Using Yahoo Answers

To Promote Your Business or Website

Using Yahoo Answers you can become an expert on various topics and share what you know with others while building traffic to your website or business.

Sign up with Yahoo! for an account and set up your own profile in Yahoo! Answers. Whenever you answer questions you get points. If you ask a question points are subtracted. If your answer is chosen as the best answer, you will get extra points. As you accumulate points your status changes to different levels within Yahoo! Answers and you can soon become a top contributor.

Following the guidelines for using Yahoo! Answers , you need to be careful not to just spam the boards and have a true interest in sharing your information. You can do that by answering questions honestly and openly and providing as much information as you can. You can post links to your own site but do it only when it is really applicable and post other sites in reference too. One thing that you can do to make a difference and build credibility is to sign your name. Most spammers don't do that and they just leave links all over the place. You can report spam by giving people a thumbs down. (For more information on their spam policy.)

There are many topics of discussion that you can monitor in various ways. I started by finding the questions on the main pages of some Yahoo! Groups that I belong to. The questions are relevant to the topic of the group. You can keep up to date of what questions are being asked in your topics of interest. You can also sign up to subscribe to the feed in your category and track them in your rss reader. I just have mine downloaded directly into Thunderbird, my email and news reader.

You can also visit your category section and sort questions by ones that are open and need to be answered and ones that are already answered and closed.

The biggest thing that I really love is that by following and participating in Yahoo! answers you can get ideas of what people are really wanting to know. That is one of the keys to success in any field - finding out what people want and providing a solution.

I have one of the largest sites online about massage and bodywork. When I started using Yahoo! answers, I was able to start creating more pages on various topics that are of interest to me and the readers. That way I am able to fulfill a need or help people find a solution which is what being successful is all about. It takes me out of my own stuff that can only see what I need.

There is also a secret to using Yahoo! answers and that is that you can vote for your own answer to become the best answer thereby adding more points to your profile. I think that is the way that most of the top contributors have made their way to the top. The first time I did it, I felt funny but then realized that other people can vote as well as the person who asked the question.

I just started it a few weeks ago and it seems like my traffic and adsense income has increased a bit so we will see. It is fun anyway and it is nice to contribute my 20 years of experience in the massage profession to the community and those who ask.