The Historian

First let me tell you about Xomba. It is a web site where you can make money online by writing articles or posting bookmarks to web site. You earn a 50/50 share of the money made through Google Adsense, but you have to have an account with Adsense.

Here are my thoughts on how Xomba can increase its the number of users and thus increase its profits.

1.) Better Integration with Social Media Sites

Like most site these days Xomba has all the buttons to help users and visitors link to various social media sites, however it does not allow its writers to integrate their accounts in to their profiles on the Xomba site so that when an author makes a post it is automatically posted to their twitter, facebook status or other social sites. This simple addition will instantly increase the exposure for the writer as well as Xomba. Additionally if Xomba were to add its own URL shortener it could show click through statistics for the writers.

2.) Help Users Maximize Their Profit Potential While Using Xomba

Xomba was created to allow users to easily earn money on things they post. This brings in people with little or no experience in writing and even the use of keywords and other way of self promoting online. Xomba can add weekly, bi-weekly and Posts, Podcast and Webinars to help their users learn to be better at what they do. They can even leverage their top users to assist in these by doing interviews and having them make additional posts on being better at Xomba.

3.) Promote their “Best of the Best” and Featured Writers

The front page of the site shows Xomba Features, these are articles that seems to have received a fair bit of votes over the past few hours , however it does not mention the author and there doesn’t appear to be any place that truly promotes individual writers. Perhaps this could be integrated with the little used “Contests”. And maybe featured writers could up for special weekly, monthly and yearly awards? Who wouldn’t want to win a “Xombie of the Year” award?

Xomba also has a twitter account (@xomba) that is currently updated a few times a day. This feed could be used to instantly promote articles that get a “Featured” status and to point out writers that are really contributing to the Xomba Community. And speaking of community…

4.) Add Real Forums and Build a Community

Admittedly Xomba says it has “forums”, but really they have a feedback and suggestion tool that they are calling forums. Add some real forums and allow your users to build their own Zombie community. These forums can be used to distill ideas, collaborate and to assist new Xombites in getting familiar with Xomba. This alone can help with retention of those users who sign-up but then never make more than one or two posts. Create a “Welcome Team” and have them contact new users to see if they need help.

5.) Catch the Details

There are some things on the site that I just don’t understand and I was unable to find any info on them.

1. What are the “Points” for?
2. How does one get into the Hall of Fame?
3. Who is in the Community Think Tank and how do I contribute.
4. Contests, where are they?
5. Why not advertise that you are on Facebook and Twitter on your homepage?
6. And finally, and this is me being nit-picky, can someone please fix the broken image on the main Help page? 

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Full disclosure: Xomba, a local Jacksonville startup, is looking to hire an Online PR Associate. I’ve tossed my hat in to the ring but wanted to go one step further and offer some of my thoughts on increasing the user base for the company.