Mahalo Sports Vertical Newsletter #1

Posted by Unknown | Thursday, January 28, 2010 | , | 0 comments »

Hello all, welcome to the first edition of the Mahalo Sports Newsletter.

You are on this list either because you
A) Approached me showing interest through Mahalo, or
B) Are a new Sports Writer who contacted me off site.
Currently this list has 30 members, it's a good number to start, but I intend on growing it.

Getting to know me

If you contacted me through Mahalo you probably know who I am, but for the new guys out there a little bit of history about myself. I've been with Mahalo since their first year of 2007, I started off by writing Serps (search engine results page), got bumped up to a full time guide position in 2008, moved on as the Community of Mahalo Answers and grew that for a year, and just a couple weeks ago I took the Vertical Manager position for Sports. I've worked for four years online previously with Netscape, AOL News and True/Slant publications, I live in Qualicum Beach BC with my fiance where I am currently training to be a part-time firemen. It's only been a couple of weeks as Sports VM, so I've been spending most of my time organizing the vertical and strategizing on a plan on how we pump some life into this long neglected corner of Mahalo.

The Trainees


For the Mahalo vets who may have thought I forgot about them, I'm happy to report that I have been spending a great amount of time with the newer writers working them through Tasks. I believe the best method of learning and understanding the fundamentals of building a Mahalo Serp (search engine result page,) is by diving in and completing tasks. This training so far has gone extremely well and I am proud to say 2 writers have reached the goal of 10 tasks already - @fphlip9 and @justimko, there are few of you dangling close and I can't wait to see you get past 10. Once a new writer reaches 10 tasks, not only do I send them a nice little bonus, but it will also open the door to the more lucrative Mahalo projects.

Project for the Vets

Speaking of lucrative projects, if any of the Veteran Mahaloians on this list, who have been admitted to the How-To team are interested in writing Sports How-To's we are working on a "Bulk Task Project" - If you think you can complete 25 Sports Related How-To's (Worth M$8 each) in six weeks, please contact me. New writers you can also participate in this project, only after you get admitted onto the "How-To" team. You can learn how to do that here.
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-join-the-how-to-team

The Olympics

Lucky me, starting the Sports department under a month before these games begin. Many of our trainees have been building key Olympic pages and if we are lucky they will rank in search engines before the Olympics begin. We are about half-way there on the event list. I have been using these for trainees, but I'm ready to open them to the vets. If you are interested in building and maintaining Olympic Event pages, please let me know.

NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL

What is a sports department without the big 4? Currently Mahalo has a team page for each team, but all of them are crap. They were all built back in 2007 and have received little to no maintenance since. My top priority after the Olympics, will be to assign and fix these pages. From the business side of things, only a miracle would ever get these pages to rank well in search engines, and as of today none of these pages earn more then a couple bucks a month. The plan is overhaul the entire "Team Page" formula.

So, if you are a MAJOR fan of a big 4 team, I need to know as soon as possible so I can assign you a team page, nothing needs to be done just yet, but after the Olympics, a major update will need to be done to your page and there will be at least a dozen tasks related to your team that we are going to build. For starters I am only going to assign 2 team pages per person, so contact me with your top choices, first come, first serve :)

Odds and Ends

Just a reminder, especially to the trainees who are noticing the "Pages Managed" tab for the first time in their profile. Page "Views" is a feature that does not currently work on your pages, if you are looking at a bunch of zeroes, I can assure you people are visiting your pages. If you are a stat junkie (and I hope you are) The best feature to take advantage of is connecting your Mahalo account with Google Analytics, this way you can track views and where your traffic is coming from.
http://www.mahalo.com/google-analytics-for-page-managers



Also, be sure to bookmark the Mahalo Sports Vertical homepage, here I will be posting tasks that are available for anybody new or old to claim. The most important bit you'll read is my emphasis on joining the Mahalo IRC Chat room, this is where I and other members of the sports department hang out while we are working on the site, the more participants the merrier. If you have any questions about HOW to login to the chat, please respond to this email and i will be more then willing to explain. However, this page explains a great deal. http://www.mahalo.com/mahalo-irc-chat - Just enter mahalosports as your channel option.

So there you have it, the first Mahalo Sports Newsletter. Naturally, I would love to hear your responses, thoughts, teams and observations, drop me a line anytime.

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