In the recent 4-6 weeks I have spent (wasted) much time trying to improve the link popularity of some of my websites.

The website topics are different, but the result of my approaching hundreds of websites is next to nothing. I killed hours and hours searching for the websites in Google, DMOZ, social bookmarking sites, digging link pages of authority sites – ALL IN VAIN.

What did I do for link exchange?

- I tested various message subject (info about your site.com, will trade or buy a link form your site.com, John P., a question about your website plus 5-10 more variants).

- I experimented with e-mail extensions (some e-mails sent from gmail, yahoo, site.com). The only achievement with this test was the ban of one website for spamming.

- I tried many body text versions where I addressed the website owner by his name, asked to buy/ rent a link from his website, admired his site pointing to some cool features, etc.

- I searched websites to contact from various sources (Google, DMOZ, social book marking websites, digging link pages, etc)

- I approached my direct competitors and those websites that complement my sites perfectly.

- I tested week days, weekends, holidays.

- I tried to approach .com/ .org/ .edu sites

- I contacted old sites (started in 90’s) and quite new sites (started in 2000 and later)

Important notice: the websites I tried to gain links for are at least 8 months old, min PR2, do not look like crap (they look pretty for me), not purely commercial, designed on the same level like this website, with unique content.

I did get some replies - most common:

- we do not trade links;
- you are welcome to buy a link from us for $60.00 month (a PR4 website with extremely low Alexa ratings).

I have got three links so far that I am aware of: one from .ca, .nz and .com sites.

Summary: the only reasons of this as I see it – summertime and most website owners are on vacations; or – link exchange does not work anymore (I think the second option is true).

In this situation it is reasonable to stop time waste to exchange links by contacting other websites. It is cheaper (you save time and Internet bandwidth) and much faster to buy a few links from the websites of your choice on webmaster forums, eBay.com or special marketplaces (www.tex-link-ads.com and similar).

The extra time you get since you drop the inefficient link exchange work – time to develop extra features of your website and focus on generating more content.

[tags]links exchange, affiliate marketing, home based business, work from home, dmoz, google, links, seo, website promotion, e-commerce[/tags]

Sellathon has introduced a new section on its site. The section contains a list of top eBay sellers with data that can be sorted to find interesting trends and information.

The information can be sorted by:

number of unique feedback,

number of total feedback,

number of mutually withdrawn feedback,

amount of negative feedback and positive feedback left for them by trading partners,

and geographic location.

Trend arrows indicate how a member is doing with regard to feedback from trading partners. The left arrow means positive feedback, the middle arrow - neutral feedback and the right arrow is for negative feedback. The President said the trend arrows are a way of quickly seeing if a seller is getting more or less of a particular type of feedback than they were last year.

These is also other useful info on the site: number of Bid Retractions, Repeat Buyer ratio, whether the member has an eBay Store, whether they are PowerSellers, and when the User ID was created. Private feedback is excluded.

Whether the seller is “NARU” is indicated by the site as well ,eBay’s indication for “Not a Registered User.” The NARU designation often, but not always, indicates an account suspension. Visitors can click through to the eBay website to find out when the account may have been NARU - the date of the last feedback is a good indication.

In general, Sellathon is widely known for ViewTracker, the service that allows eBay sellers to see where traffic is coming from, how visitors are getting to their listings etc.

To see the full article go HERE

[tag]Sellathon, eBay, ViewTracker, NARU, feedback [/tag]

I have recently written about public domain resources as a way to get free and legal content to your website (but remember of duplicate content issues).

In this post I would like to talk of one more resource that might be helpful with quality content for your website - Wikiquote It is a part of Wikipedia.org but the latter deserves a separate talk as it is a great source of good information and a place where you should try to get a link from (but not by spamming it – anyway it will be removed).

What is Wikiquote? Wikiquote is a selection of quotes from famous people. There are a few language versions of Wikiquote. English version at the moment counts over 7,500 pages.

Four basic Wikiquote principles - accurate and comprehensive collection of notable quotations.

You can edit Wikiquote by adding/ modifying the entries, but at this time we are more interested in using it as a source of content for our own websites. You can browse quotations by categories or by search. Once you found a few quotations that might be a good fit for your website – you just copy/ paste them and your web pages get some extra charm.

Summary: quotations are a good way to attract readers’ attention. You just need to find the ones that are a perfect fit for your website and place them prominently.

You can also use quotations in a few different ways. For example, use a quotation in your forum signature. It is a sort of magnet – people tend to read it and check the website of that person. Wikiquote offers a great selection and covers multiple areas.
[tags]affiliate marketing, work from home, home based business, wikipedia, wikiquote, content, traffic, links, website[/tags]