The Pitch
Hi there – Khalid & Doug here from Gizmos for Geeks. We’re writing you, a fellow gadget blogger, so that we can start on the road to building something that will be bigger than the sum of all of our efforts combined. We’ll be honest and say that we’re not doing this for purely altruistic reasons but as a way to increase our traffic. But of course, it would be silly to propose an offer where we would be the only ones who stood to gain anything from it, so we’re trying to put something together where you will benefit just as much.
The way we see it, there are just too many gadget blogs out there competing with each other against some rather huge competition from the likes of Engadget, Gizmodo, etc., and we’re all competing for a very small portion of the remaining pie. If we can collectively become a larger force, then we’ll be sharing a larger piece of the pie, and that will be better for all of us.
Here’s what we propose:
- We provide you with a username and account so that you can post articles to Gizmos for Geeks (GfG) (we use WordPress).
- Obviously, we don’t want us all to lose Google ranking and traffic because of duplicate content, so you should not just copy content from your own blog/site into an article on GfG.
- Along those lines, writing little summary articles that talk about what you’ve just written on your own blog is perfectly fine. That way you can get traffic back to your site. You could even write a summary every week that summarized what you’ve posted that previous week.
- Also, we would prefer that you not duplicate ideas that are already posted (by anyone) to GfG. For example, let’s say there’s a news story about Apple releasing the iPhone 2.0. Unless you’re providing your own unique thoughts on the subject, then an article saying essentially the same thing is redundant.
- You can include links in the articles back to your site or wherever provided you are reasonable about it. For example, if you wrote a 200 word article and included 15 links in it, that would be a little overboard.
- We’ll add a section to our blog, GfG, that contains the most popular articles over the past week, and month.
- We’ll include links to the articles in our newsletter.
- If you post at least 3 articles/week, then we’ll include a link to your blog in our blogroll. We would naturally want a reciprocal link on your blog.
- No posting more than once per day. This isn’t set in stone. We will be monitoring how the program is working and adjust accordingly.
- For those of you who wish to earn income in a more direct way, we also offer a pay-per-post model where we pay you for each unique blog entry you write and post to GfG or anywhere on our blog network. Contact us directly for more info on this option.
As we’ve built up GfG to the point where we get on the order of 40 to 50,000 pageviews every month, you obviously stand to gain quite a bit of additional traffic just by posting with us and linking back to your site. Also, if this partnering program is successful, we’ll see additional traffic and so will you.
We’re only now initiating this venture, and would love to hear from you if you have any interesting/additional ideas. We’d like to get this started as quickly as possible, so please reply as soon as you can.
Cheers!
Doug & Khalid
Gizmos for Geeks
FAQ
- What’s a reasonable # of links to include in a post?
- For a post that is 200-300 words, no more than 4 is average. However, if you’re doing something unique like summarizing your posts for the week, then having 10 links is not unreasonable, but restrict the anchor text to 1 or 2 words, so that the whole post doesn’t turn into into a completely underlined, hyperlinked and unreadable mess.
- What do you pay for a post?
- If you’re part of the partner program, then nothing. You stand to gain as much if not more from the increase in traffic you will receive. However, if you’re interested in being a writer for us, where you write unique content for the “for Geeks” network, we pay by the post and will work with you on a 1-on-1 basis to establish your rate.
- Why can’t I duplicate the posts that I already have on my own blog?
- Simply put, Google and other search engines penalize duplicate content which is the opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish with building traffic.
- What type of content can I post?
- Pretty much anything that is about gadgets or technology or has a gadget angle is acceptable. To see what’s acceptable, just browse through our past content.
- I’ve been posting at least 3 articles per week, but I don’t see my site listed in your blogroll. What’s up?
- Sorry about that. Just send us an e-mail and let us know; we’ll fix that pronto.
- What happened to the post I just made? It disappeared!
- Sorry, but we do reserve the right to retract any posts. Most of the time, the reasons for this will include inappropriate language, or simply non-relevant material. For example, swearing, sexual references that go overboard (yes, we get to decide) or political statements are all prohibited.
- How can I make my images sit nicely to the left or right of the text with the border around it the way yours do?
- That’s easy. In your < img > tag, simple insert the following code snippet:
class=”pimage-left”
OR
class=”pimage-right”