link service

[dougs]

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A friend is looking to offer a service and is looking for 5 to 10 customers and has a question of how much to charge. The service is a monthly service:

Each month you will get:

50 unique articles written and listed on 50 different article sites , with a single link
50 unique articles written and posted on 50 different peoples blogs with a single link
50 on theme links on other peoples sites, in their link swap areas

So in month 1 you will have 150 links, month 2 300 links, month 3 450, etc etc

All sites are owned by different people and on different ip ranges etc
Once links are up they will never be removed. Even if you stop paying.

My view is that he should be charging in the region of £2000 per month per customer, what does anyone else think?

I know he can do bespoke stuff if requested also.

Doug

[smingle]

Doug,

How many words per article will there be ?

Also will the articles, links and blog submissions be on 50 different websites EVERY month ? ie month 1 first 50, month 2 a different set of 50 sites etc

I would say that £2,000 is pretty cheap - I would say £3,000 would be more like it if the articles are unique, well written and very lengthy.

I honestly can't see how you could write 150 articles on 1 particular subject every month though.

Good luck though

[dougs]

Articles will be in the region of 250-400 words and will probably be of a similar vein, as there is only so much you can write about with regards to feet But if the target is global travel the scope is quite large and easy to do 50 similarish articles about France one month and then Spain the next.

To be honest the writing is not the issue, as that is something they have been doing well for years.

Getting the unique IP's etc is where I can see the issue long term, but from what I have seen they should be able to do easily do several 1000. After that then things get harder as they have to find more sites willing to play and that is when the prices may have to go up.

I have told them that if it works for customers, they will end up being able to charge what they want as they will have 5 customers who will be paying them a fortune as its a one stop shop for a variety of links.

None of this stuff is anything to do with coops networks etc, but is all based on having realtionships with site owners scattered all over the world.

Doug

[smingle]

Sounds very good and your points about the feet vs holidays are exactly what I was thinking at the time of my writing.

I feel this will only appeal to the high end of websites and your average joe public affiliate marketer / website owner etc will struggle to pay and possibly understand the true benefits of what this services does for them, and £2/3k a month to "test the waters" will be very steep for some people.

It is a very good idea though and I can see it working. Again as you know doug, it is a little bit like domaining as it is hard to educate people the importance of the link building and unique ip's etc, in the same way it is hard to educate people the importance of generic domain names.

Put the 2 together and you are onto a dynamite combination for success

[dougs]

The simple idea is to have a handfull of people using the service and just use the economics of scale for finding links....rather than people like me having to manage all our link contacts etc...but just to have one company I can buy it all from.

As you correctly say most people won't spend 2-3K pcm on a trial, but some will

We have been trialing some of it on some test stuff and the results are interesting lets say

Doug

[smingle]

Doug

As you know from when we spoke before, I do something similar but on a smaller scale, and I can definatly agree with you that results are interesting

At that sort of income you would only need 5 regular clients to make a substantial income for the company and for the link company to provide an excellent service to the customers.

If it was me, for what is being offered I would offer it for £3k and see how it goes

Hope it works out for your friend and he makes a go of this, as if people do realise how well thier sites can do with this service, £2-3k will seem like nothing

Cheers

[cottageguy]

As you correctly say most people won't spend 2-3K pcm on a trial, but some will

I would trial it myself, as I know more about my subject than I usually care to remember, or ever care to regurgitate. When I have, the information is valuable e.g. no non-positive responses to my ebay guide, but I know I should do a lot more.

My reservations are two-fold - paying serious money to find out if something is any good, and then quality control going forward. As a strategy surely you go for the best placements first, then the second best etc. And surely the copy begins to look a little tired on the nth cut and paste regurgitation?

My 2p

Jon

[DavidCartlidge]

Not sure whether you mean 50 articles or 100 per month, but at an average length of 325 words, for 50 articles you would be could get that done at a decent standard for £500.

On top of that you are paying for the links. Anybody can get the link swap ones easily enough, but to get 50 you would have to fire off at least 250, requests assuming 1:5 conversion, and if Joe Website Owner is doing that manually, that is 15ish hours of work, at £15 p/h that is £225

The article sites is going to be quicker, the blogs perhaps longer - and over time that is going to get harder and harder - like after month one, depending on sector size.

So even assuming £225 for them both as well that is another £450 giving a total of £1,175 just to cover time.

Factor in a nice profit of around 25% (else why bother..) and that is £1500.

So, perhaps it should be £1500 for the first month, £1750 month 2, £2000 month 3 etc, and perhaps put a ceiling on at £3k - but that all depends on the sector.

[dougs]

The article copy is not the issue, but where the areticles/posts/links are placed. And yes it is a concern but as already mentioned the list of places is already in the 1000's. I would envisage that if the system worked for one site then a customer woudl just deploy the system onto another site.

50 articles written and submitted to different article sites per month
50 posts on different blogs per month
50 links on other peoples link swapping areas

50 artciles will costs say £500 agreed
send 250 emails to get 50 links, no chance, try 10,000 to get the links
50 blog posts, you simply are going to have to pay people

Yes people can do it themselves, but why bother? The idea here is a simple service. To my mate it means once he has done it a few times, has found people and methods, why not just sell the service as a complete service. Plus its a service that we and he have been playing with for ourselves for a while already. So now he is just going to offer it out.

People may ask why, but then he does not have to worrry about the results, the backend deals etc. He just has to deliver his service.

Doug

[Aspirin]

The idea here is a simple service.

Yes I would be interested in this for sure.

To my mate it means once he has done it a few times, has found people and methods, why not just sell the service as a complete service. Plus its a service that we and he have been playing with for ourselves for a while already. So now he is just going to offer it out.

This is the thing, it will take time to find contacts or build up some networks of varied sites yourself so you can get links etc.

As you say the content articles are not a problem, I pay £8 for a 400 word article to be wrote and submitted to an article site.

But its the other things you are offering, like themed links, some sectors these are hard to come by as its very competitive out there.

Anyway, id pay £2k for a trial and then ill post a review about what service I got

[dougs]

Scary......seems the interest is here as I am also getting emails

The blog post stuff can also have great value if the links are "follow" links

Better get my mate to sort it out and make the offering live

Doug

[cottageguy]

Anyway, id pay £2k for a trial and then ill post a review about what service I got

I'll pay £1k for a trial and post a more positive review!:tup

Jon

[dougs]

This isn't a service we are really going to be haggling about...its a take it or leave it service, we know the value

Doug

[channel5]

The killer question as to whether this will add value is the quality of the sites that you will be developing in terms of their own back link equity and topic relevence.

If you are throwing up blogs and sites just to put this content in with no backlink equity (or with low value unrelated backlinks) then the value is questionable.

As you will effecively be creating a content network you need to take steps to be sure that it does not get picked up by Google, such as:

- unique IP addresses at the class C level
- no (or very little) interlinking between network sites
- unique WHOIS information
- unique templating

*if* you can achieve all this then send me a PM as I would be interested in the service.

[dougs]

These are not sites we own or have ever owned, but are other peoples sites. The idea is simply we manage putting articles etc onto article and blog sites


Doug