Threadloom Blog

Sharing our first Collections for Primary Bass

Paul Lee · Jan 9, 2021

Earlier this week, we opened sign-ups for Primary. Primary is a new way for people to discover products related to their hobbies, and for forums to monetize their product discussions.

One of the principal ways that Primary organizes products is through theme-based, SEO-friendly landing pages. Today, we’re sharing a few of our initial Collections for Primary Bass. We created Primary Bass in partnership with TalkBass, a forum for bass players that has been around since 1999, and has over 300,000 registered members.

The products in each Collection are automatically selected and updated daily. They feature comments from TalkBass members, which are identified using the same set of algorithms that power Newsletter and Search; and include links to purchase the product or go directly to the forum post about the product.

Collection	URL
Most Discussed Products & Accessories for Bass Guitar	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:1/most-discussed-products-accessories-for-bass-guitar
Most Discussed Amps and Cabs for Bass Guitar	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:2/most-discussed-effects-for-bass-guitar
Most Discussed Effects for Bass Guitar	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:3/most-discussed-effects-for-bass-guitar
Most Discussed Strings for Bass Guitar	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:6/most-discussed-strings-for-bass-guitar
Hot Deals for Bass Guitar	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:8/hot-deals-for-bass-guitar
Most Discussed Products & Accessories for Double Bass	https://primary.org/collection/bassguitar/c1:nc:11/most-discussed-products-accessories-for-double-bass

We’re also happy to announce that we’ve begun to distribute our first affiliate revenue share payments to partners for purchases made through Primary. We show the most-discussed products regardless of whether we receive an affiliate commission. However, if we do realize a revenue commission, we share this with the forum partner in proportion to their percentage of session referrals.

If you want to learn more about Primary, feel free to drop us a line, or sign up here.

Note: We are currently launching one forum per vertical. We select forums based on their sign-up order and the quality of their content. We plan to expand to multiple forums per vertical later this year, and encourage you to sign up even if your vertical has already been claimed.

Introducing Primary: Helping forums monetize product discussions

Paul Lee · Jan 5, 2021

Note: We are now accepting new forum sign-ups for Primary. We are currently launching one forum per vertical. We select forums based on their sign-up order and the quality of their content. We plan to expand to multiple forums per vertical later this year, and encourage you to sign up even if your vertical has already been claimed.

Over the past five years, our products – Threadloom Search, Newsletter, and List Builder – have helped forums connect millions of visitors with their best content. If you follow our blog, you know that we’ve been working on making the experience even better for one specific type of content: product discussions.

Today, we’re excited to announce our newest product that helps forums organize and monetize product discussions: Primary. Primary identifies products forum members are talking about, surfaces them in widgets and SEO-friendly lists, and monetizes them with affiliate links. During our beta, forums saw affiliate revenue increase by as much as 162% without cannibalizing ad revenue.

Here are a few screenshots, along with answers to some frequently-asked questions:

Primary Collection
Primary product page

1. How will you use my content exactly?

We group products into theme-based, SEO-friendly landing pages.
We index only snippets of forum posts (never the full post).
We display the full text of original posts, and of specific posts that talk about a product (but still only index snippets).
We always link back to your forum so you get traffic and backlinks.
Visitors to Primary can ask questions, which we post to your forum.
We never sell or share your forum or user data.

2. How are you not going to take away my traffic?

We optimize SEO for products and themes, not for individual threads or posts.
We target search traffic that currently goes to low-quality product sites.
Over half of visitors clicks on Primary go back to forums.

3. How will I earn money I’m not already earning now?

We earn money through affiliate links, and share the revenue with you.
We offer two tools to help you monetize your forum:
- Primary Explorer is a widget that shows products relevant to a thread or node. It lets you earn additional revenue and engage drive-by visitors. You control what it looks like, where it appears, and who sees it. For instance, you can choose to show it to only logged-out visitors.
- Threadloom Newsletter now includes an option to automatically insert products into each issue.

Primary Explorer forum widget
Inserted products in Threadloom Newsletter

In addition to Primary Explorer and Threadloom Newsletter, we are also launching two new features designed to make it easier for Primary visitors to register with your forum and start product discussions.

Primary Login (previewed in this blog post): Primary Login is a simple plug-in that lets anyone register and securely log in to your forum or Primary without a password. Primary Login includes enterprise-grade security from Auth0, and is free for Primary forums.
Ask Primary: When a Primary visitor asks a product-related question, we either send the visitor directly to the relevant post on your forum, or automatically post it for them to the appropriate node. In our beta, each question from Ask Primary generated an average of seven new forum posts.

We’re grateful to customers who gave us valuable feedback during our beta, including Hardline Crawlers, Long Range Hunting, TalkBass, Tesla Motors Club, WDWMAGIC. Long Range Hunting saw their take-home Amazon affiliate revenue increase by 162%. TalkBass realized a 12% click-through rate on products inserted in Newsletter, which resulted in a 9% conversion rate on Amazon. And sessions referred by Primary back to TalkBass had an average duration of over 5 minutes with more than 4 pages per session and a 33% bounce rate.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use Primary to monetize your product discussions, feel free to drop us a line. If you’re ready to join Primary, you can now sign up directly using this form. We are currently launching only one forum per vertical, but we plan to expand to multiple forums per vertical later this year, so encourage you to sign up even if your vertical has already been claimed.

We’re excited to grow Primary in 2021, and look forward to building more great products together.

Primary Login beta results

Alex Wilsey · Sep 15, 2020

Last month, we shared about a new feature we’ve been working on called Primary Login. Primary Login lets forum users securely register and/or log in to a forum without a password.

We’ve been beta testing Primary Login on The Admin Zone and several partner sites, and are excited to share the initial results. In summary, Primary Login has reactivated lapsed forum users and encouraged users to post more often to the forum.

Experiment setup

In our test, we added call-to-action (CTA) buttons to each forum’s email newsletters. The CTA buttons directed users to enter their email address and click on a link in a confirmation email. If the email address was already associated with a forum account, Primary automatically logged the user in; otherwise, it directed the user to the forum account registration page.

Results

Over two weeks, we sent email newsletters with Primary Login CTA buttons to over 100,000 recipients. The conversion rate (i.e., of users who clicked on the CTA button, the percent that actually logged in) was 55%.

We also saw increased behavior on the forum. Comparing the two-week periods immediately before and after launching the experiment, posts by Primary Login users increased 33%. After excluding a handful of frequent posters, the figure increased to 39%.

Of these users, one-third had not created a post in the prior two weeks, and half of those users had not created a post within the prior six months. In other words, a significant number of users were being activated or re-activated as content creators.

Finally, we compared post rates of Primary Login users vs. regular (i.e., non-Primary Login) forum users. Sixteen percent of Primary Login users posted in the two-week period after launch, compared to 6% for regular forum users. Primary Login posters averaged 1.59 posts per user vs. 0.44 posts per regular forum user.

Posts per user for Primary Login users vs. regular forum users

What’s next
We’re looking forward to sharing where Primary Login is going next, and how this will work with where we are going with Product Stories. In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more about Primary Login, feel free to drop us a line.

Announcing Threadloom for XenForo 2.2

Greg Hecht · Aug 20, 2020

We’re happy to share that we’ve updated the Threadloom plug-in for XenForo 2.2.

XenForo 2.2 adds thread types, non-registered guest replies, and a number of other improvements. We think it’s a significant step forward for forums, and are excited to continue supporting forums on the XenForo platform.

If your forum is already using the Threadloom plug-in for XenForo 2, you don’t need to do anything to prepare for XenForo 2; Threadloom will automatically work with XenForo 2.2.

If your forum is migrating from vBulletin or XenForo 1.5, download and install the latest plug-in for XenForo 2 from your Threadloom Portal dashboard.

As before, the Threadloom plug-in delivers all of the features of Threadloom – Search, Newsletter, and List Builder – with the convenience of a single plug-in install. Use one or all three products – it’s your choice.

You can find more details on upgrading the Threadloom plug-in in this Help Center article.

Introducing Primary Login – secure, passwordless login for forums

Chris Dildy · Aug 5, 2020

Earlier this summer, Paul shared the results from our first two Product Stories experiments. We’ll have more to share from follow-up experiments soon, but today, we wanted to share a new feature with you – secure, passwordless login for forums.

Login help requests make up 20% of Threadloom Newsletter replies. Many of these requests come from users who want to reply to a post in the newsletter, but are having trouble logging in or resetting their password. We believed that if we could bridge this gap, we could address a pain point for admins and users, and drive more engagement with Newsletter.

Using technology from Google Cloud and Auth0, a trusted authentication provider, we created a secure, passwordless login option designed to make it easier for forum users to stay logged in. The feature is called Primary Login, and you can see it live on The Admin Zone.

Primary Login on The Admin Zone on desktop
Primary Login on The Admin Zone on mobile

Primary Login enables users to transition seamlessly from Newsletter to your forum so they can participate in conversations without struggling with a login form. When a user clicks on the Primary Login button, they’re prompted to enter their email address, where we send them a confirmation email. Once the user clicks on the confirmation link in the email, they’re logged in to the forum. That’s it – no fumbling through password managers or trying to remember forgotten passwords.

In addition, users who don’t already have a forum account can register for a new forum account, with their email address pre-filled in, and without needing to generate a password. Every new forum account is created in the forum database and controlled by the forum admin. We invite you to take it for a test spin on The Admin Zone.

Primary Login is currently in beta. We’re measuring the impact of Primary Login on post activity and reactivating lapsed forum users. Stay tuned for an update on this soon. We’re also developing assets to make Primary Login easier for forum users to identify. In the meantime, if you have questions or are curious if this might work for your forum, feel free to drop me a line at chris at threadloom dot com.

Experiment setup

Results

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