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Document sharing sites: Are they any good for me?

by RoniShwartz
11 replies
Hi everybody,

I created a series of more than 10 free travel eBooks (mini guides to various cities in Asia) and included affiliate links in them , as well as links to strategic pages in my website.

I then uploaded those mini-guides to leading document-sharing sites like Scribd, Slideshare, DocStoc, Issuu, Calameo and Yudu and did whatever is necessary (good title + detailed description + keyword tags, etc...), but the results are fairly disappointing (to put it mildly)... In leading sites, like Scribd, I managed to get s'thing like 150 views @ book for the good ones and less than 30 views for the less popular ones (in three months time, that is), while in smaller sites, like Calameo and Issuu, there are certain eBooks of mine that were not viewed even once !!!

Does any of you have good experience with document sharing sites ???

If you do, can you please give me some tips that will help me to increase traffic ?

Many thanks to you all,

Roni
#affiliate #document #document sharing sites #ebooks #good #marketing #pdf #sharing #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Ankesh Kothari
    Thanks for asking Roni.

    * The only way you'll get a few thousand visitors from these doc sharing sites is if they feature you for the day. (Even then, you'll have to do some social media leg work to get the first 100-200 viewers - so that they notice you in their statistical dashboard.)

    * These sites are good for link backs. And drip traffic because they rank well in search engines.

    * Not really worth it to create specific content for these sites. But it may be worth it to repackage your existing blog posts and put them up. Or hire a freelancer to do this for you.

    * If you want more readers and traffic to your affiliate links in the ebook - your best bet is to find newsletter publishers. And let them know that they can give away the ebook to their audience for free.

    * And even better is to allow these publishers to rebrand your ebooks with their logo.

    * Start an affiliate program for your own website too. So that these publishers have an incentive to spread your ebook and earn money from it.
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  • Profile picture of the author RoniShwartz
    Thanks a lot for the detailed answer Ankesh.

    As a matter of fact, those city-guides which I created are a "re pack" of my existing content...

    I did plan to offer those eBooks to newsletter-publishers for them to offer them as an opt-in gift to their new subscribers... Do you have any idea where can I find details of those newsletter-owners ? Are you familiar with any decent directory where I can find some of them?

    Many thanks, Roni
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    • Profile picture of the author cyberws
      Roni, download a free report by Nathan Devlin (nathandevlin) - it's on the forum and it's about PLR. He has a detailed discussion of doc sharing sites and how to successfully use them. I have accounts with only a few articles - and multiple hundreds of views. The topic is important which might be why you aren't satisfied with your views. My mistake has been that I've only used doc sharing sites for links, instead of traffic, so I'm working on many new docs that have a call to action. A clear focus on WHO you want to appeal to and WHAT you want them to do is key in any traffic tactic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Onora Oz
    Do these sites still rank well in Google post-Panda?
    I used to see search results from them in the search engine's 1st page, but not anymore.
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    • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
      Originally Posted by Onora Oz View Post

      Do these sites still rank well in Google post-Panda?
      I used to see search results from them in the search engine's 1st page, but not anymore.
      We're still getting great results from document sharing sites post panda and post penguin.
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  • Profile picture of the author RyanLima
    You can rank really well for certain search terms but the rankings drop after a few weeks. Its weird... I have done some PLR to doc sties for extra streams of traffic and had some pretty decent results. Make sure your getting targeted traffic to your docs AND a cleat call to action. I usually just send them straight to an opt in page and then to an affiliate offer
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    • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
      Originally Posted by RyanLima View Post

      You can rank really well for certain search terms but the rankings drop after a few weeks. Its weird... I have done some PLR to doc sties for extra streams of traffic and had some pretty decent results. Make sure your getting targeted traffic to your docs AND a cleat call to action. I usually just send them straight to an opt in page and then to an affiliate offer
      We have seen the same as you with some of our sites. The key to combating this drop is running a consistent back linking campaign. you really only need to focus on the call of action more when you have built up your authority accounts as that is where you will be getting the majority of your traffic.

      Until then you will see that most increase in traffic from the PR the links give you in Google search engine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
    As you can see from general consensus document sharing sites can absolutely be good for you.

    If you're looking to get high traffic directly from the document sharing sites, you will need to build up your authority and reputation which we are currently doing for many of our exclusive clients.

    If you're looking to get high traffic fairly quick you would be best to utilize document sharing sites as a back linking resource to your own website hosting your content.
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