i find this very disgusting
I have to image Google eventually figures out how to weed these out altogether.
I believe there can be quality, valuable affiliate sites (Amazon and otherwise). Reviewsignal.com is a refreshing take on hosting reviews (interviewed on Indie Hackers recently).
There's nothing "scammy" in this kind of outreach unless you're building links for a scam.
So you will not get any organic traffic because your site is not visible. On-page keyword optimization is a very weak factor compared to the number of backlinks from "powerful" sites.
Cold emails to relevant site owners and bloggers is no more spam than "Show HN" is spam.
But most of the first page results have many times more backlinks. We've got less than a dozen organically during the last year.
Yes they do, speaking from experience. They aren't coming naturally for you because you're competing in a saturated market or a small market selling things people don't really want or need. Your content probably isn't useful for any reason outside of selling something, which isn't the kind of thing people will naturally link to. If your site isn't useful to people who don't want to buy something, you're not going to attract organic growth. Write interesting content people want to share, and they'll link to it without any marketing efforts. If you can't get organic growth, your content is not interesting.
I understand the possibility, but this will not work that well:
– for any market where you have competitors with decent content on the first page already
– in future because the number of niches in this state decreases each day
A company who wants to compete in more or less established market will have no choice but work on link building.
People have to want to come to your site and get something useful for free, interesting content. Look at your site, take off all the products, what's left... if it's nothing, your site will never attract organic traffic because it's a spam site hocking someone else's products. Build a site that attracts and builds an audience first, then monetize it with relevant links to affiliate stuff and you won't have to always play the SEO game. SEO is for shitty sites that don't offer anything of value in and of themselves.
Viral is just another word for extremely interesting, but normal interesting has quite a long tail. However viral marketing is the proof of what I'm saying, first be interesting, that gets eyeballs, and eyeballs can be monetized. If you're just a shopping cart site selling someone else's products, you have no draw, why would I ever come to your site, I can just go to amazon or one of the other big name sites. So you need either something interesting, or something unique you're selling I can't find anywhere else.
This guy https://www.culturehustle.com/collections/frontpage/products... can barely keep up with demand, you know why... because I can't find another product like that anywhere, it's unique, so it doesn't have to be interesting.
Who will never find it because you didn't post it anywhere to raise up in ranking because "backlinking is gaming the system and bad".
> SEO is for shitty sites that don't offer anything of value in and of themselves.
Good luck not putting relevant keywords and having PageSpeed score under 50.
We've beaten the subject to death, I'm done.
> By calling something a back link, you are specifically referring to Googles page ranking strategy
"A backlink for a given web resource is a link from some other website (the referrer) to that web resource (the referent)."
Link building isn't adding any value to your site; you're merely trying to game the search engine who doesn't want to be gamed and who actively resists gaming by hiring some of the smartest people in the world to ferret out and eliminate your tricks. Google wants good content, not back links (back links are only a proxy they use to rate quality and only one of many), focus on good content and the rest will follow automatically without gaming the search engine which is only ever a temporary win at best. Trying to continually "trick google" by creating more links to your site that natural traffic would warrant is not a good long term strategy. Creating content people want is always a good strategy and works long term and removes you from the trying to trick google game which removes you from being taken out by a change in their algo aimed squarely at you fake back linkers.
> Google wants good content, not back links
Google relies on "dofollow" backlinks from big sites more than anything, check different researches on ranking and backlink count correlation.
All those stories about people losing their businesses because Google changed their algorithm, those were people trying to game Google to promote their content higher than it should have been, Google will always win that contest.
I am increasingly inclined to go do something like this and see if it pays. Because trying to add value doesn't. It just makes me a chump.
Seeing stuff like this rake in the cash while actual journalists and publications struggle to stay afloat is incredibly depressing.
This person is providing a service in reviewing products for people making buying decisions. As a result, they waste less time being unsure about their decision, and less money is spent on purchases they regret.
Have you never found a product you wouldn't have heard about had it not been for an ad or something like it?
It is a zero sum game of trying to get a manipulate a consumer to like your product over another.
If films, TV shows or games didn't have trailers and advertisements, an awful lot of communities would lose a decent part of their activity due to their members not having much to discuss for years.
There would be no room for speculation prior to release. No feeling of excitement every time a new announcement is made or a returning character is revealed.
And some ads are basically works in themselves. Like the ones here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Advertising
Let's also not forget that while quite a lot of ads are manipulative or dishonest, a near equally large amount are pretty much spot on and give you a great rundown of the products and its strengths.
This ad Nintendo aired for Pokemon Sun and Moon for example got a great reception online and likely sold a hell of a lot of games, yet it's also 100% true to the product and illustrates exactly what you do get by buying it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6QuYi3rpo
Is that manipulating people? I wouldn't say so. It's just giving them more information about a product they may have already been interested in.
Not all ads or marketing are misleading, nor something you have to ignore to make good decisions.
that being said, if were just restricting the discussion to movies- my personal strategy now is to wait until i hear from people i know that something is good before i bother. its not a strong interest of mine, so im pretty indifferent overall. the other way i decide is if i see people on twitter i follow say that something is good. or, i hear about something that has actors or directors i like. so, i think this stance leaves me highly susceptible to marketing. but the fact that marketing is influencing my movie choices is not evidence that its a good thing-
if no one marketed movies, would we still watch movies? i think so. maybe not as many, but probably with more enjoyment overall. just a guess. do you have any art / music / film interests that are too specific to be overcome with marketing? i do, and i actively seek new stuff, which i am able to find, without the "aid" of sophisticated, organized marketing. i guess thats my counterpoint to the idea that marketing is helping to find stuff in this arena. i can see how teasers and the like can generate excitement and interest in a positive way, and thats a separate point.
dear younger people than me: strive to do something that you would be proud of even if you weren't getting paid. and if you do end up making a bunch of money without a lot of work, give it away! thats my feeling anyway.
Don't be stupid, invest the money and give away some of the fat from your market returns, put the rest back in. Charitable causes need consistent, long term donation more than they need one time cash bonanzas.
As a bonus, if you're ever in financial trouble you have a safety net.
:)
Lately I've been really liking the Jurek Endure. That plus an Amp handheld (squish it up and bungee it to the waist pack when empty) have been great for up to about 15 miles this summer.
Disgust isn't usually that easy to pin down with precision.
Do you find a soiled diaper disgusting? If so, "What exactly do you find disgusting?" Do you find a it disgusting if a person is plucking out their eyebrows and eating them? Probably, but what exactly about it is disgusting?
Many if not most people would struggle to pin it down "exactly". In the case of this particular affiliate site, I'd say the general incentive structure that leads to this entire category of business is disgusting but it's somewhat difficult to pin it on any one specific actor. The site builder may have the best of motives and simply be rationally exploiting an opportunity that would undoubtedly be done by someone else otherwise.
The "soil"!
> Do you find a it disgusting if a person is plucking out their eyebrows and eating them? Probably, but what exactly about it is disgusting?
Eating hair!
Is it really hard to pin down where your disgust comes from, or are these examples just overly simplistic?
The difficulty comes from trying to zoom in to a higher level of precision, as nimchimpsky requested. What exactly do you find disgusting about someone eating an eyebrow, for example? Can you explain it?