This Affiliate Marketing Path

In my previous post on earnings up to this point, I mentioned that last year I found some better ways to get inbound links than through article distribution and link exchanges, and Mark at 45n5 reminded me to expound on that

So here are a few methods I used that brought me many more visitors than the usual ways:

01 Just being generous with links.  I found that by just linking from each page on one of my sites out to sites that I found to be really interesting as well as relevant to my pages, I would not only make that page more useful, but sometimes I would get a good link back.  Sometimes the web owner would just link back, and sometimes the site would have some kind of trackback system that would link back automatically.  Now this was few and far between, but it brought me some good inbound links.  And I’m not afraid that links will “take away” too much PR from a page, as a matter of fact, many now believe that linking to a great site that’s relevant to yours will increase your PR - so be generous!

02 SXC.  This method has probably brought me the most fortune.  I like to add lots of nice images to my sites - if I’m making a site on juicer recipes, I want lots of pictures of fruit and stuff blending, etc.  My favorite place to get stock photos for my sites is SXC, and what I will often do is add the photo to my page, then leave a little comment on the photo page saying something about their photo and how I found it useful and then I’ll leave a link of the page and say thanks for sharing.  Not only does this bring in a small inbound link from SXC, as well as a nice photo for my page, but sometimes the photographer will be thrilled and that will result in more inbound links.  One woman, who was an expert at her craft, wrote a long and beautiful article for one of my sites - I linked back to hers on mine - and then she told all of her friends in a forum about it and they all linked to her article on my site from their web pages.  In other cases, some photographers mentioned my site in the SXC forums or other forums which brought me more inbound links and visitors.  And in many other cases, the photographers would email me even more useful photos for my sites.  So this was really a win win situation all around.

03 Bookmarking.  I have to say that in the vast majority of cases, social bookmarking doesn’t do a darn thing for my sites, but in one area, every time I post an article, a huge section in Yahoo! picks it up and sends me a nice handful of visitors.  So if you try bookmarking out with each of your niches, you may find a fortunate one as well.

04 Blog Comments.  Okay, I’m not recommending spamming here!  What I will do is blog about something for a while, check other other blogs on the topic, then comment when I have something really useful to add - then and only then!  This is something I really underestimated before - but it’s brought me some inbound links with nice PR.  Especially the sites from the Weblogs, Inc. Network.  I know this one is no secret, but I rarely think to do this - to just become really knowledgeable in something and then become part of the community and get your link out that way.

05 Sitewide Exchanges.  I find that doing a few good site exchanges seems to work a lot better for me than doing the typical link page exchanges, and am just starting to work on getting more of these.

So there you have it, these are some linking methods that have brought me the most visitors and the highest quality inbound links in the last year.  As you can see, though, I was fortunate to get many of them - so I don’t know if they are particularly easy ways to get links or if they will work for everyone - but they have kept my sites afloat and are the PR foundation blocks for many a new site of mine.