Top Advocates of December
Bravo!
Saturday, January 1, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
What's an advocate? Advocates are people who link to WinCustomize.com from other sites sending new people here. They help spread the word on what skinning and customization is. It's through advocates that WinCustomize.com has grown from a tiny "niche" community to a site that averages over half a million visitors daily.
The easiest way to score advocay points is to link to one of your skins and themes from another site. But what if you're not a skinner? If you create a personal page (click on the sites tab at the top right to create one) you can recommend other people's skins, themes, and articles and then link to that. Then you get an advocacy point (along with the person who made the skin, theme, article, whatever).
Here are the top 10 advocates for December. We'll be sending goodies some of the top ones (anyone who beats me) after the holidays.:
#1 The Skins Factory. Thanks to their popular media player and the fact that their website links to their skins here, The Skins Factory sent over 37,000 visitors to WinCustomize last month.
#2 Iben. Iben won the old fashioned way. He went out onto other sites evangalizing skins and themes that he found. His Alien World wallpaper brought in almost 1000 pepole from Neowin.net alone.
#3 Steve Grenier. Steve also brought more people to WinCustomize.com than I did. Though admittedly, I helped him a bit by linking to some of his Panther visual styles. 
#4 Me. I'd like to take this time to tell you a story about..oh never mind.
#5 Tiggz. Tiggz brought in thousands of people last month thanks to GT3.
Most advocates get a lot of help from others as well. If you want to recommend other people's stuff on other sites, just make sure you recommend the skin (using the button that appears when you press the "more details" option on a given skin) and then link to the skin on your personal page.
Congratulations to everyone and thank you! Advocates are people who benefit all the Internet. Because WinCustomize displays referrals, sites that refer to us automatically get a link back to them sending them traffic as well (and provides users of other sites knowledge of other goodies on the net). It's advocates, along with skinners, and many others who help make WinCustomize successful. Thanks again and congratulations once again!
Reply #3 Sunday, January 2, 2005 9:03 AM
Basically it is just WinCustomize tracking the number of people who click on a link from your www.adni18.com site, to come here.
Reply #4 Sunday, January 2, 2005 11:07 AM
Reply #5 Sunday, January 2, 2005 1:17 PM
The advocate system is pretty straight forward:
It's the number of people who come to WinCustomize.com from other websites to see your skin, theme, or recommendation.
Here's an example: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=262893
On Neowin I made a post that links to a skin I made here. On each unique IP that visits, I get an advocacy point.
Reply #7 Sunday, January 2, 2005 4:52 PM
I understand now.
One picture can give more info than thousand words
Reply #8 Sunday, January 2, 2005 5:06 PM
Funny... I just rote a WinCustomize User page article on Tiggs... and Steve Grenier is like 5th on my list.
Reply #9 Sunday, January 2, 2005 6:01 PM
Reply #10 Sunday, January 2, 2005 6:57 PM
Reply #11 Monday, January 3, 2005 2:25 PM
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Reply #1 Sunday, January 2, 2005 4:44 AM
Maybe something very obvious for some people, it is not that obvious for other people at all