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I have a book search and price comparsion site. The majority of my money/time at the moment is going into adding features to the site. In the works at the moment is Rare Book Search, Browsable Categories, UK Book Search and Canadain book search and more:)
For promotion I did the basics since the site is only about 1.5 months old. Paid for quick entry into all the major search engines. Started emailing sites that have a good rating on google for link trades. Working on optimizing the pages on the site and with the new browsable directory of books will be adding thousands of new pages that can be crawled. I am also advertising on google with the little extra money I have. At the moment I am getting about 90-130 unique hits a day. I would love to get some advice on what direction I should go and what I should concetrate on. Also below are a few questions that stand out.
Questions:
1. Having a book site I have noticed it hard to find book related pages to trade links with as they all tend to use Amazon to sell books so have no reason to link to me. Any thoughts on the best way to work around this? So far I am contacting mainly College etc sites that have book info and have good Google ratings. I am also thinking about adding a service so that people can add my price search to there site and some of the results have there affiliate info and some have mine.
2. What are the best pay per click advertising companies?
3. What is the fastest way to get links? I know emailing each site by hand is the best but seems to go very slow working full time. Driving an hour each way and basic duties of life:) Are any of the programs on the market any good at all? Would it be worthwile to pay someone minium wage to work at home and help with it?
I have many more questions but of course will be reading over the forum to see if I can find answers to them and maybe life the universe and everything:)
Thanks again for the help.
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1) Collectors? Literary clubs? There are many angles to this. Think.
2) Direct this Q to the Pay Per Click forum, and spend some time reading there first.
3) You should think of links as pots of gold, and therefore worth spending much time on. Soliciting links is hard work, and the most effective method - reviewing propective sites, complimenting them on specific features, and pointing out why your site is a good resource for their visitors - is highly labor intensive. But it's worth it, full-time job and long commute notwithstanding.
There is no shortcut. Automated link tools may help you to generate a somewhat-focused list of prospects, but the results of using such tools to automatically solicit links are generally poor. Personally, I don't spend much time reviewing e-mails which were sent to me by a software tool. If you want a link from my sites, you'll need to do your homework and tell me why your site is a "good fit" with mine -- and specifically, not in generalities. You are asking another webmaster to vouch for your site, and such requests are taken most seriously by those who can help you the most.
4) 42.
Jim
And yes 42 is the answer now we just need the question.
No, I didn't miss the question, just glossed it over, I guess.
If you want a thing done right, do it yourself. One good site review and link request per evening is do-able. If you focus on the best ones, and give them personal attention, you'll get good results.
Someone sending e-mail as your proxy will have no personal investment in the outcome, and it will inevitably show.
This is all just my opinion, of course. :)
Have to go, freeway coming through any minute...
Jim
