above: "product_request", "aff_link", "thanks_got_it". Each comment type has its own random text fragments as above.
Come up with as many comment types as you want. I have complete conversations about somebody's kid going to college, which college it is, and how nice it is there in the winter. And how they like their new Volvo. Seriously. And it all stands up to human review. This is the beauty of comments. They are so short that you don't have worry about paragraphs, storyline and continuity, etc.
2. After the three example comments above, you can just keep going with more. For example if the last comment type is "thanks_got_it", then your if/then will grab "youre_welcome_asswipe" - and so on, like "hows_your_mom".
3. Right now you are saying "That's a shitload of text fragments to write". Yes. So get to it. You need a dozen comment types at least. It will take you at least 20 hours to fill out all the random text fragments for them that read flawlessly. And when you fire up the random php you will read stuff that feels weird, but since this stuff is all yours you edit them quickly.
4. If you are doing this in mysql it's easier. You can add a column to a comment type that identifies it, so when you want to write a new comment you can look up the previous one. For instance if the existing comment is "product_request", you can have an if/then that the next comment should be x,y, or z.
5. Cron. This is a service that calls a file at time intervals. Google it if you don't know. I use an external service set to write a comment every hour. With several hundred sites now I set each site's cron time for 'X' minutes after the hour so that the VPS doesn't get clobbered with hundreds of requests at once.
In practice, you would take all your php and put it into one big php file per site. Then call that file with cron to write the comments.
6. I don't use WP but there are many people here who would know how to implement this for that. I use another popular CMS and write these comments right in to the CMS's mysql, bypassing the admin and all that.
7. If there are packages that do this already, please clue me in...
HTH
Noob overview:
You need to freshen your pages - hourly if possible. Comments are a great way to do this because they are short and simple. But the deeper you get into it, you find that formatting grammatically-correct text that reads perfectly and relates to other comments opens up a huge can of worms.
I looked at WordNet, spinning and the other text tools out there but found that they weren't easy to adapt to my specific use. I needed something simple that I could control, and I am a php noob.
But when I launched it I got a rather wonderful surprise. When you do this a certain way - in conjunction with an aff link - I got at least a 5X improvement in my CTRs. I have had a 46% CTR week on CJ. So following are examples and tutorial of how to build this technique that delivers two benefits; It freshens and builds your pages constantly, and it provides a very high-response place to put an aff link.
Requirements:
1. The basic php skill of grabbing random text and echoing it to a page.
2. You can do this with either flat files or mysql.
3. A cron event. More on that later.
Here is example output for a page on 'Dinosaurs':
12:31 HurrDurr said: This is a sick page on Triceratops. Does anybody know where I could buy a damn Triceratops?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12:45 OmNomNom said: The best place I found is at <retailer>: <aff link>. They were the cheapest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12:50 Homer said: Thanks for the tip OmNomNom. I picked it up. Rep points for you.
This is just the start. You can make as many comment types as you want, with infinitely random text. And all related to each other, never fucked up. As simple or complex as you want. Have different pages grow at different rates too.
Here are fragments for the first sentence of the first comment. Pick a fragment randomly from each of the 4 columns:
| . . . <1> . . . | . . . <2> . . . | . . . . <3> . . . . | . . <Keyword> . . |
| . . This is a . | . helpful site .| . . . about . . . . | . . Triceratops . . |
| . .Wow, . . . | . good page . | . talking about . | . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Totally . . | . nice info . . | . to learn about .| . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Pretty . . | . sweet tips . | cluing me about .| . . Triceratops . . |
| . . Thanks- . | . great blog . | that clued me on| . . Triceratops . . |
Non-noobs will be very familiar with the above. The difference of this particular technique is that by creating specific sentence types you can control their meaning, and therefore match them up perfectly with the next/previous comment. That is the whole goal here. It's also why I couldn't use most of the text generator tools out there.
To noobs, each column goes in a separate text file and a php random function grabs it. Then echo it to your page combining them into a sentence.
The username is done the same way. And you guys know how to slap a timestamp on there. Then format the comment with divs and css and it will look as good as it reads.
Here is how to keep going after the first comment:
If you're doing this in flat files without mysql you'll have to echo all the related comments at the same time. The three above, for example. Notice that the first comment is a request for a keyworded product, the second comment is the aff link, and the third is an implied validation that the second comment is really the one you should click on, Mr. Visitor. You'll have to print all 3 comments at the same time if you are using flat files because:
These comments have to occur in order. If you wanted to print one at a time, first you'd have to determine what the last comments is so you know which new comment to answer it with. Maybe some of you php gurus know how to do this - but then you might as well do it with mysql the right way.
1. Label each comment type. Example names for the 3 comments above: "product_request", "aff_link", "thanks_got_it". Each comment type has its own random text fragments as above.
Come up with as many comment types as you want. I have complete conversations about somebody's kid going to college, which college it is, and how nice it is there in the winter. And how they like their new Volvo. Seriously. And it all stands up to human review. This is the beauty of comments. They are so short that you don't have worry about paragraphs, storyline and continuity, etc.
2. After the three example comments above, you can just keep going with more. For example if the last comment type is "thanks_got_it", then your if/then will grab "youre_welcome_asswipe" - and so on, like "hows_your_mom".
3. Right now you are saying "That's a shitload of text fragments to write". Yes. So get to it. You need a dozen comment types at least. It will take you at least 20 hours to fill out all the random text fragments for them that read flawlessly. And when you fire up the random php you will read stuff that feels weird, but since this stuff is all yours you edit them quickly.
4. If you are doing this in mysql it's easier. You can add a column to a comment type that identifies it, so when you want to write a new comment you can look up the previous one. For instance if the existing comment is "product_request", you can have an if/then that the next comment should be x,y, or z.
5. Cron. This is a service that calls a file at time intervals. Google it if you don't know. I use an external service set to write a comment every hour. With several hundred sites now I set each site's cron time for 'X' minutes after the hour so that the VPS doesn't get clobbered with hundreds of requests at once.
In practice, you would take all your php and put it into one big php file per site. Then call that file with cron to write the comments.
6. I don't use WP but there are many people here who would know how to implement this for that. I use another popular CMS and write these comments right in to the CMS's mysql, bypassing the admin and all that.
7. If there are packages that do this already, please clue me in...
HTH
