Paying Your Way Into The Search Engines

These are just a collection of notes, ideas and experiences I've had so far with paying my hard-earned CASH to the SE's with the hopes of getting some traffic. And please bear in mind - I'M A NOVICE in this field. Just learning, playing, and experimenting

...as always.

Paying works, right?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who went white with shock and got very nervous when, one by one, the large search engines started to work in some kind of paid inclusion system. I guess the question that most webmasters would want to know would be:

"if I pay, am I going to get something for my money?"

Well, I think the term 'paid inclusion' is a dangerous one. It brings up images of just submitting a site and then BOOM! the traffic starts to flow. As myself and a lot of other webmasters found out, it's not like that. GROAN! You guessed it - persistence and hard work is the key here. But let me start at the beginning with...

Picking the right keywords - more important than EVER

When I talk about search engine optimization - one of the things I always mention is the importance of picking good keywords eg. "porn" or key phrases eg. "free porn pics". This is absolutely essential when it comes to PAYING your way in the search engines. Picking some WAY OUT, obscure phrase is fine if you're making a quick free page, and if it bombs - then there's not much lost. But when you're paying $25 or whatever the cost is to get a URL in there, it's got to count. No-one can afford to throw money down the drain.

With the paid inclusion systems out there that re-spider every so often, one good thing is that if you pick lousy keyphrases, and your page is DOA, you can always change 'em later.

Even a little traffic mounts up...

I've had a very modest amount of success getting traffic from paying my way in, and it's clear that for $25 - whatever you pay to get in there - you're not going to strike it rich. Even if you were listed number ONE for something like "porn" - it still wouldn't be enough. From what I can tell, making it with paid inclusion is like everything else in this business - you need to have a LOT of pages on the go at one time.

At $25-a-pop, this isn't a cheap way to get traffic, and you'd have to be prepared to make a good investment here, and to farm those pages very carefully. That's what I see paid inclusion as at the moment - an investment. How secure, or safe that investment is? that's something else. Who KNOWS what's going to change next month, next week, TOMORROW? Everything in this business is only good for today.

Work out what traffic is available from this system. Make your business plan, working out the total traffic you're likely to get from your $25 investment. Can you make a profit with it? Then there's a chance it could work for you.

Traveling back in time...

Search engine optimization. Anyone that's been doing it for any length of time will be able to tell ya how much things have changed. First, the aim was to crack each search engine's secrets, and to figure out their exact workings, or algorithms, and if you could do that - then you'd get good traffic. Then SE's became incredibly sophisticated, and spamming and doorways fell out of fashion (because they didn't work as well). Things like link popularity became important.

And NOW, we've come back to square one... in some ways. Everyone trying to crack the paid inclusion search engine algorithms. Another thing that reminds me of classic search engine optimization is the way that paid inclusion forces you to take 'care' of each URL - checking it's position carefully, and maintaining your rank.

And that's real important with paid inclusion. You have to make EVERY URL, every 'investment' count. As with the FREE add url systems, submission is only the beginning. Paid inclusion is not a magic solution - not even CLOSE. As Inktomi state, you're not guaranteed a good ranking and you're certainly not guaranteed even one CLICK for your money.

Will the competition pay?

One thing that appealed to me about paid inclusion was wondering if my competition would pay to get in. I'd figured that the less competition there was, the BETTER! But, from what I've seen, there's already a lot of competition in the paid inclusion programs.

What IS spam, when YOU become a customer?

I also see one hell of a lot of spam in paid inclusion. By spam, I just mean the things that the likes of Inktomi set out in their terms AS spam. But the interesting thing here is - are they REALLY going to start pulling pages, banning domains, and chastising their valued customers? I have no idea on this one. I was reading Inktomi's terms the other day and they say that no special treatment is given to the paid inclusion programs. I emailed Position Tech, and asked THEM what was spam, and how I could avoid it. Here's their reply...

"Hi Tom,

Your asking some tough questions. Inktomi recently revised their policies and we don't yet fully understand how it will impact submissions. The new policies may be found at http://www.inktomi.com/products/search/spampolicyfaq.html

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best Regards,

Sales
Position Technologies, Inc."

IS special treatment being given to paying submitters? Will the 'spam' continue? What effect will the lists of ads and 'zero content' have on the search engines? Will those surfers migrate to another SE, where there's less spam? What about...

The future...?

Well, I don't think that paid inclusion, pay per click, or pay for SOMETHING in the search engines is going anywhere. Banner advertising and other revenue streams aren't magically going to bounce back up and take away the need for the search engines to get cash from wherever they can. I think the day's for all the big guys letting submitters make a fortune from porn, from THEIR traffic are over for good. Sure, there'll always be good places to get free traffic - but the paid inclusion system seems to be something that people are willing to pay for - and the SE's are not going to turn those people away.

There's one nasty thought I can't stop from creeping into the back of my mind when I think of the future of paid inclusion. I imagine a time where EVERYONE uses the paid inclusion programs out there, to such an extent that we're back to square one - very hard to get a decent rank under good phrases. And the SE's then begin to crank up the price - or to lower the time your page stays in the engines. OR to add in very strict rules that demand X amount of free content for the surfers - and then limit the ads you can have - in a similar way that Dmoz does. Or what about corruption? Will that come into play?

One thing is for sure - it's going to be VERY interesting to see what happens with porn, search engines, surfers, and PAID INCLUSION in 2002 through 2003!

What are YOUR thoughts on paying your way in? What are your positive AND negative experiences? Where's it all heading? What's the future - is paid inclusion something to react against - or to EMBRACE?!

And if you've survived this ludicrously long post - thanks! I've got to stop drinking so much strong coffee.

TOM ^"^

ICQ 12616560
Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com

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