How important is your Epinions Profile Page?Aug 29 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Market yourself using your Profile Page. You're bound to increase your hits and improve your WOT! As an Epinions member, there are a lot of things you can do to make your membership successful and profitable. As you've no doubt read by now, one of the keys to being successful on Epinions is writing informative, intuitive, well-organized and detailed reviews on the items and/or subject matters that you posses some expertise in. Of course, you can also become successful by reading, rating and commenting on the reviews of other members. Both of these 'requirements' will doubtless lead to an increased WOT ratio, increased member hits on your own reviews and greater visibility to the Epinions community. But there are other things you can do to successfully market yourself to the Epinions community as well. Some members have discussed and debated the importance of a catchy user/member name. In fact, user k1j2g3 wrote an essay on that very subject matter (See: http://www.epinions.com/content_1770496132) where she humorously lamented about calling herself 'HotThongBabe' and reaping in the member hits solely from her name. I guess a catchy username can lead to more popularity, but as I commented to k1j2g3, I firmly believe that the quality of your work will ultimately be the basis of the judgment from your Epinion peers. Other people use very attractive profile pictures, usually of models and the like, to lure members to their reviews. Some members use them while fully disclosing that the picture is not, in fact, representative of the actual member. Others make no mention and try and pass them selves off as the displayed image. Bottom line: You can never be sure. But interestingly enough, be it a pretty picture or an alluring user name, these methods do have their own level of success in drawing in readers and, ultimately, increasing your opinion hits. But what about your profile page? Epinions has basically given each user carte blanche access to a web site with the ability of containing 100,000 characters of html code. Most users simple write a simple blurb about themselves, and of course there is nothing wrong with this. Others choose not to enter anything at all. Again - their choice. Still others, like yours truly, attempt to use the profile page as a means to drive in more hits to all of their opinions, as opposed to the defaulted-display of the 'Last 5' opinions each user is treated to. And, to further the point, consider this. If you are trying to draw in people, get them interested in your account, your writings, your opinions, YOU, you'll want to entice them in any/every way you can. Choosing not to enter in any type of information in the short or long essay is bound to have fewer people reading you as well as fewer people trusting you. You have to market yourself, and the profile page is one of the best ways of doing so. Use it to talk a little bit about yourself. Update it often - use it as somewhat of a revolving opinion on you and your life. You might find that people will visit it more often just to see what's 'new with you' which, in turn, will likely lead to them clicking on your most recent reviews. And it can snowball from there. But if that seems somewhat far-fetched, then use a little HTML magic to spruce up your profile page. I'll admit, I've gone a little wacky with my own - lacing it with pictures of Rush albums, treating it to a blue-wave background. But more importantly, I've built in drop down menus, sorted by category, that can give any reader a simple and direct means of surfing through all of my reviews. Make it easy for a reader to find a review, and they're more apt to read and rate said review. Not an HTML expert? Not sure how to get things to look just right? No problem. Up until 2 months ago, I never ventured into the HTML programming world either. But it's easier than you think, and I'm here to give you a few pointers on developing your profile page. One note: HTML code works with using the 'greater than' and 'less than' signs on your keyboard (Shift-Comma and Shift-Period on most standard keyboards). Since Epinions won't allow me to use any HTML code in my opinion, I'm going to replace those characters with open and closed parenthesis "(" and ")". Make sure you replace the parenthesis with the appropriate greater than/less than character when actually using this code. Adding a background picture/graphic Adding a background picture is as easy as pie. First, you need to have the full address of the location of the picture you want to use. If you are linking to a picture on someone else's web site, you may want to get their permission first. Simply add this code to your profile long-bio edit screen, and you're in business. (body background=http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/9313/images/blueback2.jpg) I've included the actual address of the background picture I use. You should alter this to your specific picture address. Simple, huh? Let's continue... Adding a picture to your profile page As opposed to adding a background picture, which tiles throughout the web page, you can link directly to a picture by using this simple command. (img src="http://users2.ev1.net/~paulscott/rush/images/tourbook01.gif" width="105" height="100" ) Again, alter the picture's actual address with the address I have listed above. Then you can alter the size of the picture by playing with the width and height settings. This way, if the original picture is huge, you can shrink it down. Conversely, a small picture can be blown up, but be prepared for some pixelation depending on the original picture's resolution. This is fun, right? :) Drop-down Opinion Menu Selectors As previously mentioned, I've created a series of drop down menus by my own separated categories for easier maneuvering by other users. What I'm going to display below is the segment for one drop down menu (or one category). This one is my actual 'Other Music Related Reviews' coding. To add more categories/drop down menus, simply repeat this entire code, making the obvious changes where necessary. (form) (select name="jump" size="1") (option selected value=" http://www.epinions.com/user-jag2112 ") Other Music Related Reviews (option value=" http://www.epinions.com/content_36708388484 ") The Smithereens - Blown to Smithereens (/option) (option value=" http://www.epinions.com/content_38555651716 ") Triumph - Classics (/option) (/select)(/font) (input type="button" value="Go" onclick="top.location.href=this.form.jump.options[this.form.jump.selectedIndex].value") (/font)(/p) (/form) This coding works by identifying the html address of the related opinion next to the description you want to appear in the drop down menu. Notice that I have the heading of the drop down menu linking to the address of my profile page. I did this in order to refresh my profile page if someone clicks the 'go' button without selecting a particular review. As you add more reviews to the particular category, just add another data line which begins with the (option value=... command. It's that simple. Well, I hope this little profile essay turned HTML tutorial has shed some light on ways you can improve your popularity and success on Epinions. Everyone has a unique writing style, that's for sure. Now it's time to show your unique self-promoting and HTML skills. As I always like to say, "It can't hurt..." If you have any questions about the HTML coding I've included here, feel free to email me at Jag2112@hotmail.com. I'll be happy to help you out. Thanks, as always, for reading...  |
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