What most of the blog directories that require a recip link are missing
 

Dear blog directory owners. Ask yourself a question. Have you been an owner of a quality established blog, would you like to get listed in your own directory?

Why don’t you look at it from the point of view of a blog owner. Let’s pretend you are a webmaster who runs a truly quality blog, and is very cautious to whom he links to. Would you put a mainpage (or even sitewide) link to a new (or even established) blog directory? I am more and more inclined to think it’s not worth it.

It’s like when you have an established high-PR site and then someone comes to you and says, hey, give me a link from your main page. My site is new, you know, but when enough people link to me, it will have a good PR and I’ll send you good traffic. As we all know this rarely happens. Go over traffic trades / gallery requests search forum and see what linking partners the people with PR4 and above sites are looking for. You’ll be surprised. They all want to swap links with:
1. Quality
2. Theme related
3. high-PR
resources. Preferably if it’s a-b-c trade (I asked one link list owner if he could list me if I linked back from another PR2 page of mine, but he said “it would be too complicated”)

If you build a free site which has no traffic and no PR and put 12 recip links to link lists, it’s fair. You’re giving them content, they’re giving you traffic and hopefully PR. But when you already have an established resource, with quality traffic, bookmarkers and high PR, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give directories all at once (quality content, high PR and traffic) for virtually nothing in return. I’m listed in several of directories and the most of them (even established ones) send me as much as 5-10 hits a week.

Plus, it is not that good for my SEO to put a link to unrelated resource on my page. So basically I am HARMING myself!

As a result, all those new blog directories that require a recip link end up listing a bunch of crappy blogs/splogs the owners of which already have some 100 links to other crappy resources and do not care if there will be yet another link.

Surfers come to such directories, see what is listed there, quickly understand that it is mostly crap and move away. And we all wonder why directory traffic is so hard to convert.

If you want to run a quality directory, why not fill it with quality sites?

Well, this is not only for blog directories this is related to any directory

I agree totally. By now I know which directories are worth submitting to and which aren't, thank God.

I post mainly over at another forum where webmasters pop up every day asking for link trades and where it seems I see a new blog directory every couple of weeks looking for blog submissions.

I've pretty much stopped even reading those threads. I don't look for link trades on blog forums these days. I contact webmasters of established blogs that I like and I feel my surfers will like.

At the same time, I remember what it was like starting out. Webmasters who start new directories are going to have to show they can bring some class, common sense and traffic.

The Walrus's Porn Blog Surfer is a great example of a new(-ish) directory that brings in traffic, isn't full of crappy blogs and is well thought out.

I think this comes down to having a community of webmasters who work together, people you know you can trust.

Hmm.

This is where I should announce my new blog directory...........

Next year maybe, lol. I have too many blogs to build.

Thanks, it's nice to see one of my blog directories is thought of so well.

And honestly, I think most blog owners make the exact same mistake. They are so intent on getting recips that they don't pay enough attention to the quality of what they are linking to. Even if you run a blog, your linking tells your surfer a lot about you. You can be a resource and the links you add to your site can enhance your surfers visit or you can just link to anyone and devalue your service to your surfer.

Well, it makes it tougher that a big majority of blogs are splogs, gallery posts and nothing much more. It's hard to find many with a descent amount of text.

And on the other hand if you run a directory, and you only want quality you have to put up with people bitching because you wont list their stuff...:)

ronnie

I think The Walrus set aside a section on Porn Blog Surfer called Gallery Blogs for blogs with little or no text. That makes sense, you can list them but not list them with blogs that are more purely um, bloggish.

And my blogs are pure splogs as they are commercial in nature, not personal blogs. That was my intention and I make no apologies but I try to put in at least a paragraph's worth of text for each post. But I do research for each new site and I try to not just write the typical webmaster ramble.

Yeah, we need to repeat that as often as possible. I'm registering a new domain this morning and I'm going to approach this one in a much more personal manner. Any site I link to will be a personal recommendation from me, not just a link trade.

I'm doing the same thing with my newest project. I'm not going to ask for or accept formal trades with anyone... I'll just link to whatever/whomever I like and leave it at that. :D

Just to clarify, BadWolf's blogs are commercial in nature but he does put some thought into his posts or sales text, if you prefer. They are not the sploggy, in that there is more substance than what you would find on a gallery, pics and a couple lines of text.

I'll take the bitching....but I do have a category which I generously call something like "Gallery Blogs" and stuff all the crap that gets submitted into that category. On XXX Blog Index, I even have sub-categories with all the niche's.

I'd be the first one to admit it takes time to write text for blogs, guess one of the drawbacks, not that I want to refer to it as a drawback, but you get my meaning. I know I dont always have time to actually write something, but there are other ways. If I had only a blog to take care of, it sure would be better than all the ones I have now..lol

ronnie

I still need to work on my text. My new domain is eroticmusings.com and I'm going to try a much looser writing style to match the title of the site. Lol. If I can get my text length up to about half of yours, Walrus, that would be about right for me. :D

That's exactly what I'm going to do.

I don't know about your other blogs but the prostitute blog is a bomb. I love the concept and it is pretty well written. If I didn't know better I'd think you really were Lindsey....wait perhaps I dont know better....show me your |boobies| :D

I'm afraid I've sort of taken this off topic. As a guy who knew he could grow his blog directory bigger / faster if he didn't require recips for the first few hundred submits and refused to go that route, I'll explain my side of the equation.

I knew if I opened it up, I'd get tons of submits but wanting to build something of quality, I didn't want to encourage a bunch of free-loaders to leach off the site. Plus I'm a patient person so if things went a little slower, thats cool in the end I'd get what I want.

Now I've got two mid-size blog directories that consistantly provide traffic to those that submit to me. Judging by the stats on my own blogs, I out perform almost all of the larger directories on a day to day basis. True, when you join some of the larger ones, you'll get a nice rush of traffic but within a week, it will be a mere trickle.

Now I'm not saying I'm sending out tons of traffic by any means but what I do send out is consistant and grows as my sites grow.

Plus the PR0 quality blog today will be a PR3 within 6 months, PR4 within a year and then I will have plenty of established blogs in my directory and I wont have freeloaders benefitting off the traffic that those that believed in what I was putting together have helped me to attract.

I've consciously tried to cut my text down by about half.

Not much use when he keeps exceeding bandwidth!! Sorry but it is criminal of any adult webmaster to allow this to happen. Wasted clicks going out to him and no chance of anything coming back, bad Google PR if it happens to update whilst a host error message is in place and it is not the first time. Lessons were not learned, sorry Walrus you allowed this to happen again and I was considering a link exchange with you!!

First off, the exceeded bandwidth thing affects only one of my 20 domains and porn blog surfer is up and running so it is not affected. You should check on shit before you open your mouth.

Second, yes it's a stupid mistake...or series of mistakes but shit sometimes happens. Do I feel like a total idiot? Of course. Will I move my domain to a host who simply charges for overages and double my bandwidth...yes.

Will I give two shits about doing a link exchange with you....NO!

Shit happens to all of us. Sure not a good way to build link partners. I am curious why your recip looks just like hoes recips?

ronnie

I wrote a promo about that Asian porn blooper post on your site this morning and then when I clicked the link a minute ago I got that nasty bandwidth message and thought "oh no, I've brought down the Walrus!"

Then I remembered there's nowhere near enough traffic to my blog to do any damage even if all my visitors clicked the link.

But I can dream.

:)

Well, what do you expect it to look like when you steal someone's code? ;) (Speaking of criminal...)

Well it took me 7 fucking hours but XXX Blog Index is back up and running. Now to go delete some Saucy Links

What recips? My front page?? I am not sure what you mean, please be more specific. Either way I have not stolen anything I can assure you of that...

Is this my little link box? One for reciprocating, if so then there are tons of people using this code. I had a friend (another panty seller) send it over to me as I could not get anything to work when I tried it. I have seen this style of linking all over the net so how can it be stolen... If it really is a copy of someone elses work I will gladly remove it, not that I use it for linking anymore I prefer a straight text link..

Okay, I was having a shit of a day and I shot my mouth off unfairly. I apologise to you, I had already declined a link so this is not a begging apology just one saying I was wrong and good luck with the new host. Can I suggest http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html they allow adult sites, give you 2TB of transfer on their basic package and they increase this by a 16gb a week that you stay with them (a loyalty thing).

Yes we all make mistakes, mine was shooting my mouth off *Sorry*

Tina

Yes.Bullshit. Your friend is a thief then. I'm telling you it is a copy of the recip which Hoes has been using forever. http://www.hoes.com/go/webmasters/linking-general.html