Study after study has indicated that individuals like to see other people’s opinions.  Forums, customer reviews, and stuff along those lines represent a great way of getting folks involved.  Now here’s the trick: not letting all that user-generated content screw up AdSense monetization.

A post on the Inside AdSense blog suggests that you start with some preventative steps.  Be clear about what people can and cannot write and post.  Ask them to sort and tag their content correctly.  And implement spambot protection if you can (the post recommends Googling that phrase for more info).

Then, it’s a matter of monitoring.  “Set up ways for your community to monitor itself.  For example, try adding a ‘Report inappropriate content’ link to your pages, to allow users to flag content for you to review,” the post suggests.

Also, “Proactively review pages, videos, photos, etc. with high pageviews on a regular basis,” and run spot-checks, searching for inappropriate terms, too.

Finally, the post recommends, “Create editorial policies and exercise moderator control in your comments, forums, and guestbook sections.”

User content can be great for a lot of reasons (including its price: usually free).  Just be careful that it doesn’t impact your AdSense income in negative manner.

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