So You Want to Build a Link List?
Posted On: 2011-03-21
I still remember the day I told my partner that I wanted to develop my very own link list. He fell about laughing and finally, when he had composed himself, asked me if I was totally insane. I wasn't insane and when I sold that link list a few years later for quite a tidy sum my partner didn't think I had been insane to start it either.
Today though I would really doubt my sanity if I suddenly had the urge to build that list all over again because things have certainly changed a lot to what they were back in 2000. Back then all you had to be successful was to nail a good listing in the search engines and everything else flowed from there.
And back then all you had to do to achieve a good ranking was to make sure that you used important keywords in the title and in the text on your main pages.
Of course links pointing back to your site weren't an issue then because everyone who wanted to get listed on your link list would add a reciprocal link so it was easy to pick up back links. These days though things may not be quite so easy and if you believe what Google wants you to believe then the quality of those back links is important and you've got to do more than just toss your keywords into the site's title and blob them around here and there in the text on your page.
These days, according to Google, if you want to rank well you have to have quality back links and a site that is "useful" to surfers. Now there's no indication of just what Google means by "useful" so even though porn surfers who hit your site might think of it as useful Google may not and it's doubtful that Google would ever consider a reciprocal link from a free site as a "quality" link.
And why am I talking about Google when I'm offering you some suggestions about link lists? It's simple really ... your link list will live or die depending on whether or not you get a steady flow of traffic to your list and in the beginning Google is the place that traffic will come from.
At first it will come in dribs and drabs but if you can build your site up to the point where it ranks well then more traffic will come and more free site builders will want to list on your site to get that traffic and that will mean more recips and then you're into a growth cycle.
When that traffic begins to arrive on your link list you're going to want to encourage them to come back again and again so obviously you will want them to bookmark your site and they'll do that if they can see that you deliver a positive experience. So even though you're going to be hungry for sites to list so that your category pages fill up you're going to have to ensure that you only list what surfers may think of as quality sites.
What's a quality site? Well there's an interesting balancing act for you because a affiliate marketers don't want to give away too much and they want to fill as much of their free sites with advertising as they can. On the other hand your surfers are going to want to see plenty of hardcore porn for free without trying to find it in the middle of all that advertising affiliate marketers want to put on the site.
Get the balance right and you'll have happy site submitters and happy porn surfers. Get it wrong and you'll lose your site submitters and your surfers will go somewhere else.
However there's something else that you can do to make people want to come back to your link list and use it as a launching pad for their porn surfing. You can make your site interactive ... interesting ... entertaining and even informative. Back in the early days link lists were just page after page of links to porn sites but these days you're going to have to offer more if you want people to use your site to look for porn.
How do you do that? Well probably the first guy who took his link list beyond what everyone else was doing started a blog on his link list where he talked about his experiences with porn stars and wild parties etc. Lots of guys kept going back to that site to read more. If you can't do that then look around at what others are doing to see if they can't give you some ideas that you can build on.
There's one thing for sure though ... if you can't build a link list that goes beyond just linking out to free sites etc. then maybe you shouldn't start because you'll just end up wasting your time. If your link list doesn't engage surfers as your competitors' lists do then they're not going to come back.
Finally there's one thing you need to understand about a link list if you decide to build one. Porn surfers might think that your link list is there as a service to them ... to help them find the best porn. The site builders who submit sites to you might think your link list is there as a service to them ... to help them get the traffic that they need to make money.
You need to understand that you're not building your link list for any of those reasons ... you're building your link list to make money for you and everything else is secondary. By all means treat your surfers well and treat your site submitters well too but don't forget that your link list is there to make money for you so include ads and put them in prominent positions ... list your own sites above all the others and do whatever you can to encourage your surfers to buy from you rather than from the next free site they visit.
So if you're thinking of building a link list then go right ahead ... jump in and make a start ... but be prepared for a lot of hard work because that's what it will take if you want to build a successful link list.