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I've been thinking about setting up a web site that reviews and evaluates websites that follow the Ask-an-Expert format and I want your feedback.

I think it would be interesting to have a site that lists all of the Ask-an-Expert sites in one place and grades them based on how good the site is.

I was thinking that the site with the highest score would be eligible for a certificate of excellence. But who am I to judge the greatest sites on the web?

Of course in my opinion Able2Know is the best site.

I was thinking the sites could be rated on such things like Management, Interface, the speed and quality of answers, total number of members and other areas.

Anyway, this is my idea, does anybody think it's a good one and if so what other categories should an Ask-an-expert site be graded on?

Would anybody like to help set up a site like this by brain storming ideas and reviewing web sites?

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http://www.alexa.com/browse/general?catid=60393&mode=general

http://onlineservices.tucows.com/expert_advice_default.html

It's been done many times, but never with a focus on "Ask an Expert" sites. Thing is, there are only a handful of these sites online with any real use. Able2Know.com has the highest Alexa traffic rating of them all, but the one that's really the most heavily trafficked is About'smone (don't remember the exact name, they bought out two sites and combined them).

Able2Know is in the preliminary stages of a partnership with one of the big 5. The lil field of ask an expert is gonna get a bit of a shakeup.

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I've seen a few of these so called rating sites. None of them any good. There are a lot of lesser known Ask-an-Expert sites out there that I've found that seem pretty good but don't get any recognition. of course A2K is the best one I've seen to date.

Then there are those sites that claim to be an Expert site but don't even come close. Those sites need to be set strait.

I think it would be good to have one site that focused only on this kind of site instead of a broad range of sites. That would be more credible, I think.

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Yeah, but unless it got lots of traffic nobody would pay attention IMO.

If you wanna do it, I suggest really going for depth and making a "portal" of the them with reviews and rankings etc. That way it would be really valuable as a resource (award sites are generally views as a scam).

askanexpert.com is pretty much just a directory to offsite experts but I don't think they rate or review them.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

Yeah, but unless it got lots of traffic nobody would pay attention IMO.

If you wanna do it, I suggest really going for depth and making a "portal" of the them with reviews and rankings etc. That way it would be really valuable as a resource (award sites are generally views as a scam).

askanexpert.com is pretty much just a directory to offsite experts but I don't think they rate or review them.

Well of course right now it's just an idea. Reviews and rankings are part of the idea. Also taking into consideration the different kinds of answer boards. Such as the ones that only focus on one topic. There's no way those could compete with the ones that offer multiple topics so they get their own category.

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Yeah, if ya do it it should be a categorized portal. You can monetize it by monetizing specific listings.

E.g. a SEO site would pay to have them listed as "SEO experts". etc

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It's a horrible idea. "Top 50" sites, and their like, are a form of internet pollution. It is very annoying when you are searching for a specific site when google just finds a hundred "Top 50" sites, and each of the links on them only send you to another "Top 50" site. What you want to do is not useful, and should be a crime.

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That's a very different thing from what roverroad intends SCoates.

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I don't see how you could come to that conclusion.

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Not a top 50 site, more like a carefully edited category directory that lists all answerboards in one place with reviews and ratings. Why would I link to top 50 sites? People would vote for their favorite answerboard, not their favorite links site. I don't see it as a top 50 site but I use those all the time and I actually like them. Web100.com is one that I like.

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Whether or not you call it a top fifty site, that it exactly what it is. Are you french by any chance? The french are pretty good at disguising disgusting things, by giving them a fancy name.

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SCoates wrote:

Whether or not you call it a top fifty site, that it exactly what it is. Are you french by any chance? The french are pretty good at disguising disgusting things, by giving them a fancy name.

You have a right to your opinion even though you're missing the point. A site like this wouldn't be targeted towards you. There's plenty of room on the internet for all kinds of information web sites.

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I didn't state any opinions. I only tossed out a couple of facts. I'm not as opposed as I sound though. It's not like one site could hurt the internet, but obviously one site could be useful.

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SCoates wrote:

I didn't state any opinions. I only tossed out a couple of facts. I'm not as opposed as I sound though. It's not like one site could hurt the internet, but obviously one site could be useful.

I think this site kind of shows what I'm talking about: http://www.vrd.org/locator/sites/about_college.shtml

But it would be different in that visitors would rate the sites and it would be geared more toward answer boards instead of information sites like the example above. Anyway, I was just asking for help pondering an idea. Ideas have to start somewhere!

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A number of times I've looked for the kind of site you're thinking of making, roverroad, never with good results. I think it's a good idea. Info divided by categories, with user reviews, ratings, and info on popularity, service type, membership, etc. for each site could make it rather useful.

Say for example I wanted help removing some spyware...info about the top sites that ordinarily will actually get back to you with quick accurate info about it would be cool.

IMO, this is true though:

Craven wrote:

Yeah, but unless it got lots of traffic nobody would pay attention IMO.

As for monetization, again I agree with Craven about getting sites to pay to be listed as experts in some field. But that doesn't need to compromise any accuracy of your site's info though...you can just do it like tucows does, listing "Pay per use", "Free", "Free with registration", "Contact for quote", etc. along with the listings.

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Now that's the kind of feedback I was looking for. Those are some good ideas. I do want to start making websites for the purpose of making money in the future, but I'm not so sure I would want this one to be a paid inclusion site. I would think that would make it loose credibility if people paid to get listed. That's something I would have to think more about. But you're right. Nobody would pay unless the site brought them business. So it would have to start out as a free site.

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Not necessarily. They can pay per click or per signup or some such. Then maybe when traffic to your site grows you could have some "featured" sites that would pay just to be featured.

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Monger wrote:

Not necessarily. They can pay per click or per signup or some such. Then maybe when traffic to your site grows you could have some "featured" sites that would pay just to be featured.

It would be nice to have a website that at least pays for it's self for a change. A pay per click system is something to look at.

All good ideas! Thanks. The fun part will be writing those first reviews. I have a list of about 70 answerboards so far. There's more of them out there than I thought. None as good as A2K though. :wink:

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Some sites already offer affiliate programs, so in those cases there'd be no need to convince them to sign up, & it likely wouldn't matter at all how new your site is.

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Another idea, which you might already be planning to do, is allow users to submit sites to your portal-type-thingie for approval & review (course, you'd prolly wanna say that ideally submitters should include as much info about the site with their submission as possible).

And to avoid being overwhelmed trying to test out worthless, little-trafficked forums (there are no doubt thousands out there), you might wanna restrict listings to sites that specialize in one or a few areas, or sites that make "ask an expert" their theme.

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