How to Optimize Your Experience on MyLot
By Ann LeFlore
@poehere (15123)
French Polynesia
December 16, 2015 2:33pm CST
Here many old timers (not saying you’re old) understand how to optimize their experiences on the site. However, some newer members have some problems understanding all of this. I have read where some new people wished there was some sort of a guide to follow. However, we don’t have one.
What We Have Here
* We have the wonderful blog site the famous @owlwings has created for all of us.
* We have the help of the community here on the site. They will answer all of your questions.
* We have a section under Help that can answer some of our questions and gives everyone guidelines to follow on this site.
But what we don’t have is a way to understand some of the site’s features. So here are a few helpful hints on how you can optimize your MyLot experience and love this site like we all do.
New Account
When you first create your account fill in your profile. Make sure you add an avatar to your account. Avatars are important to people. They let us know who you are. If you don’t have an Avatar it is simple to make one.
Take any photo you have on your computer. Crop the photo and now reduce the size to 100 x 100. Go to your setting menu next to your name on the dashboard. Select profile and upload your Avatar to the site. You can use this feature anytime you want to change your Avatar.
If you chose to use an animated Avatar the maximum size is 60x60 to make it work correctly on the site.
Dashboard
Your personal dashboard is located under Me. Here you will find your personal information, how much you have gained, if you have any discussions or notifications.
Notifications
Here you will find notifications from people on the site. This can be a comment on one of your discussions, a comment back to you, a like, or a follow you.
Messages
This is where a member of the site can send you a PM (private message). You can go here to read the message or even send a message to a member on this site.
If your account is blocked by a site member it isn’t possible to send them a PM.
You can also locate the person’s account by clicking on their username in “Bold” letters. On the top of their profile you can follow this person or send them a PM.
In your message setting it is possible to block everyone from sending you a message. If this happens you won’t be able to message this person.
Furthermore, in message setting it is possible to only allow people that you follow to message you. If a person has set this up it won’t be possible to send them a message if they aren’t following you.
Suggestions
These are suggestions that other member of the site send to you. Maybe you find a post you love. You can suggest a friend to read this. They can do the same and send you suggestions.
Offers
Here you will find offers from the site. If you complete some of these offers it will add to your earning on the site.
Discussions
This is how many discussions you’ve started on the site.
Responses
This one is confusing to some people, had some issues with this at first. Well anyhow a response is a comment that you make on another person’s discussion. It is not a comment a person makes to you. This shows you how many discussions you have interacted with on this site.
Comments
This tells you how many comments you have made on your discussions or on other discussions. After you respond and the author comments back. You have the choice to comment again or just skip it and move on. If you comment back this adds to how many actual comments you’ve made on this site.
Followers
This tells you how many people follow you.
Following
This tells you how many people you follow. This one is important. Under People it will display recent discussion that your followers have added to the site. You can go to People and search for your followers new discussions.
Adding Images
In your discussion at the bottom it is possible to add an image. Make sure the image isn’t too large. Images should be around 650 x 483 in size. Most photo software can edit the image size of your photo.
When uploading images to the site the maximum image size is 3MB. If your image is larger than 3MB you’ll need to use a photo editing software to reduce the size of your image.
Helpful Hints
Before writing, interacting, reading or working on this site it’s vitally important to visit the Help section next to your name. Read all the information concerning the site. If you have any questions or don’t understand the rules or TOS please post a discussion so the other members can help you out.
Interact with people. This means going to People or Explore and reading their discussions. Respond to the discussions. This helps you find new friends. The site is about interaction. The more you interact with other people’s discussion the more you are rewarded on this site. So comment, like and respond to the discussion that interest you.
Write interesting discussions. Ones that member’s want to read. Try to stay away from mindless questions, polls, and recipes. Talk about something that will spark the interest of others and they will want to join in on your discussion.
Try not to post too many discussions one right after another. This won’t help you on the site. Give your discussions time to be found. Wait people will find them. Don’t post a new discussion right away in fear nobody noticed your last discussion.
Please Add More
OK now this is too long. What are some other great tips we can give to new people to help them understand this site easier.
Image source - personal image
A quick user guide to MyLot with answers to some Frequently Asked Questions, a short history of MyLot and other notes Pages Useful Links Welcome to MyLot MyLot is a social site which rewards you for taking part in discussions. There are members from all ov
16 people like this
15 responses
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Dec 15
@poehere I struggled with this for a while when I first joined Mylot many years ago. I had a little man with a quill sat at his desk writing as my first avatar, which worked fine in the profile page but was a static image in the discussions. It took me weeks to discover why, so it has stuck in my mind ever since.
1 person likes this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
Thank you so much. I did not realize this one. I have edited the discussion and included this in there. Thanks so much for this. If you see or know of other things that might help let me know so I can edit them and add them in here. This might help some people out on the site.
3 people like this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
You are welcome. I just started to see people asking me some questions in comments on a discussion. So instead of trying to do all this there I decided to do it here instead so everyone could benefit from it. I hope it will help. If you have any other ideas and suggestions please let me know. I have edited this in a few places already from the comments here. A few people said I needed to change or add a few things so I did. If I get other suggestions I can continue to edit this so that it will be useful to people.
2 people like this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
@sugartoes Thank you so much. Hope others can find this when they need some help.
1 person likes this
@celticeagle (168856)
• Boise, Idaho
16 Dec 15
The advise I would give is to actually read it. That's what you have written, what Owlwings has written and the guidelines that Admin has written up. It doesn't help at all untless everyone is on the same page. Some are still doing recipes and such. I think that is because they think they know the rules but, haven't actually set down and read the guidelines.
3 people like this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
@sugartoes No actually understanding your account and dashboard should of gone first like I had it. Then after is the hints on how to use the site and to start posting. that normally is the order a tech paper would follow.
@allknowing (138324)
• India
17 Dec 15
That's a lot of hard work. So far only 15 have read this post and of them most are quite familiar with this approach. I wonder how one can make many or in fact the entire community read this.
1 person likes this
@allknowing (138324)
• India
17 Dec 15
@poehere The sad part is even the 'help' tab is not touched by many. And they repepatedly ask for clarifications when what they want to know is already there
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
I don't know. I wish it was possible but I am not sure it will work. Maybe you can write to Admin and ask him on this one. I am sort of busy now with a lot of work and I am just here for a few min. I need to get the other 3 people up so we can start today and try to get more of this finished. I just wish that more people would read it so it would help them. I know people who are here for so long don't need this help at all.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
@allknowing Yes I do know this one. But here is the secret on this one. If they do this and ask the right question a lot of people will jump in and help them. They will get a lot of responses on their post and make some money. I feel a lot of this is why they do it. But I could be wrong and it could be out of laziness that they choose not to find and read what is important to read here on the site.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
Yes but I don't know how to do this one. I just was trying to help some new people out that were asking questions. Wonder if the site could just use this and post it where people could easily find it. Like read this, then this, and then this to learn how the site worked. Not sure but it might help out some.
2 people like this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
No I am not trying to do this one. I just saw a lot of people asking me about images lately and how to use the site. I am not the pro here on this one. So I just decided to do a guide on the site. I am good at this and so basically I wanted to share it with people. I sure hope it will come in handy. I have a few other ones in mind to help out but if I put all the info here at first it would of been way too much to post. I had to stop somewhere and limit it. Maybe on the next guide I'll add a lot of other site features and how to use them.
1 person likes this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
@Auntylou Thank you so much. I just want to try and make it so much easier for new people. I do so much work online, forums, and such this site was sort of easy to figure out. It wasn't that hard for me but I know if I had no idea what all this was about I would want to know and understand all this information.
1 person likes this
@winterose (39887)
• Canada
17 Dec 15
This is a wonderful resource, however I can only come on late at night so I have to post all my discussions and responses to discussions at the same time.
1 person likes this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
Thank you so much. I know people aren't on day in and day out. They come and go when time permits. We all understand that it is not so easy to get on the site when we have other things to do. So hopefully this will all work out for you. Please do not feel bad about only coming on in the evening to comment, post and respond to your notifications. I come on when I can and try to catch up as much as possible. But now I am way behind for my work so it will take a little here and there to get this one done.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
You and a few others feel the same. I don't know how to do this. Maybe you can write to Admin and ask them how to do this. I just want this to help people to understand how the site works. I think if they can learn their dashboard the rest will be simpler for them to use. You can try and PM Admin and ask if there is a way to do this but I don't think there is.
1 person likes this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
I just decided to do this from a few comments I have read in the last 3 nights of working late and I mean late. I saw some new people asking for help on images or how the site works. They don't understand their dashboard or how it works. So I decided to sit down and write this up to help them. Hope they will find it and make some good use of it here on the site.
@Freelanzer (10743)
• Canada
16 Dec 15
Good information. Hopefully newbies read the rules and TOS before starting to write
1 person likes this
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
16 Dec 15
Yes another person mentions this to me. I will edit this now and add it in here. I will do this in the last section to tell them how important this is before they start to post. thanks for this one. If you think of more please let me know so I can add it here or edit a section that needs editing.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
Yah he did that is why I added it here on this discussion. Awhile back I wrote a discussion based on this site alone and how he had created it. After this I saw the site come up more and more and offered more to the new person that arrived. But recently comments are reflecting puzzled people and not a good explanation of the site. So today I wrote up this discussion based on how to use this site. I sort of made this as a newbie guide to the site. So in doing so I added Owlwring blog site to my post so that new people could easily find this one.
Do you see anything in here that I should add or change to my discussion to help people out.
1 person likes this
@Rohvannyn (3098)
• United States
17 Dec 15
Nice post! I wish it had been written when I was new. I'm sure it'll help people out.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
Thank you so much. I guess I just saw a lot of questions on some of my stuff recently and this is what prompted me to write this up. I am glad that you like this so much and yes a document like this would of helped so much when I first came here too. I didn't find the site that hard to navigate but on the other hand I am a little tech minded and have worked on a lot of forums and written websites and stuff. I hope other new people will find this and like it. I also hope it will help others on here to understand a little more of how this site is designed.
@HanVanMeegerin (1161)
• United States
16 Dec 15
@poehere this guide covers about all newbies need to know.
1 person likes this
@Sheilamarie78 (2586)
• Canada
17 Dec 15
You've touched on a lot of things that I found confusing at first. I hope lots of new users find this discussion.
@poehere (15123)
• French Polynesia
17 Dec 15
Thank you so much. I know there is other things that I can explain like this and I am thinking of adding them here. I won't add it to this post but I will create a new one. This one turned out long so I sort of would like to keep it like this. I am glad that his has helped you. I just wish it would be easier for new people to find this and refer to it when they needed it. Not sure how this one will happen but maybe one day it will. However, it is fine with me and just hoping people will find it beneficial when they need to understand a few things.
