Sharing A Small Link List Success Story

[Greenguy]

This post was a reply in this thread over in the SEO forum, but I thought I'd share it with everyone

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I don't know if this means anything or not, but here it goes...

In July of 2010 I opened Real Sexy Girlfriends. I did this site because, at the time, girlfriend sites were just starting to pop & I'm still a big fan of real amateur pics/vids. Also, I had a SHITLOAD of girlfriend free sites, so I could populate the categories with my own sites before it opened so that the pages would not look bare.

Now, please note that NONE of those girlfriend free sites that I had already built linked back to the new link list - and they still don't. (of course, new free sites that I build do link back to the index) To get links flowing into the site, I asked for a lot of trades - most of which did not reciprocate But, my links to them remain on the pages because I'm lazy

I also made up some table/text "ads" that I slapped around my hubs. Some were niche specific (see http://www.liveamateurlesbians.com/) and some were general & linked to each category (see http://www.adultwebsex.com/) I linked to each category page from all of my other link lists.

I did as much as I could with my own traffic/sites - with the exception of all those free sites - that'd be WAY to much work & upload time to add a link to each of those.

In October 2011 I joined Linkspun. In 5 months, I've set up 300+ inbound trades, most (if not all) coming off other girlfriend sites or amateurs & niche specific pages. The trades go to the main page as well as the category pages. I have no proof, but I do feel that this has helped out a great deal.

So, a little over 1-1/2 years later where am I? I'd say it's doing good. It gets about 500 hits a day (50% referral traffic from inbound links & 40% search engine) I'm in the top 10 for many of the keywords that I targeted, the best being "sexy girlfriends"

My analytics look like complete SHIT when you think about what a site should be:
2.17 Pages/Visit
00:01:37 Avg. Time on Site
64.28% Bounce Rate

But, I am making sales off the ads/text on the category pages. I'm not gonna get rich off them, but YTD it's about 15 sales (4 with 1 program that's paying $45/signup in Feb )

Also, there is NOTHING else on this domain - no free sites or galleries of blogs - nothing.

I did use some basic HTML5 tags on the pages, like:
<header>
<hgroup>
<details>
<summary>
<nav>
<section>
<figure>
<figcaption>
<footer>

My point in all this? It does still work....sorta I won't bore you with the details of Sunshine Lesbians, but I've employed the same strategy & had less-than stellar results (I will say it's only been open 9 months, so maybe it'll have similar results 9 months from now)

Now, I know this way of marketing a link list may be looked at as difficult for some of you because I am a "BIG" guy But in reality, you can do the exact same thing I did. I still list category pages on the bottom of LOR's category pages, so you can get links from the big link lists. You should all have hubs where you can push a new site. You REALLY should be on Linkspun as it's a fucking fantastic way to make trades outside of your normal circle.

Why don't I do more? Lately, I've been going back thru the existing link lists that I have & fixing them up a bit. But I do think that I will make another niche specific link list in the near future.

So there ya go! Proof that the old model mixed with a little new thinking does work - or at least could work