Link Bait Me

As some of you may know, I’ve become too busy to manage JoeTech.com, TwitterTech.com, this blog, and all my other sites, so I decided to sell most of my sites. With less than three days left on the auction, I figured I would give a little link love and go out with a great link bait experiment.

While poking through my referer logs, I found a referral from Affiliate Crunch and guess what. It worked. It got me there and more than that, it generated a link to Affiliate Crunch from me. Maybe you’re a regular visitor or maybe you’ve been lured here by a fake referrer log in your web site logs. If you fall into the second category, you know what I mean. It’s called Referrer Bombing, and it usually refers to spammers slamming a site with thousands of requests to a page with a fake referrer. In this case, though, we’re talking about something much less sinister. It’s a FireFox add-on that you install and every time you visit a site, it will pass a fake referrer for you or none at all. It’s up to you.

How does it work?
It’s pretty simple, really. When a you pull up a page in your web browser, you are sending an HTTP REQUEST to the web server that hosts that site you are viewing. This request typically contains a some important information for the webmaster. Usually, this is intended for log files and can be viewed in your hosting package’s logs page. As a bonus, third party applications that generate stats for you can also pick this information up. Part of this information is whether the user typed the URL in directly or clicked on a link and where that link was that was clicked on. When you pass along a fake referrer, the goal is that the webmaster will see it in his or her logs or statistics program and visit your site.

Is it targeted?
Like any campaign, it can be targeted. For example, if you’re looking to promote your new Twitter site, you would want to visit blogs about Twitter or the sites of some Twitter users that have a ton of followers and like to talk about the sites they frequent. This could work for most anything you want to target fresh new traffic to. It would seem that you could target this new traffic as tightly as you’d like.

Will I get a million new visitors?
Frankly, I don’t know. I haven’t really tried it before, so it’s hard for me to say. And don’t forget… You still have to do a lot of foot work, visiting a lot of sites, to get your URL in all those logs. If you have a habit of providing great content, this method will work even better because you want people to stick around, but that’s true for nearly all web marketing. If you do give it a shot, come back and let me know how it went.

Popularity: 59% [?]

To gain entries into the contest, just do any of the following:

- Make a comment of value (not just “i agree”, etc.) on a post = 1 entry (remember to comment on all blogs)
- Subscribe to RSS via email = 2 entries (per blog you subscribe to!)
- Write a post about the contest on your blog (must include a link to this page and the links below to participating blogs) = 25 entries


Please note: If you are already subscribed to any of the sites below, you are already earning entries. Also, to get credit for posting about the contest, your post’s link must show up in the comments below or in the comments on one of the other blogs below.

How much easier can we make it? So you can sneak in with just one entry by simply posting a comment here, you can increase your odds by reading and commenting on a few more posts here and at one of the blogs below and maybe subscribe to a couple, or you can really up the odds and subscribe to all all of our blogs (which you’ll enjoy reading anyway), comment on a bunch of posts, and blog about this contest. The more entries you earn, the better your odds, of course. If you’re going to post about this contest, just grab the image and code from here.

The deadline for this contest is 12:00 AM June 1, 2008.

Who wants to pay you?
- JoeTech.com
- Link Bait
- Gorilla Sushi
- CK Marketing
- The Big Bald Blog
- Jason Boom
- Mr Javo
- AFrogToKiss.net

Popularity: 60% [?]

To gain entries into the contest, just do any of the following:

- Make a comment of value (not just “i agree”, etc.) on a post = 1 entry (remember to comment on all blogs)
- Subscribe to RSS via email = 2 entries (per blog you subscribe to!)
- Write a post about the contest on your blog (must include a link to this page and the links below to participating blogs) = 25 entries


Please note: If you are already subscribed to any of the sites below, you are already earning entries. Also, to get credit for posting about the contest, your post’s link must show up in the comments below or in the comments on one of the other blogs below.

How much easier can we make it? So you can sneak in with just one entry by simply posting a comment here, you can increase your odds by reading and commenting on a few more posts here and at one of the blogs below and maybe subscribe to a couple, or you can really up the odds and subscribe to all all of our blogs (which you’ll enjoy reading anyway), comment on a bunch of posts, and blog about this contest. The more entries you earn, the better your odds, of course. If you’re going to post about this contest, just grab the image and code from here.

The deadline for this contest is 12:00 AM May 1, 2008.

Who wants to pay you?
- JoeTech.com
- Link Bait
- Gorilla Sushi
- CK Marketing
- The Big Bald Blog
- How 2 Blogger
- Jason Boom
- Mr Javo
- AFrogToKiss.net

Popularity: 100% [?]

A few months ago, I found a new way to monetize my sites with a small footprint and almost no effort on my part. The site is TNX.net. They found their success in Russia, first, and then launched the US-friendly version right before I found the site. With over 50,000 users, they’ve sold over 22 million links on 32 million pages with a current sales rate of almost 5,000 links per day. Although the fill rate could be improved, the numbers are still pretty impressive.

How it works
The concept is pretty simple. You sign up and then add sites. Each site must be accepted and then links can be sold. This is the key part. They automatically place the links for you. For those of us with a lot of sites and no time to run around selling links, this is wonderful. I can add a site and pretty much walk away. Points accrue in your account until you decided to use them for your own link campaign or cash them out. Alternatively, you can find your own buyer and negotiate a better rate, but that falls into that “effort” area I want to stay out of. When you cash out, you simply provide your paypal address and wait for the money. The minimum is $5, but I like to wait for at least $20.

Who needs page rank?
In the past year, there’s been a lot of discussion about page rank and its importance to those of us trying to make a living weaving web sites and monetizing them. Some stand firm in their belief that page rank is useless, while others feel it is still important to obtain a high page rank. While I’m part of the latter group, I still recognized very quickly that TNX.net enables a web site owner to sell links on pages with low page rank or none at all. One prime example is a forum site I run. Every post is a page of its own, so they’ve indexed over 2,000 pages on that site and have about 1,000 links sold currently. I’m still looking to fill the other 7,000 links, but I’ll get paid for the 1,000 sold. Almost all of the pages are PR0 and earn 7.5 (this can vary) points per month. They won’t buy me a new Ferrari, but it’s more than those PR0 pages made before TNX.

Page Rank can help
I’m sure you’re wondering what happens when you have a site filled with PR1 pages. Suddenly, your earning potential goes way up. On one of my sites, I’m earning around 1,400 PPM (Points Per Month) per PR1 page. That’s based on 4 links on the page at about 350 PPM each. The same site has a few PR2 pages earning about 2,800 PPM and at least one PR3 page earning 5,600 PPM. I imagine a PR 4 page would earn 11,200 PPM, a PR5 22,400 PPM, a PR6 44,800 PPM and a PR 7 89,600 PPM. This is what I find most interesting, because I have a site that is expected to hit PR7 on the next update and at the current rate, that’s about $70/month for some text links I can throw at the bottom of the page. And remember, I don’t have to sell them.

My lazy strategy
I have a simple strategy for turning TNX.net into my own little revenue machine. Build sites that grow on their own (like forums) and add the TNX code. When I say “grow on their own”, I’m talking about page numbers, not visitors. You still have to do some leg work to get traffic. A site that grows itself is good for a number of reasons. Namely, the more pages you have indexed in Google, the more Google traffic you should get, potentially. This same theory can apply to TNX. The more pages they index from your site, the more links you have to sell. The more links you sell, the more points (eventually cash) you can earn. Keep in mind that TNX indexes pages that actually get viewed. Start up a site that displays images or youtube videos or something. Display each item on its own page to increase your page count and cross-link by tags or keywords for maximum indexing. A couple dozen sites like that with 5,000 pages each becomes a grat earning network.

The strong points
The best thing about TNX for me is that I don’t have to do much with it. I add my site, include my code, and wait. Then I just cash out once in a while and look at my numbers. For you, the best thing may be the ability to go through every single link, removing those that you don’t like, or looking through all the numbers. Either way, try it out for a month and make your own decision.

Popularity: 98% [?]

Whatever it is that you do in life, if you want to make good money doing it, you need to do it well and you need to market yourself. We all have experience marketing ourselves, from getting a girl to like you to getting your resume to the top of the pile at your dream job. Today, I’m going to write about how to market yourself like a rock star, even if you aren’t one. The idea for this post was spawned by the very example I’ll show below, which should be proof enough that it works.

Some background
I run an internet radio station, so I get a few press kits and CDs a week. As a standard, I ask for an autographed 8×10 for my collection and provide my t-shirt size just in case. I’ve gotten a lot of stuff in the mail, from indie DVDs to CDs, buttons and stickers to full posters to shirts. Once, Penthouse sent me a press kit and the DVD for something called Space Vixens from Mars (or something similar), for some unknown reason. The point I’m shooting for is that I am used to the same old stuff, and if you are promoting to the right people, they will be too. You need to stand out. The Young Werewolves have clearly figured this out.

Rise to the top
The first thing I noticed before I even opened the package was the package, itself.

It was covered with spooky little Halloween stickers. Not only did this grab my attention, but it also made me very curious about the contents. I wanted to open it already and take a look.

Pay attention to detail
Anyone can send off a press kit. Anyone can put that press kit in a plain white folder with a boring white press release. You should be different. Take a look at what you are promoting. You put a lot of effort into your product, right? You should put just as much effort into making your press kit look good. If you have a lot of money, you can accomplish this easily by hiring a firm to do all the creative work. Another option is to dig into your own creative resources and see what happens. Take a look at the following images.

TYW went with a plain brown tri-fold pocket folder and cut up stickers in the shapes of werewolf claw marks. This is important because it tells me that they’re obviously creative and resourceful. When I opened the folder, I saw that they didn’t stop at just the claw marks. Anyone can be boring, a handful get creative, and a select few go all out. The Young Werewolves fit into that last category. They left boring for the boring people, touched on creative and then kept going for the win.

Personalize your message
Sure, I ask for the 8×10, but something tells me they have a stack of them ready to go. Putting your signature on anything gives it more credibility and makes it feel more personal. Take a look at any e-book sales page on the internet and you will almost always find an image of the seller’s signature at the bottom. When you take just a minute to make the message feel more personal, it will be more likely to be read.

Get them to spread the word for you
This one is a no-brainer, but it’s often over-looked, so I’ll touch on it just to remind you. If you have something worth promoting, you can often get the people you are targeting to promote for you. TYW picked the most common methods associated with a band, and those are t-shirts, stickers, and flyers. Stickers are great because a lot of people love to put stickers on their cars to show their support. Flyers make it easy for someone to share your information with a friend, and most importantly, t-shirts buy you a walking billboard for years. I have one shirt I’ve been wearing for 13 years, promoting a Canadian band I’m not even a fan of. Figure out what works for what you are promoting and include it.

But I don’t send snail mail press kits
You don’t have to do traditional mailings or be a band to take advantage of these tips. Let’s take a blog, for example. Your packaging is your domain name and your post titles. You want them to be unique and stand out so people click on your links before all others. This is even more important on the web. Unlike a package that would just sit on my desk and get noticed days later, your link may never be seen again by a person if they see another one that looks more interesting and get side-tracked. In a blog, you pay attention to detail by showing examples, using pictures to illustrate your point, and making your blog easy to read. In a blog, your message is already personalized, but you can add to that by replying to comments. Some blogs (the kind that think like TYW) go that extra step and have the blog auto-generate an email, thanking each person for their comment and reminding them to come back soon. Finally, there’s several ways you can get your target readers and others to promote your blog for you. One obvious way is to link to other blog articles that offer track back links.

Take a look at what you’re trying to promote and apply these general principals to your marketing efforts and see what happens. Have you done this already? Share an example of how you’ve already put some of the above into action and how it worked for you.

Popularity: 83% [?]