RateItAll’s Lawrence Coburn CEO an Interview

Here, I sit down with CEO Lawrence Coburn to discuss RateItAll’s Economy Program, which shares affiliate and Google AdSense revenue with RateItAll members. RateItAll’s mission is to allow consumers to rate anything and everything – products, places, music, movies – and even people! After being in business for over a decade and housing over 4 million reviews from over 600,000 users, the company is well on its way.

Tell me about RateItAll’s Economy Program.

The philosophy is very simple: we believe that anyone that contributes content to RateItAll.com should share in the advertising or affiliate revenue associated with that content.

Here is how it works: people who make the RateItAll community a better place by writing a review, creating a list of products, adding items to existing lists or creating a user profile, are eligible to share the advertising revenue those contributions generate from Google AdSense.  Those members creating lists of products are also permitted to submit their own affiliate links associated with those pages.

How do users make more money with the Economy Program?We’ve found that the single best way to make money on RateItAll is to find a category that is not currently covered, and to build out a list of the products in that category.  For example, one of our members created a list of 1037 of her favorite hot sauces.  This section has become one of the top hot sauce related resources on the web, and is now doing substantial traffic.  Because this member created the section, she gets 50/50 revenue sharing on all of those pages.

But there are other ways.  We’ve included the top ways to maximize your earnings here:
http://www.rateitall.com/t-22424-ways-to-maximize-your-earnings-on-rateitall.aspx

Do more active users tend to make more?
Yes.  A number of our members are making several dollars per day, which doesn’t sound like much, but after a while it starts to add up.  If you like to write, contributing to RateItAll can be an especially fun way to make a few extra bucks.

How many people use RateItAll?
Lots, and the number is growing quickly.  There were more than 1.4M visits to the site last month, and many of those people came to RateItAll while researching a product.  This is an important point in terms of money making opportunities, as we’ve built an audience that is very receptive to thoughtful product reviews and resources.

How long does it take to get a payout?
Google pays net 30, and they pay you directly.  Google is known for being very prompt and reliable when it comes to payments.

How does RateItAll’s Economy Program differ from an ad network?
The RateItAll Economy Program is really an extension of the Google’s ad network.  Google has advertisers, which they syndicate out to RateItAll. We’re taking it one step further by pushing out distribution and syndication to our users, so we can share revenue with them.  Google actually wrote a very nice case study about us here.

How do users leverage affiliate marketing?
RateItAll members can include a link to Amazon Affiliate pages, or to any affiliate URL, on the pages they create. On the other hand, affiliates can
submit their own product, blog, company, etc. for review on RateItAll Promote. It’s a free link, and exposure.

Okay, I’m sold. Where do I sign up?
Great, thanks! To start making money, just sign up for RateItAll then visit your account page – look for the section that says “Ready to earn some cash with Google Adsense?” You can also learn more here: http://www.rateitall.com/wt-rateitall_economy.aspx