I love experiments. Maybe that’s why college was so much fun? But this little experiment isn’t about parties, kegs and semi-naked co-eds brawling on a Twister mat; it’s about outsourced backlinks, shared revenue article sites and tossing $50 into the wind.
Also, I should probably say, “Hi” again and reintroduce myself, since it’s been about 10 million years since I posted here. I’m guessing the tens of three rabid fans that would tireless refresh this site, waiting in anticipation for my next post have probably moved on. If not: Glad to have you back. If you’re new: “Hi, I’m Lee, pleasure to meet you.”
My InfoBarrel Backlink Experiment
In case you missed all the media coverage, I recently dedicated 10 weeks of my life to outsourcing backlinks to an InfoBarrel article (what are backlinks?). I’m about half way through the ‘run,’ and am actually seeing some decent movement in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Why am I running this experiment? Because I’m a glutton for punishment and wanted to publicly subject myself to your ridicule. But also because I wanted to see if I could rank an InfoBarrel article for a couple of fairly competitive keyword phrases. And if I crack the first page, I’m guessing I’ll make a decent chunk of income, too.
I went into plenty of detail of this experiment here: Outsourcing Backlinks To InfoBarrel Articles: A 10 Week Experiment. Feel free to check it out.
Here’s the plan in a nutshell:
Week 1: Submit a press release to several press release sites. I even splurged an extra $5 for a freelancer to write the press release itself.
Week 2: Edu and Gov links.
Week 3: Social Bookmarks.
Week 4: Mass Article Distribution. I found a guy who used Unique Article Wizard, and set the articles to publish at a rate of about 50 per day.
Week 5: Directory Submissions.
Week 6: Social Media. Twitter and Facebook blasts never hurt anybody, except Myspace.
Week 7: Link Pyramid.
Week 8: Forum Profiles.
Week 9: Blog Comments.
Week 10: Web 2.0s. Other articles and such.
As of the time I’m writing this article, I’m about half way through. Last week I outsourced the directory submissions (week 5) and tomorrow I’ll find someone willing to blast my article’s URL to their Twitter, Facebook and whatever other social media accounts they have (week 6).
Why InfoBarrel?
Because I like it. How’s that for an answer?
Actually, I’ve been writing articles off-and-on over there for more than a year now, and actually really like it. I never thought I’d be happy writing for a shared revenue site instead of my own, but it actually offers several advantages. Maybe I’ll write up an entire post about it in the near future.
But my real motivation for trying this experiment was to see how far I could push an article that wasn’t on one of my own sites. Crazy? Perhaps. But I like experiments, remember?
If you’re interested in learning more about InfoBarrel and it’s shared-revenue system, I’d encourage you to head over and check it out.
If you decide to sign up, I’ll get a referral credit if you follow this link (which won’t affect your income at all).
Or you can go the non-referral route here.
Tags: Backlinks, InfoBarrel