Sphinn - Part Two: Advanced Linking Interview With Fantomaster

20
Sphinn It!

Part Two: Advanced Linking Interview With Fantomaster

Went Hot: August 16, 2007 - 9:51 am
Posted By: peterdavanzo 473 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.linkjuicy.com)
Category: Link Building

Ralph tests two networks, and shares his findings. The final part of a two part interview.

5 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from bwelford 473 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Another great interview that certainly opened my eyes to some online properties that I never had envisaged.

from Gids 473 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Very interesting. I don't know whether this is a one off or the start of something - http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-bans-pr-7-website-for-selling.html

from Halfdeck 473 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Good interview. Instead of painting SEO in black and white the interview does a good job of capturing SEO in shades of gray and 1080p instead of 640x480.

from nuevojefe 469 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

It's interesting to see just how many cottage businesses can spring up revolving around link selling and link building. Just when you think it's all pretty played out and saturated another angle comes in.

These networks are funny because to be quite frank they're very equivalent to selling a drug such as ecstasy. There's very little money for the guy with one blog sitting on DP all day selling blog posts with links for $2. Especially since he's basically sinking his only ship slowly (or quickly depeding on his discretion or lack thereof). However, for a bigger player, consider the ROI of spending just 45 days acquiring 200 blogs. It would go something like this:

1. Start by buying a few PR6 and 7 sites/blogs. Spending $500-2,500 is totally reasonable per site if you know where to look and especially considering that you don't care whether it's a monetizable topic or what the current revenue/traffic is.

Cost: $4,000 for 1 PR7 and 3 PR6's.

2. Then, you are basically going to be spending between $10 to $500 in search of PR2-5 websites/blogs. So now let's say you've got 196 sites for an average of $100/ea and so you've spent $20k on that.

Investment so far is ~$25k.

You were smart and gave a bit of a percentage to a talented WP/PHP developer with a bit of xhtml/css skill so you've only had to pay him $2,500 over the two months for covering his bills...

Now, as you bought the 196 sites you started linking from your 4 higher PR sites to some of them to end up with:

1 PR7

3 PR6

12 PR5

112 PR4

39 PR 3

33 PR 2

Now, you begin selling your link packages and you're getting roughly $150 per set of links posted because you're doing quality control and marketing it as "under the radar". You're doing 10 sets per day at $1,500 per day total. It takes you about 25 days to recoup your investment, pay for your time (opportunity cost at least) and now you have another 30, 40, 60-100 days to continue before your network gets hammered.

Ok, now, let's go back to step one and do 10 times that. For step 2 let's do 20 times that. Yep, that may seem a hefty investment... but it's relative to your resources. If you had $400,000 to invest and could turn that into $1,000,000.00 in around three months with relatively little chance of significant loss because of the grand scheme of things... would you not go for it?

Now add in the fact that if you were engaged in this type of bulk operation you could also be powering your own affiliate sites, selling SEO contracts, etc, etc and you can see that with ambition and startup capital, or rapid reinvestment you can create millions in revenue.

from fantomaster 469 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

While I basically agree with your general outline of the mechanics (barring your number which I'm taking as mere examples which may or may not be plausible, depending on your sources, strategy, etc.), your phrase "until your network gets hammered" doesn't reflect the whole picture.

Yes, you can sink your entire network if you're too greedy, allow for too many subscriptions, cut corners on quality control, etc. No contention with that.

However, if you adopt a more sensible, longterm approach focused on quality and investment protection, you will actually see a lot of appreciation in value occurring.

Both networks I've presented the stats of in that interview were indeed hammered in the course of several months - but not entirely so: Most if not all sites retained their PR value (FWIW) and quite a few actually improved on it. This could probably have been optimized a whole lot more and I'm fairly confident that their owners will actually do so if they're smart (and they certainly are, from what I can tell). I know for a fact that it's what we will be doing, anyway.

As for that ecstasy comparison it's really not fair IMV: xtcy is merely for fun (and non-addictive at that), whereas links are for business and - very arguably - for sheer survival online. Big difference!

Top 10 Most Sphunn
In What's New

Could you Buy or Sell Social Media ... (19)
5 Critical PPC Budgeting Problems (19)
fRank Takes on PageRank (15)
Conversion Immersion - Making the M... (14)
How To Actually Get Links From Your... (13)
Top 10 Reasons for PPC & SEO Synerg... (13)
How to Build Strong Relationships o... (11)
Rumors: Microsoft in talks to buy Y... (11)
How to Write SEO Content (10)
The Evolutionary Role of Social Med... (10)

Latest Comments

Save the date for:
• SMX West - Feb. 10-12, 2009
• SMX Munich - April 22-23, 2009
• SMX Social Media Marketing - April 29-30
• SMX Advanced - June 2-3, 2009