by Jack Humphrey
Reciprocal linking is dead as the web knows it. Exchanging links for nothing more than the sake of exchanging links is totally transparent to all major engines and no longer impresses them, nor your visitors.
If people want a directory of relevant links, they will go back to the search engines. A link directory on the average website is not usually an authoritative, respectable, trusted source of information.
Everyone knows people only use link directories in 2006 as a tool to try and manipulate their rankings. NOT because they truly care where their visitors end up after clicking one of the “recommended links”, if they ever find it in the first place.
Besides, if link directories were a thing of pride for webmasters, viewed as valid content, why is everyone working so hard to hide them?
Content is the main tool of Power Linking in 2006
Blogs and RSS allow us to syndicate our content around the web to EAGER users (other websites and RSS feed subscribers) who actually want to click your links.
Articles, with actual information a market is looking for, and press releases with the same, are still a hugely viable tool for Power Linking.
The missing ingredient 90% of articles and press releases suffer from is having something to say that actually impresses an intended audience.
Article and press release syndication for the sole sake of acquiring links to manipulate search engines is out.
Using them to encourage an audience to click your links is in.
The only way a savvy market will allow themselves to be manipulated is via content that is cutting edge, important to them, and authoritative.
No more $5 articles and no more lifeless, boring, grade school writing is allowed! And if you don’t believe me, go ahead and watch how your market responds to one. You will soon enough as your web statistics dwindle to nothing.
To get Power Links you must contribute to the web in some meaningful way.
Since most people are too lazy or not creative enough to accomplish this feat, the competition for good content is quite light in many, many niches.
It is worth it to think about your niche and provide content that causes the market you target to do the same.
To learn to write compelling content and propel it to all corners of your market, there is only one place that gives you both pieces to the puzzle: Content Propulsion Lab.
Gimmicks and Tricks are Dead. People who are successful online actually WORK for a living.
Notice:Â Professionalism is now mandatory for all website owners (publishers) who make a living from their content.
Black hat tactics for getting search engine rankings and links are always, and have always been, flashes in the pan.
No black hat tactic still works today that worked a year ago. And whatever works now only works for eggheads and will also be repelled like all other attempts to cheat human beings out of real information for the sake of a few pennies and clicks.
Black hat only works well at any point for true geeks and socially challenged eggheads anyway. They turn around and sell us the things that worked for them 6 months ago when they have dried up whatever tactic they are currently promoting.
Buying into black hat hype is for complete fools and newbies. By the time you read about it, it has been dead as a viable tactic for quite some time.
People want an informative internet. They want quality content and services or products. They reward this kind of professionalism massively with loyalty, repeat visits, and recommendations.
The amount of work it takes to achieve a successful authority site that makes $100-$300+ per day is less than the amount of work and investment that all black hat tactics require of you to cheat the system.
This is a fact you can gamble on and ignore, or figure out for yourself. We’ve been there. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt this is true.
Black hat tactics do not save more time nor do they make more money for the people who use them than the people who build real content sites into authority sites.
Authority sites get sold for hundreds of thousands up to tens of millions of dollars.
Black hat sites are black holes and money pits that can never be sold for figures above. This also is true beyond the shadow of a doubt and learned from experience. Take it or leave it.
There is no easy way to make money online…Period.
By making money I mean full time income with real assets that build until you can sell out for major amounts of money when you so choose.
This is true whether you are black or white hat. Work is work and there is no Big Red Button that you can click on to have money spilling out of your CD bay.
Laziness and total reliance on others for ideas for authority sites, content, marketing tactics, and even general success tactics results in exactly no results, wasted efforts and money, and extreme regret that can follow you to your grave.
(Or at least back to your day job where you will likely suffer under the yoke for the rest of your life.)
Sound harsh? It is. Yet people try to cheat in a system that is boiling over with money to be made legitimately every single day.
The writing is on the Wall Street. No major company on the web has gone public or sold for millions by following the leader.
Look at all the big companies that were tiny one year and explosive the next who went public or were sold outright for tens of millions of dollars and you’ll see what I mean.
All were based upon completely original ideas or at least successful twists on old ideas that utterly rocked the web in some fashion.
Think you can’t “utterly rock” the web or at least a fairly large niche market on the web?
Neither did ANY of the people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of taking their ideas and running with them.
And before that, having the gall to even think creatively outside the norm of the day.
All internet success stories share something in common and it is partially rooted statements like…
“Then I got the idea that…”
“All of the sudden we had the formula…”
“We completely stumbled onto this service, but would never have gotten there had we thought and acted like everyone else was at the time…”
All paraphrased things I have read in magazines and on blogs and interviews for years. All basically the same story.
If you aren’t shooting for THAT kind of success, you are a follower. Followers can make money and many do. Just not the kind of money leaders and innovators make.
One thing is true above all else: people do not hack or trick their way into this kind of success. There’s not a single story of monster success that includes a person who cheats the clearly laid out game rules online.
Anything that comes to mind, like the biggest spammers in the world, does not fit the mold of real success.
First of all, you cannot be considered a success if you are a blatant criminal. Kind of takes the glory out of your accomplishments right off the bat. Your cell mate will not be as interested in how you commanded hundreds of spam servers around the world to do your bidding as much as how good you look in denim.
Secondly, if there was any real money to be made online by cheating people and businesses (that was also stable and long-lasting) there would be tens of thousands doing it, not a relative handful of kids, child-like adults or flat-out criminals.
Only 2 year olds expect something for nothing. 2 year olds and a great many internet users (mostly immature kids) who dream that there is some gaping hole in the rules that they can take advantage of to siphon scads of cash from.
On Hype
Something that is simply true and holds merit as a system for truly making money online does not need 1200 exclamation points to make sensible people believe it is viable.
On the next sales letter you read, do a “Find on this page” and just put “!”. If the results displease you, you just saved a lot of time reading nothing of importance at all.
Death Bed Confessions
What do you want to look back on fondly when your time comes? Chances are it is not a moderately successful stint in network marketing that you will want to recall in your final moments.
Nor will it be anything you got in life with no effort. Because no matter how much temporary success that may bring you, something for nothing never holds real value to the recipient.
Just look at the values of most trust fund kids and you’ll see what I am getting at. Being born rich and completely spoiled is not something I would foist on anyone other than my worst enemies.
And you can also be “born rich” at 25-30-40+ years old. It’s called the lottery, and it is as likely to happen for any given person as a stupid, empty, scam tactic is to work for someone online.
If you have sincere desire to truly succeed with an online business, you absolutely without question must mature quickly as a real business person.
Many people do that at sites like Content Publishers Alliance. Professionals are born there every day of the year. It is no coincidence that wealthy, fulfilled, proud business people exist there as well.