Drive “Rush Hour” Traffic to Your Content Partner Site!
Sep 13 '01 (Updated Sep 15 '01)
The Bottom Line The basic premise is simple: get your site URL listed on as many different sites as humanly possible. These are just a few ways to accomplish this task.
When I was first starting out here on Epinions a long time ago, I found myself searching through various editorials in the Member Center, trying to learn more about this pastel palace we call Epinions. One of the essays (I don’t remember which one) that really grabbed my attention was by Epinions member ptiemann in which he discussed how he made something like $7000 - $8000 a month from his Epinionating.
STOP! WAIT! DON’T LEAVE YET!
Before you guys run off with dollar signs in your eyes and leave this editorial to find out how he did it, please understand one fact. Making that amount of loot from Epinions is most likely no longer possible for anybody. The income share and Eroyalties have been reduced to the extent that the only way to make that kind of money off Epinions is to sell crack with the word “Epinions” written on the vial. Calm down. Geez…
Yet and still, the editorial got me wondering, “how exactly can I make more money at Epinions?” The best way, it seemed, was through the Epinions Content Partner program. The Epinions CP program was designed to pay Epinionators to channel visitors from their existing web sites into Epinions. If a visitor goes to Epinions via a Content Partner site, the owner of the CP site gets:
High Traffic Tier (apply every day your Content Partner site has more than 1000 page views)
- Banner Revenue: Earn $3 for every 1000 page views to your Content Partner site.
- Referral Revenue: Receive $2 each time a new user signs up through your Content Partner site and writes his or her first review.
- Eroyalties credits: Receive 10% of the Eroyalties credits earned by all users who sign up through your Content Partner site.
Regular Traffic Tier (apply every day your Content Partner site has less than 1000 page views)
- Banner Revenue: Earn $1 for every 1000 page views to your Content Partner site.
- Referral Revenue: Receive $2 each time a new user signs up through your Content Partner site and writes his or her first review.
- Eroyalties credits: Receive 10% of the Eroyalties credits earned by all users who sign up through your Content Partner site.
Not too shabby. Not great, but the numbers could be much worse. So anyway, once I finally finished setting up a Content Partner site and my own personal web site (the hub of Hip Hop music and culture known as Hip Hop Hypotheses), I discovered that the only traffic I was getting was coming from Epinions. That is absolutely not what I wanted. To help turn this around, I decided to read some of the articles on Content Partners in the Epinions Member Center. Some of the editorials there were helpful, but many more of them were nothing but pooop™. Straight up doo doo.
So, instead, I checked out some books and articles on web site marketing, then surfed around the ‘net taking notes. After doing a little reading and research, I’ve found a few methods that have been successful in driving more traffic to my CP site. Hopefully, you can adapt them to fit your own needs.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Internet Marketing guru, nor do I play one on TV. I've just got a few ideas that you can use to help your CP site attract more visitors. If you can't handle that, then just scroll down to the bottom of this review and click "VH". Thank you.
Method #1: Standard Marketing - Finding a specific web site on the internet is like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles underneath another larger stack of needles. So how can you direct internet patrons to your modest site to give you that coveted fraction of a penny? Advertise. Not by unwisely purchasing ad space, business cards, or flyers, but by just getting the name and address of your site out to the public as much as possible. There are a few different ways to accomplish this task:
a) Search Engines – Once your site is up and running, make sure that you submit your main site only to as many free search engines as you can find, such as Yahoo or Lycos. Submitting your Content Partner site to search engines is against the Epinions Terms of Service. People are always using search engines to find information, so you definitely want to be listed. Each search engine has different ways to submit your site. Just read and follow the instructions.
b) Message Boards – If you post a lot at message boards, make sure that a link to your site shows up in your signature section. Don’t be ashamed; make that link as big as the Moderators will allow. If the Mods don’t allow links in the sigs, then make sure the link is in your profile section. All that matters is that your link is accessible somehow.
c) Banner/Link Exchanges – Banner exchanges are kind of cool because they allow a group of related sites to tie into each other. Honestly though, I have mixed feelings about these programs for one reason. Even though they do attract new users to your web site, the banner/link exchange programs make it just as easy for them to click away as it was for them to click in. Decide how comfortable you feel with that fact before you sign up.
d) Email – No, don’t be like the financial opportunity/porno people and SPAM your URL to the entire population of the United States and 23 other countries. Just use your personal Email wisely. In the space for your signature, simply include the address for your web site. This will encourage your friends, family, or whoever gives a flip to visit your site and make you some money.
Method #2: Affiliate Your Site with a Much More Successful Site - Epinions is just the tip of the iceberg. Leeching visitors off of other larger sites is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. Not all of us can be the legendary ptiemann and have a web site that generates an insane number of hits. Fortunately, for us mere mortals, there are many webslingers and companies that do have successful web sites. All you need to do is find a way to affiliate your web site with theirs in some way. How do you affiliate yourself with a big time web site, you wonder?
a) Ask - Some sites will tack a link to your site onto theirs if you just email them showing a genuine interest in their site. The link probably is not going to be in a primo location, but don’t turn up your nose; beggars can’t be choosers.
b) Contribute to their site - One of the few good things about the dot-com fallout is that a lot of sites no longer have the funds to pay contributors or professional content writers. Offer to provide potential affiliates with a few reviews and articles in exchange for a link back to your site. Most should have no problem with that arrangement. Just make sure you select a well-established site to ensure that you’re going to be getting back a significant number of hits for your effort.
Some web sites are even specifically set up to function as links to smaller sites. Take for example, Fan2Fan.com, formerly known as AKA.com (music lovers take note). This is a music site expressly designed to link to smaller sites that provides their content, such as news, reviews, articles, interviews and other goodies. Affiliate sites don’t have to own their URLs either; sites served from Tripod, Yahoo, Homestead, and other free hosts are certainly welcome. Just make sure your site looks good and your submissions are well written, and you’ll certainly get some hits. Fan2fan has done well by me so far.
Madtheory example: One of my favorite Hip Hop sites is unquestionably Hot104.com, that at one point had over 70,000 unique visitors per month. One day, I had posted links to a few of my reviews on the message boards over there. The site’s owner saw them and asked me to contribute some of my reviews and articles to his site. I quickly agreed, and in return he gave me my own feature section there (complete with cool flashing icon), and my own message board section. I have three links on that site that point back to my external site (one on the front page, two on my feature section) so I’m set up very well to acquire traffic from that site. Hip Hop Hypotheses gets a nice amount of hits from there, even though Hot104.com lost a lot of regulars after a recent site revamp.
Method #3: Fill Your Site with Content - When I first started out with Hip Hop Hypotheses, I decided that it would have no content, just some attractive graphics and links back to my writing. This way, the visitors would be forced to click the links to my reviews and articles. I soon discovered the fatal flaw in my logic: with no content, there’s absolutely no freaking reason why anyone would want to visit my site. Also, without content, the search engines have nothing really to hit on, so they’ll probably just pass on by your site. Just drop a few reviews, articles, editorials and thoughts into your site. If you’re including an Epinions article or review, make sure that you either completely rewrite it or include the following lines at the bottom to make sure that you’re not violating the Epinions Terms of Service Agreement:
"You can read this review at [URL of the review page on Epinions.com] and other reviews on the same topic at [URL of the product page on Epinions.com]. Check out my profile page at [URL of your Epinions.com profile page]."
Madtheory example: A while back, I wrote an article called “Strippers, Lies, and Rap Videos” in which I criticized the music video industry for abandoning other music video aesthetics in favor of showing gratuitous T&A ad infinitum (you know, it just get boring after a while. "Oh look, Jay-Z rapping in a room full of half-naked women… Oh look, Mystikal rapping in a room full of half-naked women… YAWN. I wonder what’s on PBS?”). I included this article on my web site without really realizing just how often the words “Hip Hop video” and “models”, “strippers”, “dancers” and “naked” are searched for on Google.com each day. Try it. Most of the different permutations you use will return my site somewhere in the top 40. For some strange reason those hits always seem to come in late at night…
Method #4: Network with Other Epinionators - Linking up with other members of Epinions who have similar tastes will definitely generate some hits for your site. I feel bad because I’ve already gotten a few hits from JennJoy (rhythmandnews.tripod.com) and kris_kochanski’s (nanobots.tripod.com) external sites, as well as the CP sites of gamblinfamily (tattooed.epinions.com) and magenta321 (magentasepinionland.epinions.com), but I haven’t linked back to them yet on my site. Sorry ladies, but I’m still working on version 3.0 of my site and the links will be there, I swear. I hope these gratuitous plugs help reciprocate.
Method #5: Track Your Visitors - Forget about standard counters on your primary site. Get one that tracks visitors by the URL they last visited and can give you a few other pieces of info. I use SiteMeter on HHH, and it gives me a wealth of useful information that I’ve used to market my site (such as browser type, page views, etc.), and make it more useful for the visitors as well. For example, if I notice that a particular site or post yields a larger number of visitors than some of my other marketing tactics, I’ll add more to the site or post to encourage others to visit as well. Get as much information on your visitors as you can and adapt your site and marketing methods appropriately.
Method #6: Keep Things in Perspective - When putting together your site, always keep in mind that the odds of you getting rich from it are not in your favor. For example, to build my site, I invested $14.99 in a book on HTML and several hours of my time learning to create a web site and that’s it. I didn’t buy my domain name, web hosting, or pay for any type of web advertising or search engines because I would be spending dollars to make cents (also known as: “incredibly stupid business practices,” See: dot com fallout). Don’t go broke trying to make your site a success.
So, when you’re trying to draw more visitors to your Content Partner site, I hope you keep these six tips in mind. Your Content Partner and external web sites are valuable tools for attracting visitors to your reviews and articles, and hopefully make you a little extra cash as well. Play around with these different ways to market your site, and see what the results are. Just don’t expect to retire off your revenue, because it’s not going to happen.
It’s not.
At least not anytime soon.
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Epinions.com ID:
madtheory
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 - Top 100 |
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Location: Dallas,TX
Reviews written: 485
Trusted by: 590 members
About Me:
DON'T CALL IT A COMEB... wait. I guess you actually can call it a comeback.
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