Thread: Traffic generation, backlink generation, Facebook "Likes"...

So this started out with me just messing around with Wordpress on Friday night. I have had this idea to self publish a book. I also used to have a bunch of affiliate websites. So I started poking around and by late Friday night I had a domain setup with hosting, Wordpress, a forum integrated, a theme, a custom directory integrated, advertising integrated for Adsense, eBay, and Amazon. I prefer focusing on eBay because I've made good money on that program in the past.

The problem is I've been out of the game for a few years. I'm pleased with how many off the shelf plug ins there are nowadays to do things that would have required a lot more effort and/or purchasing components to accomplish.

I want to drive this site to become a community "companion" site for the book. The site can drive book purchases, and the book can drive traffic to the site. But in addition to that I of course would like to monetize anywhere I can. I built a FaceBook "fan page". What is the best way to get "Likes"? I don't really feel like dumping money into CPC ads on FaceBook. I would not be opposed to paying some guy offshore $50 for 20,000 likes or something like that...but can you get away with that these days? Is it even really necessary? Does having more "likes" get you any more exposure, or is it pointless? I've already integrated Like and Share buttons into the site.

I've thought about buying some cheap traffic to pump through the site to give it a kick but I'm thinking that might do more harm than good. eBay is picky about traffic quality now, AdSense has its own issues but I don't care as much because they never really maximized revenue for me.

I also see that now as opposed to investing a ton of time and effort into growing a link farm...one can just buy 2 or 5 or 10,000 backlinks with a menu of PR to select from. I'm thinking about doing this too, but slow rolling it, start with like a few thousand low PR links, then gradually add more higher PR links, then whack it a few times with a ton of links over say the next 6 months to a year. Any point to doing this or just buy a ton of variety of backlinks up front?

I don't want to get sucked into putting a ton of time into this site. I want to get it going, and then set it and forget it, and focus on just posting content - blog entries, forum posts, and getting my first book completed. I have a series of 3 books planned. Once it all gets going, and the books are out, I'd like to maybe down the road flip the site and sell it off.

So, what is the latest and greatest approach these days? I could just let it be and see if it goes viral or takes off on its own. I have a totally crazy branding for the site and book series. Should get noticed in the Amazon listings I hope.

I will reveal what it is. It's a series of cookbooks. The site is at CookingConspiracy.com. I think the first cookbook will be titled "CookingConspiracy.com Volume I: Food From Spaceships". It is a inside joke with people who know me, they make fun of me for surfing conspiracy theory websites for entertainment. But they also love my food. So I figured, lets do it and be crazy. Any suggestions or constructive criticism is appreciated. My wife says the site looks "spammy"...maybe that is true. I'm just doing what I know has worked for me in the past. I am open to suggestions.

I agree with your wife, little over the top with the advertisements, never even hung around long enough to look at the content.

As far a getting traffic, writing articles and submitting to article directories and creating Web 2.0 properties works well for me. Note you will want to get 30 to 50 links to each article and Web 2.0 properties.

Google does put some emphasis on the social networking, so FB likes will help your ranking. How much? nobody really knows but G

Do the above and should end up on first page if you do your keyword research right

Larry

Dump the ads, or move them out of the initial posts...reminds me of one of those autoblogs.

I like the concept of the site.

I'd advise against throwing a lot of links at it all at once. You can after it has some reasonable traffic, but you can achieve almost the same by sending those links to ..as Larry said..any articles you create, or social stuff...
so you get the benefit, but indirectly.