DocStoc - 12 docs = 9 page 1 rankings + 2185 visitors in 10 days

[WilliamM]

I recently decided to give document sharing sites a try as a method for generating traffic and wanted to post the results from my first experience.

I registered at DocStoc using a relevant keyword as my user name. I then edited my profile to include the URL to my website along with a brief description.

Over a one week period, I took content from one of my websites, tweaked it, added a cover page with a large title, website logo and URL. I included a few links to my website throughout the text and a list of link at the end of the document. I inlcuded a tracking code in each link. I then converted the documents to pdf and uploaded them to DocStoc.

I really was not expecting the documents to be indexed as soon as they were. By chance, I was doing a search for one of the keyword phrases to see where my website was ranking and found one of the documents on page 1 of Google with a little note that read "added 20 minutes ago".

Ten days after uploading the first document I checked the results. Nine of the twelve documents were on page 1 of Google for my chosen keyword phrases. The remaining three documents were on pages 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Here is a breakdown.

keyword phrase 1 - #3 of 160,000
keyword phrase 2 - #2 and #3 of 86,000
keyword phrase 3 - page 4 of 9,040,000
keyword phrase 4 - page 3 of 1,720,000
keyword phrase 5 - page 2 #14 of 23,600,000
keyword phrase 6 - #10 of 3,610,000
keyword phrase 7 - #6 and #7 of 15,400,000
keyword phrase 8 - #2 and #3 of 4,080,000
keyword phrase 9 - #4 and #5 of 1,950,000
keyword phrase 10 - #9 of 77,900,000
keyword phrase 11 - #8 of 467,000
keyword phrase 12 - #7 of 1,270,000

When a keyword phrase resulted in two page 1 rankings, it refers to the document itself and the docstoc tag page that has my document on it. In fact, some of the tag pages have three or four of my documents listed first.

Five of the documents also ranked on the first page of Yahoo's results.

During this 10-day period, my website received 2185 visitors who arrived via the links in these documents. Adsense and affiliate income is up about 23% as a result.

One of the things I noticed was that the high page rankings were for exact (or near exact) keyword phrase matching. For example, if one of my documents was titled "How to Bake a Chocolate Cake", there is a good chance it would rank on page 1 for "how to bake a chocolate cake" (without quote marks) rather than "bake chocolate cake" or just "chocolate cake". The document could be found for the latter keywords but usually on pages 3,4,5 or beyond.

I am encouraged by the results from my first experience but have some quesions about the next step. I know that some warriors have uploaded thousands of documents to document sharing sites so I hope some of them will provide some tips.

1. Would it be better to keep adding more documents to this same account or start creating accounts at other document sharing sites?

2. When uploading documents to multiple document sharing sites, is it best to maintain the same title and keywords or modify them?

3. Should I be concerned about the number of downloads (or lack thereof)? While I have received a lot of click-thrus, I noticed that very few of the documents are actually downloaded.

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

William

[TLTheLiberator]

Sounds like this strat has served you well.

I'm very intrigued.

Did you do any backlinking at all?

Why not see if you can get more than one listing on the first pages of the serps?

Congrats and all the bet to you and yours!

TL

[WilliamM]

TL,

Seven days after uploading the first document, I used one of the bookmarking services in the forum to bookmark my profile page. I'm not sure how to measure the effectiveness of the bookmarking service since the documents were already ranking on the first page of Google when the bookmarking was done.

William

[breakdance]

Does anybody else have any *experience* with DocStoc/DocCash?

[yesacpow]

Congrats on your results.

This is one of those rarely used traffic methods and it is good for you to tap into it. Now you know you can duplicate the process and make more tweaks to get more profit from it.

[Sipboy3000]

This is excellent!

I also use document sharing and it works great.

There are many people who have no idea about document sharing and what it can do for you.

As far as the Doccash program that Docstoc has, it is too early to tell because the program is very new. But I can tell you, it looks promising.

Much like like article marketing, you need lots of documents to make it work.

[Ron Killian]

Congratz on the success William and thanks for sharing in detail

I know Tommie was the one that got me thinking about doc sharing sites, now just need to get off my butt and do it!

[quiescen]

Excellent post William! I did the same thing on Scribd. People really like to visit these doc sites.

[Andy Hart]

Originally Posted by quiescen

Excellent post William! I did the same thing on Scribd. People really like to visit these doc sites.

Me too, I used to get many page 1 placements using scribd back in the day, not used them in a while though

[monitorit]

I sell plr ebooks do you think a preview version would go well on these sites?

[SullyUI]

Looks like a great new traffic method, hope it doesn't get exhausted.

As long as your title and keywords are relevant to your document, I don't think it's a problem if you use the same title and keywords on multiple sharing sites.

[WilliamM]

Here is a quick update.

The documents I upload to DocStoc continue to rank high on Google within a short time (minutes to hours). I uploaded some of the same documents to Scribd but did not have the same success.

DocStoc encourages DocCash users to set up a channel to track income generated from the program but they don't tell you how to do it. I finally figured out that I needed to set up a URL channel. Here are the steps for anyone who wants to know.

1) Log into Adsense account
2) Click on the tab "Adsense Setup"
3) Click on the menu link "Channels"
4) Click the link "URL channels"
5) Click "+ Add new URL channels"
6) Enter docstoc.com and click "Add channels"

With only 15 documents uploaded, I have averaged exactly $1 a day from the doctoc Adsense channel. As mentioned in the OP, uploading the docs to DocStoc has also increased my website rankings and number of visitors to my website. As a result, the income generated from my website has increased as well.

Present goal: 150 docs and $10/day.

Future goal: 1500 docs and $100/day

[ShawnC]

Really really cool info shared here William! I've seen DocStoc start showing up in my searches but I honestly never even thought of using it as a traffic getter for my own sites!

I have one site that will be perfect for this, as it just suits it.

Thanks for sharing your results!

[dizen]

Thanks for sharing Wil. Do they allow members to insert affiliate link into documents?

[Margaret Arumugam]

Originally Posted by dizen

Thanks for sharing Wil. Do they allow members to insert affiliate link into documents?

Docstoc links are no longer live. You can insert affiliate links in your documents but the link will be inactive. (It's a new development that has happened in the past few days)

It was a good source of traffic while it lasted.

[FredJones]

I had tried it once - had risen to the second and third pages on the 2 occassions that I had tried. This was a couple of months back. The rankings had happene without any backlinks from my end.

Then they had slided down.

So maybe with niches with lesser competition they would rise more.

Surprised to know that they have stopped affiliate links - when I had submitted (early 2010) they used to accept the affiliate links.

[Margaret Arumugam]

Originally Posted by FredJones

Surprised to know that they have stopped affiliate links - when I had submitted (early 2010) they used to accept the affiliate links.

It's not just affiliate links, ALL links in the document you upload are now inactive. I guess they want visitors to focus more on clicking their Adsense links (surrounding your documents).

Can't blame them, but it's a reminder not to rely too much on these third-party sites for traffic. Eventually, the rules change and you're left with wasted effort.

Best to focus on developing something you control -- own site, own domain, unique articles.

[johnmags]

Hi William,

Did you do this without doing other things like ping, social bookmarking and backling? just plain submission of docs and pdf to docstoc?

I tried to do this but somehow I did not experienced the same results. Cheers

[thegabrieljibril]

doctoc links are not clickable, how do you generate traffic from your documents, you cannot even click the links in the documents,i think they disable it

[Marakatapolis]

Think its still worth it to simply put your domain name in the header/footer of the dument? Won't you still get people who manually enter it into the address bar or Google?

Or, not worth the time?

[MagicMike111]

DocStoc is great... works well to get a new site spidered within an hour and index within a couple of days... sometimes sooner.

The key for me for indexing new sites is to make sure you create new accounts because google is finding your new website through your new profile.

Scribd is another good document sharing site... of course, as mentioned, now that docstoc links aren't live it is not quite as useful... but still great for indexing quickly.

[Margaret Arumugam]

Originally Posted by Marakatapolis

Think its still worth it to simply put your domain name in the header/footer of the dument? Won't you still get people who manually enter it into the address bar or Google?

Or, not worth the time?

Type-in traffic from Docstoc is minimum, if even that much.

Unless document links are clickable, most visitors are simply going to click out through the surrounding Adsense ads. That's the revenue earner for Docstoc, which is why they've disabled our document links.

[arie_ds]

i'd like to try this, lets see how it goes.. I hope doc sharing sites are still effective for traffic.