recips - giving away traffic or sharing it?

[basschick]

since we got to talking about recips on that free site thread, i got to thinking. over the years, i've talked to a LOT of webmasters who make free sites, galleries and avs sites.

some people feared that those buttons and text links that tgps, link lists, etc, require will leach too much traffic, so they started hiding them on pages no one every went to. so the link lists, tgps, etc, countered by requiring that the link be easy to find and on a page that gets traffic. most link lists require it on the warning page because people just kept trying to hide them - and also because they'd rather get listed on a higher PR page.

something i noticed doing galleries is that after a while, the top spots on my galleries - where the recips always go on mine - stopped sending many hits. i know this because we had our own tgps and ultimately each spot was sending under 15 hits per day when we're talking about standard sized recips. the surfers just sort of seemed to stop looking at the top of the page, i suspect because of free hosts.

and of course, the truth is that a good link list or tgp sends hundreds to thousands times more hits to a free site, avs site or gallery than a recip sends to them - usually. but some recips are very very effective.

so... what percentage of your site or page's traffic do you think it's fair to give to your traffic sources? i'd say 10% seems fair, but it ain't easy to track.

thoughts?

[gaydemon_jr]

good point. its not a straight forward exchange as id previously just thought. you do tend to get much more traffic from a link list than you can return in general.

it would be a pain in the bum to keep a track of what percentage you are returning. and there would need to be a fair and fully justified way of defining what is the right figure.

[abostonboy]

There is one thing that free site builders have to keep in mind. A link list may send you 10,000 visitors to your free site. You may send them 100. However, the 100 you may send them may make as many sales as the 10,000 that they send you.

Let me explain. You have a 50 pic site and maybe only a total of 10 outgoing links. A directory can filter those surfers like crazy. Get them as bookmarkers. And the directory may contain 1,000s of links to sponsors. So, 100 surfers to a directory can be more valuable than 10,000 to a free site. Trust me, I have gotten 10k surfers to a free site and zero sales.

When I ran my link list, which was low traffic, I made one sale per 150 visitors that entered my site. If I could do that for every free site that I had made in my life, I would not be posting here now! Would be living the good life in some warm climate.

[abostonboy]

it would be a pain in the bum to keep a track of what percentage you are returning. and there would need to be a fair and fully justified way of defining what is the right figure.

In our free site buildathon I will use openads and track what % go where with what recips and what % enter my site. Last time I did that 8% were not entering my site, but going to my recips (text links).

[tmt-Walter]

In our free site buildathon I will use openads and track what % go where with what recips and what % enter my site. Last time I did that 8% were not entering my site, but going to my recips (text links).
I only wish I knew half of the stuff you know about freesites

[gaydemon_jr]

I've got OpenX, though know little how to use it. Thats the same as openads isn't it?

[basschick]

yes - apparently they renamed it
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/20/openads-now-openx-former-aol-ceo-jonathan-miller-joins-as-chairman/


I've got OpenX, though know little how to use it. Thats the same as openads isn't it?

[gaydemon]

For me with gaydemon, i dont care much about the traffic I get in return from reciprocal links. Its pretty insignificant compared to what i get from hard link trades and SEO.

The reason why I make sure people link back to gaydemon properly is due to its SEO value.

The only real way of getting high on Serps on search engines are through incoming links. No matter what no one says. The more links coming in the higher and stronger gaydemon becomes.

People should not hide links or have a problem with reciprocal links if they want traffic. Thank to all those 10000s of reciprocal links, gaydemon recieves a large amount of SEO traffic which is then redistrubuted back to the smaller sites which linked to gaydemon in the first place.

[abostonboy]

I've got OpenX, though know little how to use it. Thats the same as openads isn't it?

Yes. They recently got a round of financing. Was phpadsnew, then openads, now openX. I would spend a day and really learn that software as it is a great piece of software and it's always good to match your outgoing clicks to what your sponsor tells you.

And you can track your outgoing clicks to recips.

As Bjorn said the true value of recips lies in the links coming into your directory. Which brings me to another point. If you have a hub, make one of the recips to your hub. Those are one way links if you don't list that site on your hub. So, you can use a recip to send both surfers to your own property as well as cast some votes with Google.

[gaydemon_jr]

As Bjorn said the true value of recips lies in the links coming into your directory. Which brings me to another point. If you have a hub, make one of the recips to your hub. Those are one way links if you don't list that site on your hub. So, you can use a recip to send both surfers to your own property as well as cast some votes with Google.

Great idea.