Linklists and Free Sites: How Do We Move Forward?

[mb]

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

[JackDaniel's]

Great post marc! I've really enjoyed reading it

[kit]

Nice point mb, but have you idea, how really stop the "cookie-cutter, auto-generated spam sites"? I think this is impossible. Smart webmasters already do as you stated, but there is 80% lazy ones still here and you (and we all) have no power to drop them.

[nemocnice]

Thanks for that post. I'm starting from zero and reading that was very helpful in my trying to get off on the right foot.

[NY Jester]

Nice post marc...I think thats important what you point out. I honestly think thats what has happened to TGP and why its become "garbage" in some peoples eyes. Because the automation that a WM has today was unheard of 4-7 years ago. Most NEW Tgp sites just rotate their FHG's and circle jerk the surfer around...no wonder surfers are turning to Tube sites..they get what they get and know it.

Believe me Im all about thinking outside the box, not too far but just enough. I think the warning/index 3 gallery site is a good idea and I see its benefits...same as the classic style...so I can understand the desire to test it.

[Mateusz]

Great post. Thats pretty much what I'm doing and it works for me

[Magix]

Great post Marc, but here is another thing why our sales from Fs is getting down, it's the whole economy, just look at the stcok market indexes and you can see that the index is going very nice and steady down, it's my head acke for more then a year now and this trend is unlikely to go up very soon, we just have to wait this period out and it will all be okay again

[tigermom]

Awesome post. Very well written, on top of containing great advice.

My only question to LL owners would be, if you can so easily tell the automated junk from the hand-made sites, why not reject the junk and help us all keep the system healthier?

[Sergeyka]

fix

[Simon]

You know, Marc, if you didn't waste time writing great posts, you'd be able to spend it coming up with more cool tools like those Smart Flash banners.

(note: emphasis is mine)

Originally Posted by mb

...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.

Originally Posted by kit

Nice point mb, but have you idea, how really stop the "cookie-cutter, auto-generated spam sites"? I think this is impossible. Smart webmasters already do as you stated, but there is 80% lazy ones still here and you (and we all) have no power to drop them.

Originally Posted by tigermom

My only question to LL owners would be, if you can so easily tell the automated junk from the hand-made sites, why not reject the junk and help us all keep the system healthier?

Why wouldn't everyone want to eliminate the poor-quality free sites?

Or...what is the advantage to accepting them, since it seems that's what's happening.

Inquiring minds want to know.



.

[koalaTalex]

Marc, that is an amazing post! You made very good points and communicated it very well.

I do everything by hand and a free site takes on average 4-5 hours to get out there. I get the best content I can from sponsors and am trying to weed out the sponsors that won't supply good fresh content. I size and thumb all the content by hand one picture at a time. Our free site designs are well thought out from title to design, colours we use and building the pages. I have even skimmed down my list of LL I submit to so I am only submitting to the ones that give us significant traffic and eliminate the LL owners that are frowned upon by trusted board members.

You make very good points about people cutting corners and when I surf some of the link lists I am amazed to see some of the shit that gets listed. I understand that as a LL owner you need lots of content to keep surfers coming back but Tigermom & Simon bring up an interesting point - why would you want to fill your link list with shitty sites?

Hopefully you're right and people like me that take the time to build and submit quality sites will prevail in the end with good sales from the amazing traffic from link lists like Hoes.

[ladydesigner]

Originally Posted by koalaTalex

why would you want to fill your link list with shitty sites?

I have two relatively small but established link lists and I'm notorious for NOT listing shitty sites. I'm a stickler for the rules. I made a conscious decision when I started out that even though I needed to list free sites to grow, I would not let crappy sites slip through the cracks. Sometimes it's hard though to see/recognize the automated stuff. Lately I've found myself giving priority to my regular submitters and trusted board members and declining the rest. I just refuse to fill my link lists with shit.

[mb]

Originally Posted by kit

Nice point mb, but have you idea, how really stop the "cookie-cutter, auto-generated spam sites"? I think this is impossible. Smart webmasters already do as you stated, but there is 80% lazy ones still here and you (and we all) have no power to drop them.

Hoes.com has been doing this for a while. We don't accept most of the sites that are submitted to us. Only the good ones pushing unique content with a clean design that doesn't appear to be auto generated. Our experience has taught us what to look for. I can pick out the hand-made free sites in a heartbeat.

If all linklists scrutinized the sites they list more, it would weed out the bad seeds.

It's not hard to do that.
marc

[LD]

A couple of questions re Marc's post...

Building the niche hubs...You're referring to sites that you build, right? No FHS or sponsor stuff...is that right? And should the niche hub be completely done by hand as in no scripts? no php in hubs?

[JohnnyR]

Thanks mb for the great post. I'll sure have to rethink a couple of things... I've always been so damn lazy building them hubs and now I regret it... but live and learn!

[swedguy]

BINGO!!

Right on, Marc!


Many years ago I sat down with lots of papers taped together and started drawing (I love pen and paper).

First I made a list with "type of sites", then a list with "traffic sources".

How can this type of site benefit this other type of site?
How can I get more of this traffic by getting more of that traffic?
How can I create this kind of site and get this other kind of traffic back in the other end?
And so on...

Once I saw the whole picture in front of me, I asked myself: What parts do I need to do by hand, what parts can I automate and what parts can I recycle?

Will the sites I create today for this type of traffic work in 1-2-5 years from now? Impossible to answer, but I could bet a pretty penny that sites with 500 "cunt" in hidden text will not work in the long run.

Will this type of traffic work for that type of site work in 1-2-5 years from now? Also impossible, but you see trends and things that will always work. Make them work together. The latest fad is good right now, but will be forgotten before you know it.

The parts that involves other webmasters, someone you will create a "partnership" with, nurture it. Don't fuck around with that.

Enough talking and side tracking, this is the point I was coming to:

Submitting Free Sites is a small piece of the pie that involves fellow webmasters that you should respect. Make your site by hand (you can still use some type of template) and make sure it follows the rules, then submit it by hand.

There's 100's of other things you can do to make your webmaster life way more efficient.

[Greenguy]

GREAT FUCKING POST!

[Nenad]

Back to the roots

[mb]

Originally Posted by tigermom

Awesome post. Very well written, on top of containing great advice.

My only question to LL owners would be, if you can so easily tell the automated junk from the hand-made sites, why not reject the junk and help us all keep the system healthier?

If it were only that easy! Not every link list has the luxury of having "too many submissions". We do because we've been around for so long, as do a handful of other linklists. But smaller linklists are in love with submissions. The more the better. So in the quest for more submissions, quality assurance goes out the door. What they don't realize is that by only taking quality, hand built submissions and deleting the rest, they are helping their linklist exponentially. The bad ones dilute their traffic and affect their SE rankings in a way that they might not notice on the surface. But this cyclical negative effect is real.

Let's say you only accept 1 out of every 5 submissions you receive. But that one site is high quality and will eventually rank well in the SEs. The linklist that ONLY has that one site listed will fare much better than the one that accepted the other 4 autogenerated junk sites that are in turn on the negative side of the SEs and returning the favor to their linklist. Additionally, their surfers will enjoy that 1 site, end up at a quality sponsor, maybe join and come back the next day for another high quality submission. The linklist with the 4 junk listings will send their surfers to hell and lose that surfer forever.

You've got to think long term and be patient with this stuff. Again, nothing comes easy. We've drastically cut down on the number of submissions we accept at hoes.com for the very reasons I've outlined above and will continue to be more strict in the future.

marc

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Greenie

GREAT FUCKING POST!

My reply doesn't do this post justice.

This is what a lot of us have been preaching to everyone for a long time. You need to build up a network of sites. You need to have a hub of sorts. You need to link everything together. You need to be creative with your text. You don't really need mirrors if you plan ahead. etc etc etc.

If you're a Free Sites builder - or a gallery builder or a blogger or whatever - you need to print this up & hang it on the wall next to your desk. Read it & learn from it. Put it into action. Your wallet isn't gonna get fatter tomorrow or next week or next month. But next year, who knows

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by mb

Let's say you only accept 1 out of every 5 submissions you receive. But that one site is high quality and will eventually rank well in the SEs. The linklist that ONLY has that one site listed will fare much better than the one that accepted the other 4 autogenerated junk sites that are in turn on the negative side of the SEs and returning the favor to their linklist. Additionally, their surfers will enjoy that 1 site, end up at a quality sponsor, maybe join and come back the next day for another high quality submission. The linklist with the 4 junk listings will send their surfers to hell and lose that surfer forever.

I made mistake of accepting just about anything reasonable submitted since my list was growing very slow. Lost almost all of my search engine traffic (which was a fairly decent amount). It has been a long hard ride trying to get it back too.

I will not be making that same mistake with my directory. If it takes 10 years to get it rocking, so be it.

[kit]

Originally Posted by Simon

Why wouldn't everyone want to eliminate the poor-quality free sites?
Or...what is the advantage to accepting them, since it seems that's what's happening.
Inquiring minds want to know.
.

Can you find serious differences between following two sites?

http://www.mytrannydesire.com/fs/3003/
http://kinky-cleo.com/porn/tranny/se...ics/index.html

One of them has been listed on all mentioned link sites, other is not listed even in one link site.

[amadman]

Can you find serious differences between following two sites?

The I am Live thing is what would kill the first one for me.

Some of the dark links blend in with the background on the second one. But I am color blind so that could just be me.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by kit

Can you find serious differences between following two sites?

http://www.mytrannydesire.com/fs/3003/
http://kinky-cleo.com/porn/tranny/se...ics/index.html

One of them has been listed on all mentioned link sites, other is not listed even in one link site.

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[swedguy]

One is using Cogent bandwidth and one is not.