About.com

What's the best way to get on to topic.about.com?

[franklin dematto]

What's the best way to get on to topic.about.com? Google seems to weight their links highly.

[ukgimp]

Find the most suitable cat and then contact the editor of that cat. Remember that all the usual directory submission protocols should be observed as they are human reviewed.

No under contruction etc...

I dont know how I managed it but I also got into Sprinks, perhaps I will look into that one day :)

Cheers

[franklin dematto]

Do you mean to contact him indirectly, not through the about protocol, just find his e-mail and contact him?

[ukgimp]

I suppose you could try a bit of net stalking although the editor might not like that too much. I meant through the about protocol.

Cheers

[skiguide]

franklin,

Here's how you contact an About.com - go their photo/name listed at the top of the topic area you want to be listed on, and click through the link, you should find either their email address or further details about contacting them, or if you're really lucky FAQ's about submitting site links.

Also, when you submit a suggestion, try to narrow down the exact location (providing URL on the About.com site) where you think your link would be most appropriate.

Alternatively, a better method of promotion on About sites is to offer an article or piece of content that is relevant that they may reprint on their sites.

[europeforvisitors]

It can be pretty tough to get URLs reviewed at About.com these days, for several reasons:

1) The corporate focus has shifted quite a bit since the days when About.com (or The Mining Co., as it used to be known) wanted to out-Yahoo Yahoo and become the best directory on the Net. In the last year or so, there's been a big push toward e-commerce, with guides (topic editors) being expected to create product reviews with MySimon.com price-comparison links, "top picks," etc. Guides have only so much time to spend on their sites, so more time spent on "e-commerce initiatives" means less time available for editorial tasks.

2) Guide pay has dropped considerably over the last couple of years, so it's harder for guides to justify spending time on link maintenance than it used to be.

3) Guides don't own the copyright to their collections of links, but they do own the copyright to their articles. When About.com shed 300+ guides last year, About.com was able to keep those guides' links without paying for their continued use. This fact has made at least some current guides leery of spending time on "work for hire" when they could be working on their copyrighted content instead.

Of course, there are still some guides who continue to add and maintain links, so it doesn't hurt to submit your URLs. Who knows? You could get lucky.