Social websites: why you should care
I have already discussed the value of social networking websites for getting links to your online projects. I also mentioned other benefits you get using this type of websites while promoting your own:
a. Traffic (it does not turn into cash at a normal rate, but you can monetize it with CPM banners)
b. Branding (your website has a good chance to get noticed)
c. One way links (natural - most valuable links that will result in a better search engine visibility of your website)
My recent experiments prove that one should spend more time to explore these social websites and opportunities they provide for online entrepreneurs. I have realized that I can get traffic, good traffic from other sources besides search engines where it is next to impossible to rank high for popular keywords if your website is new (under 2 years).
What is a social website? It is a public website where its members save their bookmarks that are (as a rule) accessible to other members. Members use keywords to tag their submissions. Other members use tags to search for the information they are interested in.
In fact, it is a new approach of organizing information that is completely different from traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo!, etc). The good news is that the social websites gain their popularity and are likely to shortly compete with Google and other SE in traffic. It makes us less dependent on Google updates and fads.
Three key elements of social websites:
- members
- tags
- URL’s
You should focus on these three elements while seeking ways to succeed with this new source of traffic.
There are new social websites that come online practically on a monthly basis. They are not equal and one can’t keep track of every new service. And I think there is no reason for that. I use the below social websites that are most popular at the present time:
- www.onlywire.com – in fact it is a service that allows you to submit your new entries in seconds to an entire number of social websites (Backflip, Blinklist, Blogmemes, del.icio.us, Feedmelinks, Furl, Linkroll, Looklater, ma.gnolia, Maple, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Wink). To start with, you need to open an account with every service. Later on you will be able to make submissions to all services via one interface – www.onlywire.com
There are popular sites that are specialized in particular industries (for instance, www.slashdot.org or www.fark.com). I do nt mention www.myspace.com as I have not so far explored the service to the level I would like it. I have an account and friends, but no successful promotions.
Summary: It takes me in total 10-15 minutes to add my new articles or posts to every service. The result is not always the same and as expected, but I know that I will get a few hundred visitors each day thanks to these websites solely. Plus some possible links, plus branding aspect. It is definitely worth my 10-15 minutes.
These are my first steps with social bookmarking websites and I think that my best posts are still to come. It is not a secret that you can expect 30,000-50,000 visitors per day if you really make it big with these websites. In that case you should be prepared to properly handle that volume of traffic; otherwise the website will go down.
[tags]social websites, traffic, link bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]
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