F.A.Q. Sections Added For Advertisers and Partners

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.

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Want to score points with LinkWorth Account Managers? Read more . . .

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.

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LinkInTxt v2.1 ROCKIN and ROLLIN

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?

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What Link Buyers Want

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!

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LinkInTxt v2.1 – Up And Running

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.

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We Need You! Please Help Us Help You . . .

thinkingWith our latest upgrade it seems our long time LinkWorth customers are having a hard time with the change. We understand because you get used to one way, then it changes and you have to learn the process all over again. Oddly enough, the newer customers seem to think it’s easier. Now this is just based on what we’ve actually heard, so it could vary either way.

I’m not here to say this is right or that is wrong, what I would like to do is reach out to those who have problems and see if we could maybe address common situations that our customers might have problems with. Now do understand that we are still set to launch a second version of our control center by year’s end. This means there are many areas that need to be upgraded, and will be, but we may not get to them right away. We DEFINITELY want to hear from our customers with suggestions that would make your experiences better.

One big addition that we’re working on is tutorials on how to do most common functions. We’ll have written instructions that will go up first, then we’ll be adding video tutorials for those who like watching how things are done.

Please add your comments below and we’ll do our best to add your suggestions. If it is something that we might not get to right away, we’ll let you know, but we’ll do our best to make everyone happy. 🙂

PS. Did I mention GO COWBOYS!!!!! GIANTS WHO?

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Come By Our Booth in San Jose

LinkWorth BoothFor those in San Jose attending the SES show, please stop by our booth (#803 and shown in the picture) and say “Hi”. This place is going to be busy busy tomorrow and we’re excited to be a part of it this year.

San Jose is beautiful and the weather is perfect! Cool at night, warm during the days. The way we’d all like to have it.

UPDATE**
Look who our neighbors are!

lw-tla-ses.jpg

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San Jose Bound

Today we’re hitting the road on our way to SES San Jose. We have a great group (Enrique, Eric, Juan, Matt & Ron[me]) on the way so if you happen to be attending SES this next week, look for our booth and stop by to say hi.

We have quite a few conference parties to attend and chats with clients, so probably the best time to catch us will be at the booth or after the expo hall closes wherever the crowd tends to migrate.

We hope to see some of you there and be sure to grab one of these really cool shirts we’ll have at the booth!

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LinkWorth Blog – A Lot Easier On The Eyes

New website, new customer backend . . . and our poor blog was feeling very left out. It is something we have wanted to do for a while, we just had too many other project taking up our time. I personally hated the last theme being used and after a couple suggestions yesterday to change our blog, I made it my personal Saturday project.

There’s something to say about not reinventing the wheel, but there is nothing wrong with tailoring a proven product to do what fits best. I’ve been looking at blog themes, customizing blog themes and just writing our own theme. The one theme I felt was clean and well built was the old Copyblogger theme which is available for download. One great feature is the ability to use the custom.css for easy changing of the look. I took the theme, made the customizations to fit our overall look, and have it up and running.

We’ll probably make a few more tweaks once our graphics guy gets on it. (He’s real picky!) Ok, it’s time for me to get out.

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We Are Up And Running – New Control Center

So far so good with the upgrade. A few small things here and there, but overall things went great.

The control center is back online and you can login to see the new look and all spend $10k each. 🙂 Feel free to post your thoughts here. We’re ready to listen.

Also, if you happen to come across any weird bugs, please send any errors or problems to admin ((at)) linkworth ((dot)) com.

UPDATED:

Thank you to everyone who gave things a spin and were able to give us great feedback. There was a tiny bug that was confusing what account types people had, causing navigation to not function properly, but everything was adjusted and working fine within 45 minutes.

We have some colorful comments below where most love the upgrade, a couple long time customers aren’t up for a change, and mixed bag of other interesting comments. It appears we might have accidentally deleted a group of comments by accident as we’ve had a few people tell us their post was gone. We apologize for that, appears to be a user error (us).

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