I received a rather exciting private message from Rand recently.  In it, he stated I was going to receive a free Premium membership.

How did it happen?  Thumbs baby!  Thumbs!!

Huh?  What the hell are you talking about now, Payne?  How do thumbs get me a free Premium membership?  Well, if you click on the MozPoints link under your profile (or left side bar), you'll be dropped to a page that...well, it's boring.  It pretty much tells you what you already know.  It's a rating system of whether you liked something.  We all know that.  We aren't new to the internet and its rating systems.

If you read far enough (which I didn't, and I saw the page several times by accident thinking I was going to the ranking page), you will see that if you manage to garner 150 MozPoints in a single month, then you get an upgrade to Premium.  Cool, huh?

So, how do you get 150 MozPoints in a month?  Well, that can be rather controversial right now with all of the fake wars raging and the highly in-depth analytics being used to 'crack the code' of 'what to do' and 'not to do'.  However, I have managed to outline a few, yet Moznificent (trademark it while you still can, Rand) bullet points to get you well on your way to FreeMozzerie (another one for ya; make a subdomain of it, too):

1.  Read all the comments.  Even the pointless ones that are inside jokes amongst long-time Mozzers.  You may find something that you can make a worthwhile comment about and you get a point for each comment you submit.

2.  Make some really nerdy, SEO related comments.  People read this blog in the morning.  Usually while still half asleep.  Things are funnier then, so your rate of joke success on SEOmoz will be higher than normal.  When you're feeling silly, start commenting. The mozzers gobble it up and will thumb you like crazy for a bad joke related to SEO.  Make sure you follow it up with another in response to someone getting a good laugh out of your dumb joke (but not a 3rd, you just get annoying at that point).

3.  If you are commenting about a comment, then the original comment deserves a thumb (unless you are criticizing it, then it may or may not deserve a thumbs down).  The idea behind this is that if you comment to another comment and the original comment only has one thumb up, the original comment's author knows that you didn't give them a thumb so they won't give you one either.  It's a 'treat others as they treat you' rule at SEOmoz, not the Golden Rule.  So, if you leave a comment to a comment, thumb the comment you are commenting about--lest you not get thumbed yourself.  Note: The above paragraph is horribly written, but it's 3:30am and I still have to get up early tomorrow, so cut me some slack.  Besides, it's fun to read if you do it aloud.  Go ahead, try it.  Nobody at Starbucks will care.  ;-)

4.  Write a YOUmoz article.  You get thumbs for the article (and people rarely will thumb you down) and you will get thumbs for each comment you make to commenters about the article.  It's the ultimate way to be able to comment about every comment on a page and not look like a thumb spammer.  If you provide some juicy details in the comments, you may actually get more thumbs for the comments than for the article.  People tend to blow past the article thumbing section and jump right in on the comments.  Personally, I think it's a design flaw but I will save my SEOmoz ranting for the closing.

5.  Avoid all types of spamming.  Unless you have a killer reputation on SEOmoz already (emphasis on already), any type of post or comment that can be construed as spam will kill your MozPoints.  This also means that you shouldn't cheat on thumbing.  Sure, you could setup multiple Moz accounts and have conversations with yourself as two, three, or five different users, but...why?  Okay, for the Premium membership, got it.  But the Moz staff are savvy people.  They'll catch you pretty quick and then you'll be on the naughty list, and you don't want to be on that list.

And now, the promised rant about SEOmoz.  Why in the freakin' world don't you make this more well known?  I see the value.  If you can get people to contribute then you have a better site.  And for what?  $50?  Sheesh.  Killer ROI.  I have spent hours on SEOmoz and you only had to pay $50 for my contributions?  Put a ticker on the side-bar telling me how many more points I need to get this month in order to get free Premium membership.  Give me 5 extra moz points for my first YOUmoz post ever.  Once I realize that the Moz community is really nice, heck I'll post again, but that first one is scary.  Help me get over that fear.

Okay, I need to get to bed.  I'll be working on 4-1/2 hours of sleep at this point.  Good luck with being a contributor and maximizing the power of thumbs to get free Premium Mozzerie.

Brent David Payne