Guest post by Howie Romans
The intense boom of Web 2.0 properties has become more palpable than ever. Unfortunately, however, the mere fact that these particular websites aren’t actually your OWN websites has immediately thrown up red flags in the minds of affiliate marketers all around the world: inducing argumentative sentiments and criticisms on even the most frequented marketing communities online. After all, what affiliate would reduce themselves to the notion of ultimately contributing to the success of some other entrepreneur’s business? The mere thought of contributing to a Web 2.0 website property like this is absolutely shunned in some circles.
With high search engine authority developed by the consistent, passionate, effort of their collective userbases just ask some resonating online personas, like “SquidooGirl” (Google it!), just how valuable a Web 2.0 property can be in giving her content an immediate one-way ticket to the top of the search engines. Because of the inherent value that Google places on websites like these, affiliate marketers are afforded the opportunity to strategically use these websites as a part of a much greater online marketing campaign. Those who resist, or criticize, are simply missing out on an amazing opportunity that many of the most keen and savvy marketers are already taking full advantage of.
Of course, many have been extremely successful just using these websites in isolation, or in conjunction with their own blogs or sales landing pages.
With tens of thousands registered users spanning the world over, the highly intriguing aspects of these sites are pronounced, yet seldom talked about. Their presence have come to represent a high valuable tool that only a small handful of affiliate marketers even know how to use appropriately, with a plethora of unskilled users simply signing up, only to never return and use these websites to their maximum capacity.
Enter InfoBarrel.
Riding on the coattails of entire blog posts dedicated to highlighting their superior business models and offerings, this single website has constructed a perfect storm that has garnered the attention of some of the world’s most elite bloggers. While exhibiting exponential growth trends, InfoBarrel is quick becoming a highly valuable tool and resource to everyone from freelance writers to affiliate marketers.
So, why is InfoBarrel worthy of your consideration for use?
- For affiliate marketers, integration of affiliate links is allowed in both your article’s content, as well as, the prime location (nestled nicely “above the fold”) of your author’s signature box. With a little keyword research magic applied, your articles can become earning machines as they experience quick indexing and transcend the search engine results as a result of being so highly favored by Google.
- With a 75-90% transparent impression-based lifetime revenue sharing arrangement, in this aspect, up to 18 various Web 2.0 properties (based on my extensive research over the course of 6 months), to include Squidoo, HubPages, and eHow, are all flat-out dwarfed by this revenue sharing arrangement. As a highly lucrative incentive that serves as a driving force behind their high quality content submissions, revenue sharing alone is responsible for the numerous earning’s case studies that this website is already beginning to produce.
- As InfoBarrel continues to transcend the search engine rankings, affiliate marketers will find that its value only continues to increase with time.
“Everything seems to be so perfect. What are the drawbacks of using a website like InfoBarrel?”
In complete transparency, Web 2.0 websites inherently have some drawbacks. While the extent of these drawbacks (or whether or not they are perceived as drawback in the first place) do vary in relation to the specific property we are speaking about, it is absolutely important that we cover these if we are to invest our valuable time submitting content there.
- You do not personally own Web 2.0 properties. As mentioned earlier, when you contribute content to a website like this, you are also helping to essentially “build” and develop someone else’s business. With adverts displayed on each individual piece of content, you are providing them with content that they can earn from via their own integrated affiliate and non-affiliate monetization methods (Google Adsense, Chitika, Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank, etc).
- Generally speaking, Web 2.0 properties have varying treatments of do-follow and no-follow links. These treatments can be good or bad to an affiliate marketer. While HubPages applies a negative incentive where do-follow links automatically revert to no-follow links if a HubScore of 75 is not maintained, many other Web 2.0 properties either allow do-follow links or do not allow do-follow links across the board. In HubPages’ case, this negative incentive is applied, much like Squidoo’s lensrank system, in order to ensure the continual output of quality, continually updated, content that they perceive as being very valuable in the eyes of search engines.
- While I would argue that a strict editorial process is a good thing, many affiliate marketers would (and, have) absolutely shunned a website that doesn’t afford them the opportunity to gain instantaneous results. In InfoBarrel’s case, their application of a 10-article manual editorial process represents a new and ground breaking treatment of content that even the highest ranked Web 2.0 properties had neglected for a very long time in their overall growth and development. In order for these web properties to best serve their end users, they must take the proactive steps to ensure the high quality content submissions into their database. To affiliate marketers, as far as InfoBarrel is concerned, the immediate “drawback” is that you will have to “wait” for pre-approval to begin submitting content freely.
- Web 2.0 properties vary in where exactly they present in their growth and authority. Even with a superior business model in so many aspects, InfoBarrel is a young site and, although growing exponentially, does not have quite the search engine authority that other bigger sites have. The importance of keyword research is intensified on a young site.
As an affiliate marketer, what have your experiences been writing for a Web 2.0 property? Would you recommend it to your peers? Are there any specific elements of these websites that you find particularly useful in your online business.
Howie has contributed close to 350 articles to InfoBarrel. You can connect with him, via Facebook, at tacticalcashflow.com.
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