BizFancy

While I have many content based sites, making money from Adsense or CPA ads or whatever, I thought it might be prudent to explore why my most successful sites became that way. Exactly what tactics did I deploy in terms of link building or other promotions… let’s find out.

Site #1

This was and still is my most successful site to date. It makes money from Adsense and another ad network. This one site has made me 5 figures a year for the last couple years. I guess it isn’t too much of a surprise, as this is the site I put the most time into. Whereas with some sites, I put in an hour or maybe a few hours into creating and refining the content, with this site I probably spent 25 or 30 hours on content creation over the span of a few weeks. I guess because the subject was one I was passionate about and interested in, in fact, its something I do quite often, that it didn’t seem like hard work at the time. It seemed very much like a true labor of love.

As far as the promotion, I recall that once I launched it, I did several things:

Wrote an article for distribution – This was an extensive how-to type article, nearly 1000 words long. It took a couple hours to write it, but it paid off. I posted it on my site first, then I submitted it to EzineArticles.com and the other major article directories. It was picked up and posted by quite a few niche sites.

Niche Directories – I submitted to several niche directories that specialized in the topic. None of which required any fees. Though one did require a reciprocal link, which I provided.

General Directories – I submitted to Yahoo Directory, since the site was non-commercial. Though it never got in. I also submitted to DMOZ, but it did not get in by my submission. Instead, a few months later, an editor added the site to a different DMOZ category. Interestingly, the DMOZ editor added an internal page of the site. I also added the site to JoeAnt and GoGuides as an editor.

Social Sites – I also submitted the site to Digg and StumbleUpon and a few other social news and bookmarking sites. Though it was a manual submission, not automated, so it was just a few.

RSS Submission – The site has an RSS feed, which I submitted to some RSS directories, like Technorati.

That’s pretty much all I did at launch. I did a few more updates after that, adding another section and updating a few pages. A few months later, I submitted to a few more trusted general and niche directories, created a Squidoo Lens with unique content and contextual links and did another article distribution.

Not long after, it had achieved good rankings on MSN and then on Google for a very competitive phrase. At this point, I stopped doing any promotion, as from my stats, I could see that it was naturally gaining excellent links every single month, often every single day. The quality of the content and the time I put into it paid off big time. The site was mentioned by a major newspaper, was site of the day on a local newscast, was included on About.com as a resource, it was mentioned by people (not me) as a resource on Yahoo Answers, eHow and sites of that nature. Pretty soon it gained blogroll links on major niche blogs.

I really haven’t done any promotion at all in the last couple years and it just keeps gaining traffic!

Lesson Learned —

Putting the time and passion into your content PAYS OFF, eventually. When you have great content, you don’t need to build links or send out press releases or articles or spam other sites with comments and profile links. You get superb quality links, naturally, for free, without any work!

Site #2

This is a bit of a different story than site #1, however, many days, I make more money with this one than site #1, with about a tenth of the traffic!

With this one, I took shortcuts, and perhaps I got lucky. It is a simple 10 page site that is based around an up and coming health product. I hired a (good) writer to create articles about 10 different keyword phrases on the topic, then added them to the site. I properly SEO’d it, of course, but didn’t go overboard. The phrases were not very competitive. All in all, I spent no more than an hour setting up this site. The promotion I did:

Social Bookmarking – I bookmarked it using OnlyWire, once.

Link Wheel – I used 6 unique articles to create a link wheel at 6 of the top web 2.0 sites, including WordPress.com, Squidoo, Quizilla and others.

This is it. That’s all I did, because I had to move on to another project right away.

I don’t know if I lucked out or what, but the site gained the #1 listing on Google for the exact phrase I optimized for with the link wheel. It still has that #1 listing, in fact, it has an indented listing for it.

I have added a few additional articles over the last year or so, but that’s it.

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Interesting, isn’t it? One thing I will say though, neither of these sites were built using WordPress as the CMS. Both sites are built in HTML. I don’t know why, but I don’t have as much luck with content based sites made in WordPress.

Ok, if you’ve been trying to promote your website very long, you’ve no doubt heard of article marketing. It’s still an effective way to bring in targeted visitors AND build links at the same time. Needless to say, this double edge benefit is certainly worth the time you must invest in this tactic. Most people simply write an article, then submit it to a few directories by hand or use a service like ArticleMarketer, iSnare or submission software. This is ok, but you’ll get MUCH more out of each article you write if you use some other services. Here are some service that are pretty effective at taking your article and multiplying the benefit it will have:

Unique Article Wizard – This is a service that you must pay for each month. Basically, you take your one article and spin many unique versions from it, then a unique version is submitted to hundreds of different article directories. Because each article is at least somewhat different, you should get many links from that content. One of the best things about it, is that you can spin the article title and also the resource box, so you can get links with many different anchor texts from just one article.

Article Marketing Automation – UAW gets you links from article directories, but AMA is different. It spins the article for you and posts it to many blogs, including related blogs. So, each blog gets unique content with your links inside the text of each article. This is another great way to get links.

If you combine these two services, you are getting links from two sources, ie, blogs and article directories, just throw in a few links from other methods each month and you have link building synergy.

The great thing is that you are not spamming social bookmarking sites or social news sites or wasting hours trying to find dofollow blog comment links and all that. These two tools are fantastic for people trying to promote sites that are usually quite difficult to build links for, like BANS sites, eBay affiliate sites, Amazon affiliate sites and Adsense based sites.

If you hate article writing or simply can’t seem to find the time to get it done, there are MANY options for outsourcing. Decent quality articles that will work perfectly fine for spinning can be had for a few bucks each. Pay a little more and get better quality. Try the freelance sites and webmaster forums… but do watch out for scammers. Many article writers that do work cheap, even ones with good feedback ratings will disappear after a while and take the money and run. A reputable site to buy articles is Needanarticle.com, but also try Getafreelancer.com and Scriptlance.com to get bids on your work.

While I usually tell SEO clients that link building must be done manually, I am always checking out the latest software that can streamline, speed up or complete automate some link building tasks. Here’s my opinions on the ones I’ve used:

DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS

Autofill Directory Submission Software

SubmitEaze – This is a nice program, it does streamline the directory submission process quite a bit. The problem with it is that some directories in the list have broken captcha’s which makes them useless. Even with this program directory submissions can take a while to do.

Directory Submitter Gold – This one isn’t quite as slick as SubmitEaze but it seems to have more directories that work.

Semi-Automated Directory Submission Software

DigiXmas Submitter – This tool does a good job of automating the process as much as it can be done. You still have to enter the captcha’s for any directories that use one, but you do not have to visit each site, which obviously saves a lot of time. The problem with this program is they charge for each URL you want to submit. At $15, this can add up fast and not only that, you pay the $15 and still have to spend the time submitting yourself. Not exactly the deal of the century when you consider you can outsource directory submissions to someone for around the same price, leaving you to do NONE of the work instead. If they lowered their price or had some subscription plan, it would be worth considering if you do a lot of directory submissions. I should note that they do allow you to submit to 150 PR 0 directories for free.

Website Based Directory Submitters

GTSee – This is actually a service/script that you pay to use. It is $6.95 and it submits to 1000+ directories. It would be great if it actually worked. I tried it and found that I only got a few approvals from these submissions and tons of submission declined notices.

EasySubmits – This is a nice service, it’s free and best of all, it actually works. Now, this will cost you some time, as you have to enter the captcha’s for each site and you have to go through page after page of directories, but submitting with this tool was easy and I got loads of confirmations to my email and tons of approvals! You know a submitter is working well if you get actual APPROVALS to your email address.

Other Link Building Tools

SENuke – SENuke generally does what it says, it makes it much easier to do social bookmarking, create WordPress MU blogs and links on those blogs, creating social networking account and links, submit videos, submit your RSS feeds etc. I found the software buggy at times, especially the social bookmarking part. Plus, it’s an expensive investment at $127 a month.

Bookmarking Demon – This one is for social bookmarking only. It does what it says it will do and it even creates social bookmarking accounts. That said, I found it buggy as well and slow at times. This could be because I was using the older version, and they did recently come out with a new version. Worth a look if you need social bookmarking done.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Some alternatives to the above social bookmarking software are these sites that allow you to post to your accounts for free:

OnlyWire – This is not free anymore, but you can use the service by just providing them a reciprocal link, which I think is worth it. Supports quite a few sites, basically all the biggest and most important ones, even sites like Twitter. The only drawback is that you must create the accounts yourself. Which will take you a bit of time. Also, it doesn’t support multiple accounts or anything like that, you must log in and change the account information yourself if you want to do that. Still, I do believe this is the best service of its kind right now.

SocialMarker – This one is a good alternative to OnlyWire. You have to create the accounts yourself but it supports more sites. Not as automated though as you have to visit each site to submit the bookmarks.

I do a lot of SEO work in addition to my own projects, and link building is a huge part of SEO. I often get clients who can’t afford a big monthly package for link building work, so I try and give them tips for how to do it themselves. Maybe that’s not a wise thing to do as far as making money, but I hate to see people struggling when they get started and helping people in this way makes for some very satisfied and very loyal customers. I always get more business from them once they get going, plus lots of referrals. Anyway, I tell them each something a bit different, since every site is different. However, for most sites, I recommend the following to start with and to do on a regular and consistent basis:

• Local Search Submissions – Get listed on Google Local, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle etc., there’s about a dozen or so big ones currently.
• Major Directory Submissions – Submit to Yahoo Directory only if you have plenty of space in the budget for it, then submit to DMOZ, then to JoeAnt and the other large and reputable ones, 20-50 submissions should cover the important directories.
• Niche and Regional Directory Submissions – For most niches, there will be a directory that pertains to it. For example, if you have a  health related site, submit to health directories. Another example: If you have a wedding site, you can submit that to all wedding and bridal directories, women’s directories and shopping directories. Don’t forget to submit to your regional directory, like if you’re in the UK, submit to UK directories. If you are in Canada, Canadian directories. If you are in a big city, most of them have a directory or search engine. Just do a search and you’ll see there are directories for every region and niche.
  
• Forum Profiles and Posting – For just about every niche, there will be appropriate forums that you can join. Find the main ones in your niche, join, add your link to your profile and your signature, then add something of substance to the discussions on a regular basis.
• Press Release – When you launch your site, announce it via press release. Every time you make a major addition of a new service, product, feature or have some other news, announce it in another press release.
• Social Media and Community – Like forums, there are going to be social sites and communities that cater to your target market. If you have a wedding site, join wedding, bridal and women related communities. Add your link to your profile, post blogs, join groups and discussions. Don’t forget to join business and entrepreneur sites like Ryze, LinkedIn, Startup.biz etc.
• Social News Sites – Submit articles, blog postings and content (of good quality) to social news sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Propeller etc.
• Content Syndication – Create content sites and blogs at sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Vox, Livejournal, Blogger etc. Put unique, interesting content on each site like tips, articles, recommendations, reviews etc. Try to update these sites once a month, at least.
• Article Writing – Write quality articles and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles and GoArticles. Put this method on steroids by using a service like JetSubmitter or UniqueArticleWizard.
• Link Exchanges – Consider a few highly targeted link exchanges with reputable sites.

With every method, don’t forget to vary anchor text and don’t forget to build links to internal pages of your site as well.