FAQ
Following are some of the really smart questions we get at the Optimizers Club.
Q: What is the Optimizers Club, anyway?
The Optmizers Club is a website dedicated to the idea that any and every website can perform better than it does now. We concentrate on split testing so that we know for sure if a change to a website is actually helping or hurting. But, it turns out that there’s one critical flaw with most split testing — and that’s the diversity of ideas that people test. So, we built our Optimization Engine to generate spectacular, diverse options for you to test. The Optimization is a Crowdsourcing application. It’s the power of the crowd — in this case, the power of all of our members — that produces the valuable ideas that help to improve our members’ websites.
Q: What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is a concept that basically says that “the many are smarter than the few”. And, in most cases, this turns out to be true. There are several books on the subject that we recommend reading, most notably Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, and the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. There are many other books, as well, and we’ll post reviews of them in our Crowdsourcing Book Recommendations category.
Q: What does membership cost?
The Optimizers Club basic membership is free. Join now!
Q: How many projects can I run at once?
Presently, you can run one Optimization project at a time. But, you can run as many Optimization Projects, one after another, as you want over time.
Q: Are there other sites that use Crowdsourcing, or are about Crowdsourcing?
Yes, there are several, and the list is growing. Here are just a few that we enjoy:
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- Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia is a crowdsourcing site. All the pages are built by people contributing to the project.*
- iStockPhoto. Thousands of photographers, videographers and illustrators work together to create the most popular library of royalty-free photo images online.
- Threadless. Crowdsourced T-shirts? Yup!
- Mechanical Turk. Amazon’s way of helping split up large jobs into tiny ones.
- The Crowd Sourcing Directory. Ironically, they don’t build the site using crowdsourcing.
- BoostCTR. Helping you beat your Adwords Click Through Rate via Crowdsourcing.
Q: How do I get optimization ideas for my site?
You get optimization ideas for your site by earning “idea credits”. You earn idea credits by giving optimization ideas to other members with our “suggestion surfer”.
Q: How many idea credits do I earn for giving one set of ideas?
You earn 6 idea credits for giving optimization ideas.
Q: How many idea credits do I use when I receive optimization ideas from others?
You use 10 idea credits for each set of optimization ideas you receive.
Q: Why does it cost me more to receive ideas than what I earn for the ideas I give?
There are several reasons.
1) A small gap makes the system more robust.
2) Some of the gap is used to place OptimizersClub.com pages in the rotation, so we can work on making the site better for everyone. And
3) We use some of the gap to motivate good behavior from members. For instance, you get a bonus idea credit for rating the ideas you receive from others.
Q: What do I do if the review is not helpful?
After you receive optimization ideas, you can “rate” the ideas. If the ideas were not helpful, you can score them a 1. You won’t be charged for the ideas, and the member who submitted the ideas will be notified.
Q: Who started the Optimizers Club?
You can place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Jim Stone and Mark Widawer. Jim is the inventor the Split Test Accelerator, one of the best Taguchi testing systems available for internet marketers. Mark is the author of the Landing Page Cash Machine, and more than 20 other internet marketing related ebooks, teleseminar, and webinar series. Once you sign up, you’ll get an email explaining how the site was conceived, and how it works.
