Yahoo Answers is an interesting place to get quality traffic from. Have you been using the service yet?

Well, it’s a nice service they’re running out there and is the only service (apart from flickr) that I regularly use from Yahoo.

On Yahoo Answers, people ask all sorts of crazy questions. Yep, really crazy ones. I’ve seen some one ask – “Where are my car keys?” But that’s an interesting observation. It could be a meaning less one now, but 10 years from now, similar questions would make more sense.

Now, how is Yahoo Answers a good tool for generating traffic?

The modus operandi is like this.

- You enroll as a member at Yahoo Answers. This means that you can ask and answer questions. There are no criterions that screens if you are a qualified authority or not (which is both good and bad.).

- There are different categories in which people ask many questions. You select the one/ones that you are more interested in, and think you can answer.

- Go through the questions asked there and answer them.

You earn points for each question answered. And if the person who asked the question like your question, he may select your answer as the best one and you could win extra points for it. And you have a ranking system based on the total points you earned, where you get to jump levels as you score more.

Now, why Yahoo! Answers?

- There are lot of novices over there, who are genuinely looking for quality information.
- Yahoo has an option to provide a link (nofollowed) to your site while answering a question that serves as a reference to the answer. 
- Lot of people are asking questions – while only some of them are answered completely.

I think this is a place where lot of potential subscribers come. A novice or a person who is genuinely interested in solving a problem is more likely to subscribe to your feed than a learned guy (who you found on another blog.)

So, if your site has good and informative content, it’s a great model that works.

Find your target audience —> Answer their queries —> Invite them to the source of information —-> Get them subscribed.

Aren’t you misusing the service Mani?

Not really. Well, the idea of Yahoo Answers is a meeting place for knowledge seekers and knowledge providers. If you do it the right way, obeying the staff guidelines, it is a great place to gain knowledge.

Here are some suggestions that will help you earn a good reputation.
- Answer only relevant questions, that you think is within your knowledge level.
- Be specific to the question and give in all the details and sources that is relevant to the question.(Not everything that you know)
- Never give your site link if it doesn’t have any information about the question asked.
- If some one has already answered before you, don’t repeat the answer. Probably give the guy a thumbs up.
- Appreciate efforts from others, never get into arguments.
- Feel free to give the link from another site that you think has the information the questioner is asking for.
- Obey the staff guidelines.

Essentially, Yahoo Answers is a good tool to generate some quality traffic, if you spent the right time on it, answering some quality questions. Don’t expect a huge traffic but it will trickle down slowly as you build your reputation. And, whatever comes in would be quality traffic and the conversion ration will be excellent. Try it out setting a goal on Google Analytics.