Greenguy's Board - View Single Post - Linklists and Free Sites: How Do We Move Forward?

mb · 2008-03-31, 09:00 PM

This is my response to the following thread:

http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=46266

I didn't want this long response buried on page 6 as I think it brings up points not currently being discussed and should stand alone.

No disrespect to Kit, whom I find to be a very creative and smart business person, or the others who have provided valuable input on an interesting topic, however, I must provide my opposing opinion and offer some suggestions on how to improve the landscape of our business.

The link list and free site business is not dead.
The link list and free site business is not dying.
The link list and free site business is in a recession of sorts. And this one isn't because of George W Bush.

Automation tools and lazy webmasters are the two major reasons why people are finding it hard to make a buck submitting free sites or running link lists these days.

Face the facts. Money is not easy to come by. Every legal business has it's ups and downs and those that bust their ass day in and day out are the ones that will succeed in the end. The day that you tell yourself "let me find a way to cut a corner or two and make this easier" is the day that you decided to step out of the system and enter the realm of the "common webmaster". There is a HUGE distinction between "cutting corners" and "optimizing a work flow".

CUTTING CORNERS:
So you are making a few dollars by building free sites and decide you want to step it up a notch or two and double your income. You decide to purchase a tool that automatically makes mirrored pages for you to include the extra lists you are going to submit to. You set it up and bam, two identical versions of a free site. You submit and forget. Then move on to the next one. As the process seems easy, you multiply it 3-4 times so you are now spitting out 10 mirrors and 100 linklists are covered. Now it's getting easy. So you buy a program to automatically build the free site and generate random text on the pages and randomly grab content from a huge pool of content. Next, you decide you can't hand submit all that stuff, so you use a program to auto-submit. Next thing you know you aren't doing anything and have effectively cut every corner there is for the sake of making a buck.

THE RESULT?
You have thousands of pages out there and have made a little extra in the short term. Slowly sales begin to sink and the questions start to arise. Link lists are dead? Free sites aren't appealing? No! The unique qualities that your free sites started out with in the beginning are gone. The hand-picked, hand-optimized content and hand-picked sponsors you used to work with are all gone. For the sake of automation, you've ended up with mirror after mirror of bland, basic, non-selling free sites pushing sponsors that don't have anything interesting to sell.

NOW. Consider thousands of other webmasters JUST LIKE YOU doing the same things day in and day out. You want to save time, you want to increase your chances of a sale, you want to only spend 1 hour a day with these free sites. THE MARKET IS NOW FLOODED WITH GARBAGE. Google starts to notice patterns in the mirrored system you are using. They penalize it because it's bad practice. Your penalized sites trickle up to the link lists that link to them and in turn the value of the link list is lowered. This has happened hundreds of thousands of times over the last few years across many networks of free sites.

IS THERE A SOLUTION?

Sure there is! Start doing things by hand again. Start by finding unique paysites to promote that offer exclusive content. Make sure those sponsors are not scamming the surfer. Look at their join page. Are they cross-selling? If they are, fuck them. It's a scam. Work with revshare programs if possible. It almost always works out better in the long run. Now that you've found a good sponsor, contact them and tell them you want to build a network of free sites with their content. They will most likely be happy to give you an archive of stuff to work with. Don't always rely on what's on the surface of the program's webmaster tools section.

Now that you've got a nice archive of content, start building your free sites.

HERE IS HOW I WOULD DO IT:

Try to make your free sites cover one niche theme. Once you get a group of free sites that cover a theme, build a hub site to link to all of those niche free sites. When you get a good number of niche hubs built, build a site to list all of those niche hubs. Now, and this is important, make that main page that lists all of the hubs a dynamic page. You can blog on it. You can pull links to free sites to the front as "feature items". Do whatever you can to make sure that FRONT PAGE changes daily. That is what search engines like google enjoy seeing. And guess what, if google likes your front page, they will see your hub pages and in turn will see your free sites which will in turn see the link lists you have linked to and bring relevance back to the linklist/freesite dynamic. Don't forget to include a link to your main page that lists all of your hubs on every free site you build! One simple link will do. And take it easy with those recips! 40 recips on a page is ridiculous. If it seems spammy, it is spammy.

This is not easy. This is not quick. This takes some thought. That's business folks. It's not easy. If you plan to make the real money, plan to spend many days working 14-16 hours. Take some time off in between those spurts, but always remain focused.

I can't stress the point enough that you have to work with good sponsors. Contact a bunch of them so that you can gather a gorgeous archive of content to build with that covers dozens of paysites across many niches. Don't just stick with one of those "all in one" large programs that have 50 sites in their portfolio. Typically, those programs are scammy and have very little to offer the surfer. I like to stick with programs pushing 1-3 sites at the most. Check out the popular review sites to get an idea of what's good. They've seen them all.

IN CONCLUSION

Our solution is not to change the format of our free sites. It's to take a second look at how the entire system works together as one organism. If we all decide to take a step back and start doing things better and linklists help to police this by not accepting cookie-cutter, auto-generated spam sites, then the bad seeds will be weeded out and the entire system will begin to breath easier. It's going to take time and everyone has to work together to get there, but I'm certain it's possible.

marc
hoes.com

2008-03-31, 09:00 PM	#1
mb The sun? That's the hottest place on Earth Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 391	Linklists and Free Sites: How Do We Move Forward? This is my response to the following thread: http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=46266 I didn't want this long response buried on page 6 as I think it brings up points not currently being discussed and should stand alone. No disrespect to Kit, whom I find to be a very creative and smart business person, or the others who have provided valuable input on an interesting topic, however, I must provide my opposing opinion and offer some suggestions on how to improve the landscape of our business. The link list and free site business is not dead. The link list and free site business is not dying. The link list and free site business is in a recession of sorts. And this one isn't because of George W Bush. Automation tools and lazy webmasters are the two major reasons why people are finding it hard to make a buck submitting free sites or running link lists these days. Face the facts. Money is not easy to come by. Every legal business has it's ups and downs and those that bust their ass day in and day out are the ones that will succeed in the end. The day that you tell yourself "let me find a way to cut a corner or two and make this easier" is the day that you decided to step out of the system and enter the realm of the "common webmaster". There is a HUGE distinction between "cutting corners" and "optimizing a work flow". CUTTING CORNERS: So you are making a few dollars by building free sites and decide you want to step it up a notch or two and double your income. You decide to purchase a tool that automatically makes mirrored pages for you to include the extra lists you are going to submit to. You set it up and bam, two identical versions of a free site. You submit and forget. Then move on to the next one. As the process seems easy, you multiply it 3-4 times so you are now spitting out 10 mirrors and 100 linklists are covered. Now it's getting easy. So you buy a program to automatically build the free site and generate random text on the pages and randomly grab content from a huge pool of content. Next, you decide you can't hand submit all that stuff, so you use a program to auto-submit. Next thing you know you aren't doing anything and have effectively cut every corner there is for the sake of making a buck. THE RESULT? You have thousands of pages out there and have made a little extra in the short term. Slowly sales begin to sink and the questions start to arise. Link lists are dead? Free sites aren't appealing? No! The unique qualities that your free sites started out with in the beginning are gone. The hand-picked, hand-optimized content and hand-picked sponsors you used to work with are all gone. For the sake of automation, you've ended up with mirror after mirror of bland, basic, non-selling free sites pushing sponsors that don't have anything interesting to sell. NOW. Consider thousands of other webmasters JUST LIKE YOU doing the same things day in and day out. You want to save time, you want to increase your chances of a sale, you want to only spend 1 hour a day with these free sites. THE MARKET IS NOW FLOODED WITH GARBAGE. Google starts to notice patterns in the mirrored system you are using. They penalize it because it's bad practice. Your penalized sites trickle up to the link lists that link to them and in turn the value of the link list is lowered. This has happened hundreds of thousands of times over the last few years across many networks of free sites. IS THERE A SOLUTION? Sure there is! Start doing things by hand again. Start by finding unique paysites to promote that offer exclusive content. Make sure those sponsors are not scamming the surfer. Look at their join page. Are they cross-selling? If they are, fuck them. It's a scam. Work with revshare programs if possible. It almost always works out better in the long run. Now that you've found a good sponsor, contact them and tell them you want to build a network of free sites with their content. They will most likely be happy to give you an archive of stuff to work with. Don't always rely on what's on the surface of the program's webmaster tools section. Now that you've got a nice archive of content, start building your free sites. HERE IS HOW I WOULD DO IT: Try to make your free sites cover one niche theme. Once you get a group of free sites that cover a theme, build a hub site to link to all of those niche free sites. When you get a good number of niche hubs built, build a site to list all of those niche hubs. Now, and this is important, make that main page that lists all of the hubs a dynamic page. You can blog on it. You can pull links to free sites to the front as "feature items". Do whatever you can to make sure that FRONT PAGE changes daily. That is what search engines like google enjoy seeing. And guess what, if google likes your front page, they will see your hub pages and in turn will see your free sites which will in turn see the link lists you have linked to and bring relevance back to the linklist/freesite dynamic. Don't forget to include a link to your main page that lists all of your hubs on every free site you build! One simple link will do. And take it easy with those recips! 40 recips on a page is ridiculous. If it seems spammy, it is spammy. This is not easy. This is not quick. This takes some thought. That's business folks. It's not easy. If you plan to make the real money, plan to spend many days working 14-16 hours. Take some time off in between those spurts, but always remain focused. I can't stress the point enough that you have to work with good sponsors. Contact a bunch of them so that you can gather a gorgeous archive of content to build with that covers dozens of paysites across many niches. Don't just stick with one of those "all in one" large programs that have 50 sites in their portfolio. Typically, those programs are scammy and have very little to offer the surfer. I like to stick with programs pushing 1-3 sites at the most. Check out the popular review sites to get an idea of what's good. They've seen them all. IN CONCLUSION Our solution is not to change the format of our free sites. It's to take a second look at how the entire system works together as one organism. If we all decide to take a step back and start doing things better and linklists help to police this by not accepting cookie-cutter, auto-generated spam sites, then the bad seeds will be weeded out and the entire system will begin to breath easier. It's going to take time and everyone has to work together to get there, but I'm certain it's possible. marc hoes.com __________________ * Top Converting Sponsors At Hoes.com! * Promote MovieRoom.com!