All You Need to Know About Discussions on MyLot

MyLot is a site that pays you for discussing your favortite subjects with others. It's a bit like Facebook, but there is no limit to the characters you can put in your post, and this allows you to go into as much depth as you like. Another difference is that you will be mostly talking to people you've never met in real life unless you are successful in bringing some of your friends onto the site with you. Another difference is that myLot is a place where you can feel safe from personal attacks in your discussions. Facebook also expects you to be civil and not flame anyone, but at MyLot trolls are simply not tolerated. Flame someone and your message will be reported and deleted. So, if you are a troll, just don't go there.

In this hub I will be concentrating on the ways you make money on myLot -- starting and participating in discussions. Before you start doing this, you first need to join MyLot and set up your profile so you can make friends who will participate in the discussions you start. I have written an entire hub on how to set up your profile at myLot, since it can be a bit tricky. But first you have to join . You can do that here . If you join, you will start with one automatic friend -- me. And I will do all I can to help make you successful.

If you are already a myLot member, you are ready to start or learn more about discussions.

The way you earn money at MyLot is in discussions. But things aren't always what they seem. MyLot has some very strict rules in their terms of service for both starting and participating in discussions, and you must keep referring to these until you know them by heart, if you don't want to waste your effort. Basicially, myLot pays you for what you post. If you don't start and participate in the discussions you don't earn anything, and once you've earned for your post, you don't get any more for that particular post. The amount you earn each day will be found at the top of your profile. But, occasionally, some of your pennies can disappear. That will be because discussions that violate the terms of service will be deleted, and so will all the responses made to it. If only a response violates the terms, only the response will be deleted, not the whole discussion.

This is one reason you want to know the do's and don't's of myLot. First you don't want to start discussions that could be deleted. Secondly, you don't want to waste your time responding to them.

So what are the things you should do and not do? You will find all of them here in the myLot Guidelines in great detail. People who start discussions should not ask anything that myLot staff might mistake for a poll question. Example of a discussion I started that was deleted: "When You Want to Get Clean, Do You Prefer to Take a Shower or a Bath? " That was my subject line. I added some details in the paragraph below it to make it easier for people to think of responses. I did not think or intend this as a poll question, but as a way to get people talking. They did talk -- for two days at least, and over two pages. But then, the whole discussion disappeared when administration decided it was a poll. I and others had some pennies subtracted and lost a point. What did I learn from this? Be very careful about starting or responding to a discussion that has the word "or" in the subject line along with two or more choices. It might be considered a poll.

Another "don't is you don't ask a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no, in the subject line. Ask something that begins with "Why" or "What do you think about" or "How do you explain." Ths makes it more likely that your discussion will survive and get responses. And, don't forget. It's a waste of time to respond to such discussions. If someone reports it and it gets deleted, you will lose something.

Another thing you need to know before posting anything is that there is a point system and a rating system. When you first join and see a discussion, you will notice that each person has a set of parentheses by his name with a number in it. That is an activity number and it goes up when you start and respond to and comment on discussions. It has nothing to do with the quality of your posts -- only the quantity. But when you reach certain milestones, you get some perks. First, when this score gets to 100, you will get your reputation. (See next section) When your activity level reaches 200, you can start using emote symbols like smiley faces. But you have attain 500 points to get what to me is the most important perk -- the ability to paste. Until you get to 500 you cannot paste anything. I think you have to prove yourself to be original first so they know if you like to paste in someone else's work, you will leave the site out of frustration. This site won't tolerate duplicate or plagerized content, and making it very difficult is their way of preventing it. Meanwhile, on the way to 500, you can't even move a sentence in your writing by cutting and pasting, and you can't do copy back-ups and be able to paste them back in if you post disappears into cyberspace. This is a pain in the neck, but the inconvenince is not enough to chase me off the site. I figure, at my present rate, I can get to 500 in a month or so. Meanwhile, I'm still seeing the pennies add up to dollars, and it's motivating me to stick it out.

Your reputation is shown in a star by your activity rating in posts. Stars are different colors and the scores range from 0-10, with ten being the highest. The reputation is determined by other users. When you participate in discussions, you will see a plus or minus sign on the right side of every post. If you think the one who posted made a positive contribution, you click the plus, even if you don't agree with the post. You would only give a minus in very rare cases. I have never given one yet. You dont give them to posts you disagree with or to posts written in broken English, since a good number of myLotters speak and write English as a second language. If you have strong feelings that a person's comment or discussion has a negative impact on the discussion, but doesn't go so far as to violate discussion guidelines, you might click the minus. If your feelings about a post are neutral, you just don't click anything. You don't have to rate, but you should rate people who make positive contributions up because it helps people, and it doesn't hurt you. You are not competing with anyone here. If the post violates the guidelines, you would click on the exclamation point.

When you start a discussion on myLot, it becomes your baby. You want people to participate and keep coming back so you can keep making comments. When you post your discussion, it gets listed on your profile as a discussion you started. If you have friends who had asked to be notified when friends post, they will get an email saying you posted a discussion, and they will probably look at it to see if they want to write a response. If they do write a response, it's considered good myLot etiquette to comment on every response you can. And, of course, each comment you make will add to your earnings.

If your discussion gets at least two responses, it will add one to your score, as long as it doesn't get deleted. And if you followed all my instructions, it should remain and you will have posted a successful discussion. Just remember, it's not like HubPages where what you write continues to earn for you. Consider each bit of writing you do on myLot as a complete job in itself that will immediately be added to the money you will get on your first payout.

After your discussion has been up for about a week, you should start thinking about awarding a best response (BR) to someone who made a response to your discussion. If the discussion is still getting responses, wait until the responses seem to be pretty much finished before making this award or some people may not respond if they see they have no chance left to win it. You select the BR by clicking the little "mark as best response" note that appears at the top of each response. Be sure to choose wisely, since you can't change it once you've clicked.

Maybe it isn't. It depends on your own needs and what you enjoy doing. If you are the sort of person who likes to particpate in forums like Facebook or those for special interests, you would probably enjoy this for its own sake. I meet interesting people from many cultures, and I learn a lot about a variety of subjects. I get ideas for writing on other sites. And I earn more than I make from Adsense anywhere.

MyLot pays not for page views, but for writing. It's motivating to see your total change every day. This is my thirteenth day. I have a score of 258 of this minute. I have a reputation of 10, and my current total is $9.28 for my first twelve days. That is an average of .77 a day. If you are doing much better than that on other sites and don't especially enjoy forums, then maybe your time is spent better somewhere else. But if you like getting to know new people, communicating with them often, and talking about your interests and theirs, you might just become the next myLot addict. No keyword research or selling is needed. Just type and earn.

Any questions? Feel free to ask below.