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Tip To Get Free Content for Your Site

If you operate a single website or more than one, you already know that a big challenge is adding fresh, relevant content to your site. You don’t necessarily need to add articles and information to your site every day, but you do need to add new content fairly often.

I want to share a strategy I use to get content on some of my websites. I like to reach out to my advertisers and ask them to send me a guest post on a topic of their choice related to their business. I emphasize that it will receive good placement on the website, and it will also link to their own website. They can send unique articles as often as they’d like, and I will post them as often as they send the articles.

What has happened is that I’ve received some great articles written by experts that are happy to share knowledge and advice. In return, these experts get exposure on a high trafficked website, and they also receive a back link from my website in return. I believe it’s a win/win for both parties, and it’s something you can and should do on your own websites.

I want to share an example of this with you. One advertiser on DogWalker.com owns a pet care company in San Diego. Just about every month, she emails me an article for DogWalker.com, and I post it ASAP. This morning, I was sent an article about traveling with dogs, and I posted it on the site right away. I also used Facebook and Twitter to share the article with others.

This may not bring a lot of traffic, but it’s a topic that is of interest to vacation travelers right now, and perhaps they will learn about the site when they find the article while searching Google. Perhaps they will even need a dog walker while on vacation and use the services of one of the advertisers on my site. However it’s used, it’s something that will attract visitors to the site, and it didn’t cost me anything to create.

If you’re not doing this yet, I really think you should.

Get Targeted Traffic From Wikipedia

Here’s another tip to get traffic to your developed websites, and the cost is virtually free, aside from the time it takes you to actually do it.

We all know that Wikipedia is one of the most highly trafficked websites online. One reason is that it has a ton of content about millions of topics that cover just about everything. Another reason is that it has great search engine rankings, which is likely due to the amount and breadth of the content on the site. I often find Wikipedia outranking some of my own sites for certain topics.

If you review Wikipedia pages associated with the topic of your website, you can add external links to the bottom of Wikipedia pages. For instance, if you own a site that covers Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, you should add a link to the bottom of the main Philadelphia page. You can either call it your domain name .com or embed your link with anchor text. It’s no follow, so you won’t get search engine benefits, but you’ll likely receive traffic.

I would also recommend adding a link to relevant internal pages of your site on “deeper” Wikipedia pages since there will be generally less outbound links on those page than on the main page. For instance, you might want to add a link to your Independence Hall page on the associated Wikipedia page, again with the Philadelphia theme.

In addition to adding links to the external links section, your website can also be used as a reference if you can add information to articles. If you have information on your site that would enhance an article and you happen to be considered an  authoritative  website, you can post the info and link back to your website as the reference. This is great for traffic, too.

You don’t have to be a registered Wikipedia editor to post links, although they will give you more ability to have links stay on the site if you do register. You can’t add too many links all at once, or you’ll be banned for spamming the site.

It’s a good way to get free traffic to your sites.

Stat Counter Upgrades Are Helpful

Stat CounterI’ve been using Stat Counter on many of my websites, in addition to Google Analytics. I pay a total of $49 each quarter for unlimited websites, and I am given a log of 25,000 pageviews in addition to my free 500 pageviews per project log quota. This means I have records of the last 25,000 pageviews, which is very helpful when it comes to watching traffic trends.

Stat Counter recently released an updated version, and the thing I like the most is the search engine traffic analyzer. Instead of simply telling me the entrance keywords for search engine traffic, it actually tells me the position my article is in when the person clicked through to my site. For instance, I saw that I rank #2 in Google for the search “iCloud domain sale.”

I’ve always liked how easy it is to track my visitors’ paths, IP addresses, recent page views…etc, but the new upgrades on StatCounter are impressive to me, and they didn’t even raise the price.

If you operate one or more websites, I recommend you check out and install the free edition of Stat Counter to get the 500 previous pageview logs. You can always upgrade down the road if your usage dictates it, and it’s well worth it for the information that’s given and the easy of accessing the information.

Bahamas.CO Nominated for Bulby Award

I just received word that my website, Bahamas.CO, has been nominated for a Bulby Award for Best Content on a .CO web address. I put quite a bit of time and effort into researching and writing articles for the site, and it’s a cool honor. There are a number of other categories for the Bulby Awards, and you can see all the nominees at Bulbys.CO, where you can vote for Bahamas.CO!

Congrats and good luck to the nominees.

“In less than a year, over a million new ideas have been registered using a .CO web address. To celebrate, our UNDER THE BULB campaign will offer a closer look at the creativity and ingenuity of our community by recognizing the individuals behind the ideas and companies on .CO. At the heart of our effort will be a worldwide invitation to vote for our inaugural Bulby Awards.

These awards are celebrating the trailblazers, day-dreamers, innovators and insomniac entrepreneurs that are helping to create the .CO global community. We want your fans, followers and voters to say “I wish I would have thought of that!” show their support of your work and cast their vote for you.

As a nominee, you’ll get prime real estate on the Bulby Awards homepage, www.bulbys.co, where your fans and friends can vote for BAHAMAS.CO as the BEST CONTENT on a .CO web address.”

Why I Like DomainQuestions.com

This may come across as a bit self serving, and it probably is, but I want to give some feedback about why I like my site, DomainQuestions.com. I also think it’s good to remind people where they can get answers to some of their own domain questions.

It seems like every day that I receive a question related to domain names. Some questions are about domain monetization, some are about general domain investing, and others are related to domain acquisitions or sales. It’s humbling that people feel that they can ask me a question about domain names and get a good answer, and I appreciate that level of confidence in me.

However, I stopped doing private domain consulting over a year ago. I don’t have the time to give to others on a regular basis, and time away from my own business development is detrimental to my bottom line, even while earning a decent amount of money from consulting. Despite this, I still receive many questions about domain investing, and I want to give a good answer since people took the time to write to me.

Enter DomainQuestions.com, a site I launched several months ago. Instead of saying, “sorry, I don’t do domain consulting,” I can let the person know I will do my best to answer the question if they take the time to post it on DomainQuestions.com. Not only does this become a resource for people who have similar questions, but it also saves me time answering questions I’ve answered in the past when I simply need to email them a DQ thread with the same question and an answer.

If the person doesn’t want to spend the time or effort creating an account and posting a question, why would I ever want to spend my time answering the question?  If the question is private in nature, there are plenty of great domain consultants who will happily answer their questions for them.

In addition to the site being a resource for domain related questions, it has become a (slow growing) revenue stream. As traffic continues to grow, I’ve been fortunate to have a few advertisers on the site. It seems like a win/win.

If you haven’t checked out DomainQuestions.com, I urge you to do so the next time you have a question. I’d also recommend creating an account, adding your profile information, and helping to answer the questions that other people have. I appreciate it and they will appreciate it, too.

BeerWeek.com Development Example

Beer WeekA couple of months ago, I was negotiating to buy the domain name BeerWeek.com at Sedo, but I couldn’t agree on the price with the seller. I just noticed a new website on BeerWeek.com, and it appears that another company acquired the domain name.

The strategy of the new website on BeerWeek.com is similar to what I envisioned, and I want to discuss why I like it and think it’s a good idea. Perhaps it will give you some ideas for your own domain names, and as I am writing this and thinking about the site, I am also thinking about a couple names I own, BikeTours.com and BikeTour.com.

There are dozens of “Beer Week” events that take place in various US cities and in countries around the world. Most of the events are unrelated to each other, but they obviously focus on beer. The owner of BeerWeek.com has turned the site into a resource for people who want to learn about the different “Beer Weeks.”

It almost seems that BeerWeek.com is the primary brand for these individual “Beer Weeks,” despite the fact that they are likely unrelated. For instance, there is an informational page about American Craft Beer Week, and that event is managed by a different Colorado company.

Having the “more generic” term that encompasses these various events should help the site rank well in Google and Bing when people do long tail searches for the events covered in the site. For instance, I wouldn’t be surprised for BeerWeek.com to rank just after CraftBeer.com when people search for American Craft Beer Week because of its seemingly close relation with the event and the keyword match.

For monetization, the company can use Adsense (which it’s using), and as it grows, it can sell advertising space directly to the event organizers. It can also charge other Beer Week organizers for links on the site if it so chooses, and it could even sell tickets to different beer week events, or possibly use hotel affiliate links for people looking to travel to different Beer Weeks.

One next step could be offering advice/consulting on how to start and manage a beer week for people interested in doing their own event. Another next step could be to get in touch with brewers and see which companies are interested in participating in Beer Weeks and organize its own Beer Week. Finally, the company could opt to organize its own Beer Week(s), and use the revenue from that to expand and/or acquire other events.

In any case, it’s neat to see a domain name I almost purchased launched with a website model I thought would work. I am going to continue following the site’s progress, and perhaps some day, I will find the time to do something similar with BikeTours.com and/or BikeTour.com.