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Here's my plan to drive more incoming links and traffic

by Chris Thompson
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone,

I have a plan and I'm interested in hearing critiques or suggestions to improve the plan. Hopefully somebody will benefit from this besides me. I think it's an easy strategy, but I'm just trying it out for the first time.

I have an audio product. It's on Clickbank. I want to see more stuff written about my course on blogs. I don't care if the write-ups are from affiliates or not. Any exposure will increase my sales.

I got a great book for a birthday gift last week. It's on marketing and PR. The author talks about many cases where product vendors (book publishers, etc) have provided bloggers with "advance copies" to get the buzz going, and in some cases bloggers have been responsible for 300 write-ups on a book before it is released.

My audio course is still less than a year old. So it's still new enough.

I've posted a job to elance that will require someone to go find a huge list of related blogs to my course. I'll offer the bloggers a review copy, and ask them if they are interested in checking out my product, no obligation, no mention of affiliate program, etc.

Those who reply, I'll send them a review copy. If they ARE smart with regard to affiliate marketing they'll either ask me about my affiliate program or they'll find it themselves. If they are not interested in monetizing their blog with affiliate stuff, they may just write about the course so that they have more content. I find, in my niche, a lot of bloggers just want content to write about.

So - thoughts? This whole thing will cost me about $50, with an elancer being paid about $3/hr to gather blog info and then use my gmail account to send emails to blog owners. Personalized emails to each blogger. I figure I can probably hit up 200-400 bloggers with offers for review copies using elance. Depending on the take-rate, I may continue it and hit up over a thousand blogs in my market. I'll probably look at each blog myself BEFORE giving the green light to email the blogger. That way I can avoid bloggers who are not actively blogging.

What specifics should my elance person gather about each blog aside from URL, blogger name and email address? Any other suggestions?

Thanks for any advice on this. I think it's worth the small investment to look to get a lot of publicity from bloggers.
#drive #incoming #links #plan #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Quick update: I decided that I should probably get my elance person to somehow measure how often the blogger posts. I'd like to send review copies only to people who are actively blogging, not stale blogs.

    This thread should help people ...anyone want to pitch in? It's about outsourcing in order to promote your product, get backlinks, gain affiliates, gain traffic, etc. This is a prime topic for WF members!
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    • Profile picture of the author GeorgettaSterling
      Chris, I think it's a good idea. As you say, the traditional book publishers have been doing it for awhile now.

      In addition to whatever "activity" metric you come up with to measure how frequently and recently the blog owner is posting, you can also have your outsourcer collect some easy measures like PR and Alexa Rank. This will give you an idea of the popularity of those blogs, and help you sort which blogs to target first.

      You can go further and have him/her look for blog age, get some estimate of their subscription rate (for example, if they use Feedburner, or whether they actually have one of those widgets that posts their RSS sub rate), whether they have an easy method for people to subscribe to their blog (email or RSS links) etc.

      That should give you a bunch of criteria to sort the blogs by "power".

      Some other random thoughts that aren't necessarily completely on the "outsourcing" topic:
      - you might want to look for the most influential blogs in your niche and target them more aggressively. For example, in the self improvement niche, getting Steve Pavlina to review your stuff is a lot more powerful than getting Joe Spamblog's review. Obviously they are harder to contact and get attention from, but the big movers are often worthwhile...

      - depending on your topic, you might expand your search to include general book review blogs. These folks specialize in book reviews and often have a large following. Don't try this with "make money" products - most book review specialists don't appreciate that niche.

      - be aware that the big publishing houses often pay for reviews. You could simulate that by going through the "pay for post" services. For many, a review copy of your book just isn't enough...

      - you could stimulate natural reviews (or requests for review copies) by getting lots of diggs for an informational page on your ebook site. Lots of bloggers use Digg to find "popular" topics to blog about. You can buy diggs or sign up for lots of accounts yourself and try that...or try to join one of the digg clubs that are around the net. A short note on your informational page telling bloggers that they can get a free review copy also helps. Those reviews won't likely be on blogs specializing in your niche, but some could be.

      - active bloggers in your niche will often respond to people posting real, thoughtful comments on their blogs, even when they ignore emails. If you engage the blogger sufficiently, she will often want to take a look at your stuff, especially if it is relevant to her readers.

      I am POSITIVE that other Warriors have much better thoughts than these!!!

      Regards, Georgetta
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      • Profile picture of the author grainosalt
        I know its been done by a company selling a large bean bag.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Georgetta - thanks for the great reply. Lots of fantastic ideas there.

    Regarding paid reviews, does anyone know how this affects google rankings? Google seems to frown upon paid links, so if a review is paid for and Google knows that the website accepts pay for reviews, then it would seem to me the link to your site is also paid for ... bad for SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author magicstar
    Those who reply, I'll send them a review copy.
    Sorry to dampen your spirits but before you do that you might want to register the copyright, put something in place to find copies and make sure you've got a Cease and Desist letter all drafted out and ready for use.

    For many bloggers getting a free copy of material not already published on the Internet (Unique Content) is a dream come true.

    I would prefer to just pay per post without giving out copies. You could write a detailed piece on what the course covers, publish it on your site and give the bloggers access to that page so they have some source material to base their comments on. And don't worry about Google, they are pretty pathetic at discriminating against links from known paid-for posters.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
      Originally Posted by magicstar View Post

      Sorry to dampen your spirits but before you do that you might want to register the copyright, put something in place to find copies and make sure you've got a Cease and Desist letter all drafted out and ready for use.

      For many bloggers getting a free copy of material not already published on the Internet (Unique Content) is a dream come true.

      I would prefer to just pay per post without giving out copies. You could write a detailed piece on what the course covers, publish it on your site and give the bloggers access to that page so they have some source material to base their comments on. And don't worry about Google, they are pretty pathetic at discriminating against links from known paid-for posters.
      Magicstar: The product is already on the market. It's an audio course, not an ebook. I'm not worried about this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Update:

    I awarded the contract on elance to a guy in Nairobe, Kenya. $3/hr is the rate, and his english was next to perfect when he communicated with me. I'm impressed so far.

    I'm going to ask for domain age, page rank, alexa ranking, email address (or contact form URL) and blogger name. I'll then sort the list somehow and have my outsourcer send an email to the top 100 to see what happens.
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