Is there a way to get my own website?

When launching a Q&A website, what is the best way to get it seeded with first questions and answers?

• When launching a Q&A website, you need to address two types of users: those that need an answer to a question, and those that are willing to give that answer. But who posts a question on a website with no activity? So, how to get the first questions and the first answers? A few ways I thought about doing it: Start with a teaser campaign to gather emails of people willing to answer questions in different areas. Stimulate them with a chance to win something, then send them an email when the website goes public. Ask your friends to start using the Q&A website as they were ordinary users, in order to simulate questions, answers, votes, etc. Generate some questions and answers on popular topics using different usernames. Any other ideas?

• Answer:

  This is one of those "chicken and egg" problems, and there's just no way around the need to seed content in order to begin to push your new Q&A community towards sustainable critical mass. In AnswerHub (http://answerhub.com) we provide a feature called "alter-egos" to help community owners get initial content seeded. Alter-egos let privileged users create new, virtual users and select them for asking, answering and commenting roles. In short, alter-egos is a built-in astroturfing feature that really helps. In a Q&A community, you want your expert members to be recognized and appreciated for their expertise, so it looks weird and bad to have your expert ask a noob question and then answer her own question with an expert answer. After all, if the expert needs to ask a noob question, then how can she really be an expert? Alter-egos make it easy for her to pick a different user for asking, but she can answer as herself. This feature is especially handy when you have a small group of topic experts trying to get your initial content seeded. You may be able to get others to assist you in seeding content, but all your early adopters will be precious to you, and they may be harder to acquire and produce less than you expect. At the end of the day you may need to rely on yourself to get things started, but our experience shows its a lot like a nightclub dance floor. It is completely empty until some bold couple dares to go out there to break the ice, and then it fills up quickly.