1
Building Backlinks: The Fastlane To Insanity
2
Monetizing a Blog With Premium Posts: Does It Work?
3
Want High Quality Banners For Free?

Building Backlinks: The Fastlane To Insanity

This weekend, I decided to engage in some research that never fails to get my blood boiling. What better way to spend your Sunday afternoon than by crawling the web making notes on how to boss Google’s search rankings?

SEO is to Finch, what the slaughterhouse is to cows.

It’s where I go when I feel like throwing my business plans before the judge and pleading for a stay of execution. “Dear Google, please take pity upon thee.

So I loaded up on Victoria Sandwich, pointed my browser at Yahoo Site Explorer, and prepared mentally for the skullbreakingly arduous task of analysing my competitors’ backlink structures.

As it so happens, Yahoo Site Explorer is now defunct. My childhood sweetheart, the only SEO tool I ever truly loved, has been married by Bing and shepherded away – presumably to be shagged and ruined in some Microsoft developer’s basement. This has driven yet another wedge in my already unstable relationship with SEO.

Backlink research is touted as a ‘must’ before venturing in to new niches. Nobody wants to build a potentially lucrative website only to find that Joe Marketer has already pummeled Xrumer and assembled his gajillions of links to maintain search engine dominance through 2017. But there’s the paradox. Even though I make the effort to do backlink research, it rarely ever affects my decision to go ahead with a project.

Wow, the competition has 3,990,374 backlinks. That’s pretty impressive. But I don’t like his choice of stock photos. I’ll build my site anyway.

Ego often impedes the voice of SEO reasoning in my head. I hate the idea that success hinges on some bullshit measurement of who has the best/most backlinks. That’s why you’ll find me feeding buckets of fish laced with steroids to Google’s Panda in the middle of the night, then running away like a little girl as the ‘SEO Professionals’ come charging in disgust.

The whore charade makes me wonder if offline business ever used to be this way. If you took the regional equivalent of today’s Google, let’s say a local business directory, would it have been ranked and prioritised in the same manner? Are you telling me that to get my business spotlighted on a good page, I would have to cruise every last dark corner of the neighbourhood posting my business card through abandoned letterboxes?

Because that’s essentially what backlink building is. It’s handing your business card to anybody who will accept it, in the faint hope that a chief regulator, aka Mr. Google, notices the card in abundance and is mathematically satisfied that you’re worth half a shit.

No doubt this analogy would provoke an uproar from the local directory ranking experts. They would tell me quite bluntly that I’m wasting my time whoring business cards in the ghettos. They’d insist, “No, no. You need to get your business card adorning the windows of the palaces and castles!

So, I’d work hard and mingle in those upper class circles. I’d send letters and scratch backs. My culture vulture would be well and truly on. But invariably, I’d discover that the owners of the palaces and castles aren’t interested in my business cards. Their interest extends only as far as their own financial gain.

Believe it or not, these Princes and Kings don’t classify what you promise to be “relevant content for their kingdoms” as fitting for their cause. Cruelly, they would rather engage in a furious 24/7 circle jerk behind closed doors than deal with the ignominy of your fresh arse on the block. So, what are you to do? You get on your bike, retreat to the neighbourhood, and blast your business card through 3,990,374 derelict letterboxes instead. Fan-tastic.

My conclusion? The backlink building game is fundamentally shagged. Don’t waste your time building backlinks. Just build a reputation for awesomeness instead.

Recommended This Week:

Monetizing a Blog With Premium Posts: Does It Work?

If you’re a reader of my affiliate marketing blog, Finch Sells, you will probably be aware that I’ve introduced paid content over the last 6 weeks.

I thought it’d be interesting to see how many of my regular readers converted in to paying customers, especially given how fellow marketers can be notoriously hard to sell to.

The results from the first 6 weeks have been promising. I’ve taken just under $15,000 in sales, which I’m hoping will double in the next couple of weeks (Volume 2 was released yesterday).

While $15,000 is certainly a nice side-income to go with my usual marketing projects, I think the most exciting development is simply discovering that the premium content angle can work.

I’ve spoken about the concept on Twitter and a few people have quite rightfully pointed out that paid content can only be successful as long as the standard of the posts is kept high. I couldn’t agree more with the need to deliver quality content, but this is one of the reasons I’ve chosen standalone products instead of the currently popular subscription model.

Subscription based Internet Marketing forums are all the rage right now, and I’ve had the pleasure of checking out most of them. Sites like Aff Playbook, Stack That Money and IMGrind all do a fantastic job of delivering valuable content – and I’m sure they make a lot more money out of it than the $15000/month my Premium Posts have delivered so far.

The issue for me is commitment. I could potentially roll out a subscription based service, but it would create an enormous burden of pressure to keep delivering excellent content month after month. There really is little margin for error with a crowd that is so tough to please.

It’s the type of model that is much more sustainable on a forum where you have dozens of different personalities offering their own useful advice.

I’ve gone with the Premium Posts on a themed basis, so users with particular interests can buy information that should hopefully be directly relevant to them. With no subscription deadline, I can take full creative control and spend however long it takes to deliver content that I’m proud of, and that I think my readers are going to enjoy.

I hope that by adding products slowly, and keeping the quality high, I can build up a sizeable ‘passive income’. I’m also hoping that readers who have been converted in to paying customers will become more loyal to the brand.

Ironically enough, after releasing Premium Posts Volume 1, my blog received 6 of it’s 10 highest traffic days in the history of the site. Far from driving readers away, it seemed to generate extra visitors.

Releasing the products has also allowed me to seize a lot of traffic from forums and blogs linking to the announcement, which will presumably help my SEO. Not that I give two shits about SEO, but it’s a nice bonus.

Perhaps the opportunity that excites me most is the idea of exporting the Premium Posts concept and implementing it on other blogs.

It’s constantly preached that creating products is the best way to produce a long-term stable income, no matter what kind of site you’re running. While it will definitely be a challenge to provide the same incentive for purchasing paid content as affiliate marketing brings (who wouldn’t want to make more money?), I believe the concept has legs on it.

It should be interesting to see the results over the next couple of months. I’m definitely looking forward to making blogging a more profitable cornerstone of my business.

Recommended This Week:

Want High Quality Banners For Free?

How many hours have you lost piss-arsing around in Photoshop and still getting no closer to a banner that is suitable for promoting your product?

How many freelancers have you paid to take away the torment?

Welcome to the world of SnackTools, a cracking suite of automation software that takes the hassle out of creating banners if you’re not already outsourcing the task.

SnackTools has a number of very handy and attractive looking apps, each designed to improve the visual presentation of your website. From professional quality slideshows, to online surveys and polls. There’s a lot to digest, and like sweet music to your ears, most of it is free.

The app most likely to capture your imagination is BannerSnack.

Bannersnack Review

BannerSnack is my new best friend if I ever find myself weighted with the burden of having to produce a banner that isn’t embarrassingly slapped together like something out of MS Paint in the nineties.

The software allows you to create flash and gif banner ads using a very simple interface. It’s all drag and drop.

I consider myself a bumbling dinosaur when it comes to showing that deft touch in Photoshop, or indeed any of Adobe’s industry standard tools. BannerShack is simplified in such a way that even if you’re like me (you poor sod), you’ll be able to produce the eye-catching banners that have alluded you for so long.

Want fancy icons to give your banners that sleek 2.0 look? No problem. Want lots of direct response friendly arrows, buttons, labels and familiar visual cues to drive more clicks to your site? It’s all here.

Besides using BannerSnack to create images, I’ve adapted the software to create entire product landing pages for my affiliate marketing campaigns. Just select a custom banner size, adjust it to the size you want, and lavish the page in direct response love.

Call to Action Arrow

I haven't accessed ClipArt since 1997. But these arrows will come in handy for my landing pages.

Call to Action button

Many different kinds of buttons, colours and effects available.

BannerSnack lets you save your artwork to the cloud, making it possible to drop back in and edit your creations whenever you feel like it. I have a growing assortment of banners and landing pages, all of which perform very well for me in their given tasks.

No automation suite will ever replace the genious of a super-talented designer. If you’re a designer reading this now, I’m not trying to put you out of a job. I admire you for having all the skills that I was never blessed with.

However, for those occasions where as webmasters we want effective banners ready to roll in 10 minutes, there aren’t many creative suites as fun and simple to use as BannerSnack. Check it out!

Recommended This Week:

  • Subscribe to my new FinchSells RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add Finch to your Twitter. Merci beaucoup!

Copyright © 2009-.