So what’s happened since the launch?

In Jan, when WebProNews announced the Amapedia launch, early feedback was along the lines of:

The site looks pretty raw currently and has little info in it – it is after all brand new.

And now nearly half a year later, I find 15 product reviews on the site, none of which are particularly inspiring. Worst still, some product discussions haven’t had an update in 55 days.

Ghost town?

For sure.

Critics will question, Is it even a worthwhile exercise for the mammoth online retailer?

Let’s look at the demand for Wikipedias, or user-contributed content sites:

So there is high demand for online information reference sites.

And the chances are, once you’ve discovered wikipedia, you’re likely to bookmark or keep it in mind, and head over there to bone up on unfamiliar topics.

I’ve gone over there a number of times in the course of my blogging and site development efforts to fact check or build up my background knowledge.

So where has the story gone wrong for poor Amapedia?

The site design certainly looks polished and is consistent with Amazon’s branding and consistent sitewide design.

I do find the user interface a little clunky though.

The Wikipedia I’m used to is fairly text-heavy and has little in the way of design gimmicks.

It’s utlitarian in the way of “enter key phrase in search box, hit enter”. I don’t use burn any neurons trying to find categories or figure out how to search for stuff in Amapedia’s case.

But I think the biggest obstacle is a lack of buzz for Amapedia’s efforts.

History has shown that websites with really horrible interfaces, and poor design can survive, provided there is something compelling.

I have been on more than a few forums and social community sites where the design and interface has been nothing short of dreadful, but I’ve stuck around because the people were interesting.

Text Link Ads not too long ago, enlisted the likes of Neil Patel and Cameron Olthuis to spice up the Link Building Blog and have generated a community of readers and buzz.

Can Amazon do the same too?

They’ve already dumped the idea of plogs (a kind of product blog) in February. So what next?

Maybe Amapedia could hire the likes of celebrity gossip maven Perez Hilton or the folks at gadget blog Gizmodo to contribute interesting content to shake things up. Give Amapedia some personality.

But I think the biggest lure Amazon could go with is with their most valuable asset: Amazon credit vouchers.

If you remember back far enough, Amazon used to give away $10 credit vouchers like water when they first launched.

It certainly worked very well and I’ve racked up a couple of thousand dollars worth of purchases from Amazon over the last couple of years.

A lot of it had to do with the initial exposure and liking for Amazon’s interface and more so their customer service (I typically received an answer within 24 hours, and sometimes as short as 6 hours).

Awarding quality Amapedia content contributors is a less expensive route than taking on hired guns for content creation. More so, incentivizing Amapedia contributors builds site stickiness and organic growth will occur.

If something is going to happen, it needs to take place soon, because the web is already evolving at a rapid place, and the marketplace is unforgiving of slow pokes.

Not too many hands there.

But if you think about it, having original, quality content is vital critical to building long term sustainable traffic for your blog or website.

If you’re posting stale content on your site, you’ll turn off your readers.

Do it for extended periods of time, and you might as well sound the death knell.

It can however, be alleviated if you adhere to some guidelines.

• Look for inspiration

Visit Wikipedia, article directories, forums, Yahoo Answers, Google News.

Look at existing content specific to your niche, whether it’s weight loss, scrapbooking, smoking cessation, birdwatching, affiliate marketing and the like.

What’re the topics that people asking and discussing?

What’re their biggest worries/problems/concerns?

• Find an angle and get answers

Compile questions that if answered, will give some insight, or better yet, a solution to their problems.

Look for high authority sites, contact high authority contacts, get the questions answered.

• Create value

Sort out and organize your information. Arrange and present the information in a logical manner. If you’ve got differing opinions, sort them into pro and con stances. Present a balanced viewpoint.

• Presentation

A blog or website gives scope for you to present the information, using lists, bullets to arrange the information in an easy-to-understand manner. Use graphics, photos if available. Better yet, include a podcast or a video if you can.

Aim to shoot for the heart and answer your reader’s most burning questions.

If you’ve done this, you’re well on your way to building your traffic to something ferocious.

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The whole process is easy, isn’t it?

The key is really going about your “business” in a systematic manner, and reducing the tasks to an easy to understand, and easy to execute manner.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the Internet Millionaire Code system, it will open the gates of understanding and help you see Internet Marketing as a holistic and organic system.

Doing a search for “affiliate marketing” shows the Wiki entry at the top position for the organic results.

Should Wiki entries be so dominant? Especially as the members of the SEOmoz team point out other high authority sites might provide more comprehensive and relevant information?

As Shoemoney pointed out in his posts Google Video #1 Rank – What Kind Of Traffic Does It Bring? and Top Commentors MyblogLog Integration, the evolution of alternative high authority, high traffic sites like Google Video and MyBlogLog can bring huge amounts of traffic.

Now think about Wikipedia, which generates loads of traffic, coupled with it’s dominance at the SERPs. Can you imagine how a well-placed Wiki can drive hordes of qualified, focused traffic to a site?

A good podcast to kick off SEOmoz’s series (I believe they’re planning another 4).

I liked the content and it’s great to put a face to the team.

My feedback consists of two points:

• Tighter framing

I’m a fan of closely cropped photos and videos, which draw your eyes to the focus of attention. I’d probably have framed the shot like this:

• Publicly Hosted Bugbears

As with all hosted video services, the service will attempt to serve up relevant video content. At the end of this clip, the following “related” clips popped up:

While the “Shoe Shop prank” and “Mixed Armwrestling” clips might be irrelevant to Wikipedia and Google rankings, they could be good for a laugh.

Having “Cheating Wife” served up (even if it’s a joke clip), tends to detract from the informational nature of the clip.

The alternative would be to host the clips on a dedicated server, though the potential bandwidth resources would escalate exponentially, especially if the post ranks high on Digg and other services.

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While you’re over at SEOmoz, you might like to check out Matt Inman and Rand’s Page Strength tool.

The purpose of the tool as listed is to:

I ran the tool on this domain and got the following summary:

Accompanying the summary is a comprehensive set of information, including dominance in the search engines, backlinks, link from .edu and .gov domains (I was surprised to see my blog listed at: Online gaming: Moral panic in Singapore), internal site links and others.

You can see the Page Strength results for WhoIsAndrewWee.com.

And the Page Strength tool can be found here.

In the works too are a variety of interesting SEO-related tools, I’m sure it’ll be worth checking out once they’re launched.