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A trend in recent advertising is to let consumers create the ads. This has worked splendidly sometimes (BSSP, Converse) and has failed miserably others (Chevy Tahoe). This idea has been used in other mediums, like the internet, with about the same results. Consumer generated content for websites is a great idea, it brings traffic to your site, and they do all the content creating for you. The only problem is that it's difficult to get users to actually add content. The general rule of thumb is that 1 out of 100 online users will add content, 10 will interact with the content and the rest will just sit there and watch. In the past it was believed that these values were much higher but recent research, and many more data points have shown otherwise. Youtube.com for example, which is a widely popular video sharing site is only able to encourage 0.5% of its users to add content. Wikipedia.com, (the online "What I Know Is" Encyclopedia) has 70% of its content created by only 1.8% of its users. It's hard enough to persuade people to visit your site, and once they're there it's another struggle to convince them to contribute, but if you can, you're golden?.

If you're interested into who these content creators might be, a national phone survey was conducted in 2003. The results of this survey found three distinct content creators:

Power creators are the Internet users who are most enthusiastic about content-creating activities. They are young -- their average age is 25 -- and they are more likely than other kinds of creators do things like use instant messaging, play games, and download music. And they are the most likely group to be blogging.

Older creators have an average age of 58 and are experienced Internet users. They are highly educated, like sharing pictures, and are the most likely of the creator groups to have built their own Web sites. They are also the most likely to have used the Internet for genealogical research.

Content omnivores are among the heaviest overall users of the Internet. Most are employed. Most log on frequently and spend considerable time online doing a variety of activities. They are likely to have broadband connections at home. The average age of this group is 40.