Well today was the first day for SMX – Social Media. Matt and I arrived a little late yesterday because imagine that, American Airlines was running late. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve traveled and been on time. I know sometimes it’s weather, but geez… you need to plan several extra hours when traveling now because you’re rarely there when you’re supposed to be.

Anyhow, we’re staying at the Affinia Hotel and have a pretty nice room. Thankfully! Why you ask? Well, so far so bad with regard to the SMX Social Media conference. I hate to say it because we loved SMX Seattle so much and thought they were going to dominate the conferences. I’m not sure if it’s the location or the how little networking abilities there are, maybe the fact there are literally 4 or 5 exhibitors, I just can’t put my finger on it. Oh and one of the most spoken about topics regarding SMX Seattle was how awesome the food was. SES has always thrown these horrible sandwiches or whatever cheap food they can at you, but SMX Seattle spoiled us with lavish food that EVERYONE spoke highly of. This SMX Social Media, the food the first day was horrible. Granted this is my opinion, which Matt shares, but luckily we have a few clients, partners and such we’re going to make the time worthwhile.

The jury is still out if we’ll even make an appearance back to the show because I’d rather fall asleep in our hotel room than in the middle of a hundred or so people at the conference. Big disappointment as far as the conference goes, so far, but it seems very odd because Danny Sullivan shows are always put together well. Unless these are turning into something I’m just unfamiliar with. We’ll keep everyone updated..

We’re about to head out and meet a great contact who is part of the new life we’re breeding into our LinkWords program. We’re meeting at our favorite place, Faces & Names. 6pm, tonight, meet us there. Matt will be wearing his triathlon gear.

For those of you who don’t know me, I would like to more formally introduce myself. My name is Scarlett Tarjick, and I have been with Linkworth for over a year now. I have just recently been promoted to the “PR Coordinator” here-quite exciting and yet at the same time challenging.

In the last month, I have been commenting on lots of blogs trying to get our name out there…anything to stir a little attention back our way. Nevertheless, after talking to Ron last week, he gave me a great idea. Let’s have a contest!

We have tons of publishers like yourself that are using our LinkPost service. This is where the contest idea comes in. We are thinking of setting up a contest where whoever writes the best blog posts about LinkWorth and our services will win some prizes. Yes, I said prizes! What I mean is that we do not want to have just a 1st,2nd and 3rd prize winner-3 winners. Depending on how many people sign up, we might do something like rewarding the top 10-15 people. I know that the top blog post will be getting a Mercedes and a lunch date with Ron.

Not really…I know you were looking forward to the lunch date. : )

Anyways, give me your ideas fellow LinkWorthers. What kind of prizes would it take for you to write a dang good linkpost about LinkWorth and a thorough description of our services?

There are two ways Partners participating in LinkInTxt can tell our lwbot what to index and what not to index. Actually, you can use both for even better efficiency.

Our bot follows all robots.txt instructions, so you can disallow entire directories, specific files and whatever else is necessary. You can also use the robots.txt file to disallow everything except one specific folder where your content exists.

Beyond the robots.txt file, many of you were asking for tags to add around specific areas of a page you do not want to sell keywords. You can now do this easily! Login to your account and navigate to >>MY PRODUCTS >>LINKINTXT. On the summary page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and select your website. It will generate a unique exclude tag for each website you have.

To use the tags, simply put it around the text you wish to exclude. For example, if I am writing a paid blog review and want to exclude the entire review, add the first exclude tag before the content starts:

< span class="XXXXXX" >
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur pretium, sapien sed imperdiet pharetra, lorem enim condimentum urna, sed tempor tellus nulla at ipsum. Morbi leo est, ornare a, lobortis at, ornare a, urna. Sed imperdiet. Sed at quam quis neque egestas accumsan. In augue erat, placerat egestas, venenatis et, porttitor quis, odio. Cras auctor sem ac mi. Ut eu nulla. Maecenas erat. Sed ac nunc id arcu elementum egestas. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nullam ullamcorper. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam quis leo. Sed adipiscing, metus dignissim laoreet aliquam, arcu tellus facilisis urna, eu varius leo tellus non metus.

Ut fringilla sapien nec risus. Morbi cursus rhoncus dolor. Suspendisse ultrices ligula. Fusce semper. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Fusce nulla. Ut elementum ornare orci. Sed nibh nisi, vulputate vitae, dignissim vitae, ullamcorper non, mauris. Quisque faucibus ante sit amet massa. Quisque sed mauris. Curabitur dapibus nulla vel ante.
< /span >

Everything between the opening span tag and closing span tag will not be included. You can add this to sections of pages like sidebars, header, footer and other ad sections.

If you have further questions, contact support.

We’re glad to announce we’ve added a new FAQ section for both advertisers and partners.

Advertisers – Login to your Control Center and under the Account Info tabbed section, you’ll see a F.A.Q. tab. Under this tab you’ll see common questions with links to the full FAQ page. You can also go to the HELP menu tab and click the FAQ link to access the page.

Partners – the exact same process as the advertisers with obviously different options.

We tried to make them as simple as possible but as we receive feedback, we’ll add more information if necessary.

Our account managers like to read about great write ups about LinkWorth. Why? Because it helps bring more business to us, turning into more business for our Account Managers. More business for our Account Managers means more money for their pockets.

I came across a superb blog post about LinkWorth that I feel is exactly what a perfect example of this is. This type of blog post will alert our Account Managers to send more business to them. Kind of a ‘I do for you if you do for me’ situation. Just be sure if you get a request, publish it fast. Account Managers prefer to work with people that publish ads immediately. It saves time on their job and gets the campaign in the process faster.

For those of you who are participating in our LinkWords program, you may have noticed an influx of new ads showing up today. LinkWords has been injected with a big life of new ads starting today that should expand the earnings potential, especially for content filled blogs/sites.

If you are not participating in LinkWords, it’s very easy to implement and if you look in your account under My Products > LinkWords, follow the settings and it will walk you through setting it up. You earn 70% of each click and it’s really as simple as installing and letting it ride.

We’ll announce who we’re working with in a few weeks. For now, just jump in and add to your earnings.

LinkInTxt Stats as of 3:30PM, September 28, 2007:

• Number of Pages Included Index: 18,534
• Number of Keywords Available: 331,910

Partners:
If you haven’t opted into the LinkInTxt program, what in the world are you waiting for! Login to your Control Center, go to My Products, then click LinkInTxt and then ‘crawl my site’. Submit the sites you want to include and we’ll get to work. Other than adding your url and adding links, the only other thing to do is get paid. Do you not have a LinkWorth account and want to monetize your site? Signup today and Sell Links?

Advertisers:
Have you taken a stroll through the product to see what keywords are available in your industry? It’s simple. Login to your Control Center, go to My Products, then click LinkInTxt, then click ‘search/purchase’ and enter your term. More than likely we have what you’re looking for based on the stats above. If we do not, an alert is immediately setup for you and you’ll be notified as soon as we find keywords that match your criteria. Do you not have a LinkWorth account and want to market your site? Signup now and Buy Links?

I get asked questions like “How can I sell more ads on my site?” all the time so I thought I would share a few things that might shed some light on what Advertisers really look for when buying links.

You’d think it was really simple. Advertisers are just looking for basic relevance, high PR (barf), or lots of traffic, right? Well, yes and no.

While all of those are true, savvy advertisers are scrutinizing the links they buy more today than ever before. And, especially given the nature of what we do here at LinkWorth, we’ve become very familiar with link buyer motivations.

99% of people who buy links expect one of these three things:

1. Improved rankings or PageRank
2. Click-throughs (from high traffic domains)
3. Buzz (new company, reputation management, re-branding, or whatever)

Once you understand what the motivators are you can then consider how the link buyers go about selecting the websites they use when building a campaign. The smart ones do a lot of homework and base their decisions on a variety of factors. As a publisher, you should know what they’re looking for.

Since I have “list-o-phobia” I will refrain from putting these in any particular order, but here are some recurring themes I hear when it comes to paid link selection.

Strength of site
Thankfully, this does not refer to toolbar PR exclusively. (That is so 2005!) Strength can be measured in other ways like age of domain, inbound link profile, Alexa/Compete ratings, pages indexed, clean code, etc. I’ve even heard of really hardcore buyers that check out the WayBackMachine and see what they’ve got on tap. (You can tell if a site was keyword stuffing back in 2002!) We don’t get to see the TrustRank of a site but it’s something that is critically important for ranking on Google.

Even further, nothing says “buy a link from me” quite like great rankings for your own title phrasing or keywords. Just the fact that you rank well is a key-indicator that your site is trusted and will probably pass juice. (And don’t think for one second that your prospective customers aren’t looking at this, because they are!) If you’re ranking for popular keywords you’re probably getting a good bit of traffic which can be a tantalizing added bonus for Advertisers.

Related content
This is beyond your control as a publisher, but what you can do is have well-written, unique content about whatever the theme of your site actually is. If someone from your niche comes along, be the obvious choice because your content is the best out there. I realize this is much easier said than done, but if you are serious about monetizing your website FOR A LIVING in the midst of the millions of websites being added to the internet, it is probably a good idea to be thinking this way.

Value
This just in: advertising online is expensive! Provide value and you’ll attract more advertisers. Be reasonable in your asking price and people will come. Always keep in mind that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, too, because marketers come in all shapes and sizes with different philosophies and levels of knowledge. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Just don’t price yourself out of the game.

Perceived value can extend beyond the realm of cost, too. If go above and beyond for an advertiser they’re likely to stay with you month after month after month. For example, you might get a special request in regards to a link placement or something. My advice? Do it if you can! Or at least consider it because educated link buyers know going in that they want to have the same inbound links indexed for an extended period of time. Sure, that might make them a bit picky, but when you consider that they’re prepared to commit to you for YEARS in some cases that it’s probably not an excessive request. The way I see it is, you’re in this together. Work with your partners!

Options
Especially within this community, the more options you have available the better. Offer multiple ad types, page locations, packages, etc. Buyers are getting smarter and don’t want just the typical sidebar or footer link on the index page anymore. Be open to this! Take the time to list your sub-pages that address specific topics, for example. Fish with a big net! Offer rotating ads or paid blog posts, too, because you never know how you might fit in to someone else’s campaign. Why exclude yourself?

LinkIntxt is going to be another HUGE factor. I have clients salivating right now; just waiting for their keywords to become available on Partner sites so they can snatch them up.

Websites that aren’t “obviously” selling links for rankings or PR
Over-the-top disclosure, especially with all the recent dialogue about paid links, can be a deal-killer. Is it right? That’s not for me to decide, but if I’m a publisher I’m following the money. Most advertisers I speak with request that we find them sites that make it difficult to determine if their outbounds are sponsored or not.

Hint: use your blogrolls! 😉

Websites that aren’t completely littered with ads & outbounds
You’ve seen the sites that have very little content but an enormous amount of ads, right?. MFAs, banner buffets, link farms, and every other junk site you can think of are losing business in a hurry these days because it’s difficult for these types of sites to have a positive impact on a linking campaign. I, along with everyone else who knows anything about it, always advise clients against using “hollow” sites because they just don’t produce.

There is a fine line between monetizing your site and whoring it out. Sites that are written out of passion tend to do the best. Even if your sole intention is to monetize your site (which is most often the case, right?), there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Just be aware that if your site looks like the Las Vegas strip you probably won’t attract tons of link buyers!

I’d say I hit the majority of the hot-buttons. Inevitably I’ll publish this post and think, “Damn! I forgot to mention ‘this’ or ‘that’….” but that’s how it goes. Good luck!

We have two very important updates to announce!

1. Payout minimums are changing with most payout methods. We are increasing the minimum to $100 for all payout methods except Paypal, which will remain at $25. The number of payouts have exploded and we’re having a hard time getting them done by the 10th. This change will allow us to get payouts down on time and it will also help us keep costs down.
2. NEW AFFILIATE PROGRAM! We briefly explained a new program to those participating but now we are making it official. I think everyone will be delighted to see our payout potential. For those of you that know Joeychgo, you can thank him for talking me into the higher number. The program is tracking all referrals and has been since June 1st; Advertisers, Partners and Combo’s. We’re almost finished with all of the development, but it’s more visual. The important part of tracking and recording what you are sending is working and has been working for months.

Along with the new affiliate program, once things get going, we’ll start rewarding the best affiliates and having contests. Maybe something amazing like lunch with Matt Stoddart. Look at how much fun he is!. We’ll have all kinds of fun games. I’m not opposed to Twister. 🙂

FINALLY! Big applause for Juancho for abandoning the search in a box and building our own personalized lwbot. As of right now, all websites that have opted into LinkInTxt, allowing us to crawl your site, have been indexed. We are fine tuning mr. lwbot as he crawls along, but we’ve gathered a couple hundred thousand keywords and still going. If you are interested in including your site, login to your account and go to MY PRODUCTS > LINKINTXT > CRAWL MY SITES then pick the sites you want to be included along with a standard price. We’ll pull the keywords on your site and make them available in our database.

Advertisers, jump in while you can. Buy keywords from similar site content. Get targeted traffic through these links and help build link popularity. Login and go to MY PRODUCTS > LINKINTXT > SEARCH/PURCHASE.