Just Ask Matt - Answers

Do Link Exchanges Still Work?

QUESTION: (Gerald) I have a number of people asking me to exchange links. I have read that this is good, but can’t find anywhere how to do it. Any suggestions, or is there an article you have that would help me. Appreciate it.

Good question, Gerald, because we really don’t hear as much about link exchanges as we did in the past.  I think the big reason for it is it’s effectiveness (or lack thereof).  Search engine spiders are much smarter than they were 2 or 3 years agos.  And most will recognize a “link exchange” rather easily.

For those who don’t know what a link exchange is, it is when you approach another website (usually with similar content to yours) and ask them to place a nice, keyword-rich anchor text link back to your website.  In exchange, you will do the same for them.  Remember that an important part of SEO is backlinks (i.e., receiving links from other websites pointing back to you).  A few years ago, a lot of this “linking power” was represented by a Page Rank.  Getting high Page Rank websites to point back to you effectively will increase your own page rank.

Personally, I think Page Rank is a bit of a farce these days (at least the public one).  I do think the major search engines (like Google) have there own ranking system based on popularity, but it would not be public.  Still, getting links from “authority sites” with relevance (to your niche) is always key. 

Now getting back to the question…I think link exchanges (or “reciprocal linking”) is really not going to help or hurt you.  Any backlink (in most cases) usually will help you.  But if there is a reciprocal link, the spiders will usually recognize this and probably not give you proper popularity for it. 

Again, like everything SEO, this is speculation, but I know there has been a lot of abuse of link exchanges over the years (like link farms, paid text links, etc.) to draw a lot of attention to it.  I used to do it quite a bit.  I don’t really do it any more (unless I am quite friendly with the website and we exchange primarily for the traffic, not the SEO).  I think your efforts would be better suited to article writing/submission, press releases, even directory submissions. 

You can also consider n-way link exchanges.  For a 3-way link exchange example: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, and Site C links to Site A.  You can do this rather deeply, too.  But still, the search engine spiders are smart and may start recognizing the linking footprints.  The larger the “n”, the better off you are…but of course, this is a hell of a lot more work and requires some skillful coordination.

Personally, I have become somewhat of an a-hole about link exchange requests.  I don’t get as many as I used to, but when I do I usually ignore them. 

cheers…matt

P.S. If you want to know more about Getting Backlinks, check out SEOExciter.com.  (There are 10 free videos over there that shows you how!)

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Matthew BredelMy name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer. For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...

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Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Pt 3) - 3-Step Plan

December 8th, 2008 . by Matthew Bredel . Tweet This!
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So what do these two guys from the Arbitrage Conspiracy actually do to make $50k-$100k/day?
In the video, I outline a simple 3-Step plan that they seem to implement in nearly all of their campaigns.
Step 1 - Identify an Offer to Promote
In this step, they usually go to free CPA Networks and browse over the various [...]

So what do these two guys from the Arbitrage Conspiracy actually do to make $50k-$100k/day?

In the video, I outline a simple 3-Step plan that they seem to implement in nearly all of their campaigns.

Step 1 - Identify an Offer to Promote

In this step, they usually go to free CPA Networks and browse over the various types of offers (focusing on Pay-per-lead, in most cases).  From the statistics provided and some general market research, they chose an offer.

Step 2 - Testing the Offer

Using systematic techniques (which involves a lot of competition spying), they use pay-per-click networks to test the offer. (Nope, there is no website at this point!) Don’t be expecting to earn much money in this phase, but the information that you discover from a simple testing plan will be the foundation for step 3.

Step 3 - Promote the Offer

If the offer tests well, they continue to create a rather simple landing page.  This can be done using templates or predesigned web pages.  In some cases, the offer will provide most of the graphics for you.  Here, you will use your test data to increase your profit margin (and in many cases, traffic).  This is where a bit of campaign ramping takes place.  With the proper ramping, they can take a $10/day campaign into a $10,000/day campaign with very little risk.

Of course, this is the basic outline.  There are more details (and more tricks) to make this work, but believe it or not, this is generally what is involved.  There are really two tough parts to this:

1)  The Research - Finding the right offer to promote is a major key to success here.  Luckily, they provide many strategies on which products to focus on initially and the testing phase is there not only to gather data, but to provide insight on whether or not this offer is going to work or not (before you get too involved).  This reduces the risks significantly.

2)  Pay-Per-Click - Knowing how to use pay-per-click CORRECTLY is essential to make this work.  That is why much of the Arbitrage Conspiracy focuses on using pay-per-click.  I have spent years learning how to use pay-per-click effectively and within 4 hours in Las Vegas, these guys released many of the secrets I spent a lot of time and money having to learn myself.

cheers…matt

**********************************************************
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http://www.matthewbredel.com/vegas_report
**********************************************************

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17 Responses to “Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Pt 3) - 3-Step Plan”

  1. Matt: Great info, I live in Canada, will that present a problem with these CPA networks as most of the offers are directed at the US market

    Posted by: Bruce Hauck
    December 8th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

  2. Matt: If the Arbitrage is so great it would be silly for any IM to do anything but. Are you going to do it too or just make afffiliate fees?

    Posted by: Bill
    December 9th, 2008 at 6:02 am

  3. Bill, what I DO is very similar to what the Arbitrage Conspiracy does, just at a much larger scale. Most of what the Arbitrage Conspiracy teaches are the things I needed to learn myself in affiliate marketing. This whole thing is affiliate marketing at a larger (and somewhat different scale). And I do promote CPA offers (and this has also prompted me to try a few other campaigns, too). I may not make $100k/day (but up to $1k/day is not bad, in my opinion!)…and yes, I do get affiliate commissions for this product.

    Posted by: Matt Bredel
    December 9th, 2008 at 8:04 am

  4. Thanks Matt: Still wouldn’t I get just as much by following you and keeping up with your materials on WebNetVideo? and other materials I’ve gathered? With all the hype I’ve gotten I have the feeling that the Arbitrage Conspiracy is going to be pricey. I guess we’ll know more after tonights teleseminar.

    Bill

    Posted by: Bill
    December 9th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

  5. [...] Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Pt 3) - 3-Step Plan [...]

    Posted by:   Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 1) by Inside the Internet Marketing Mind
    December 10th, 2008 at 8:45 am

  6. Bill, of course I think my stuff is just as good, but it a bit more broad and focuses on more traditional affiliate marketing methods (than this). This is kind of specific in the strategy they are trying to teach.

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am

  7. Just over a year ago, I started in affiliate marketing using Google Adwords to direct traffic to affiliate links for Clickbank products. It made very little money because I was never able to get my quality ratings high enough to get low costs per click - never mind being able to out-compete the other internet marketers for keywords.

    My solution was that I needed to create a quality website for Google adwords to work well.

    Now if this is another PPC method, have they resolved the Google quality score and Google Slap issues?

    Posted by: Vince
    December 10th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

  8. Vince, I totally understand your point here. I’ve tried (and failed) at Google Cash methods in the past, too (primarily due to competition for the URL and Google Slaps).

    The answer is they DO create a landing page of quality and depth AFTER some initial “Google Cash” method testing (usually which doesn’t last too long…or at least long enough until they are Google Slappes). Again, there is no real money made in this “Google Cash” phase…it is used to test both the products and the keywords. From there, good PPC practices MUST take place in order for this to work (including good Quality scores, unique landing pages, and relevant content)…though, some of this is a little bit “gray hat”. cheers…matt

    Posted by: Matt Bredel
    December 10th, 2008 at 10:02 pm

  9. MAtt, I have looked for that PDF file on matthewbredel.com/vegasreport and do not see it ??

    Posted by: Jeff Strum
    December 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

  10. Matt,
    Your videos and your honesty is what made me order through your Affiliate link instead of the big guys. You explained to me what I was not finding in the gobs of text that everyone has out.
    Thank you,
    Ana Seidel
    http://www.TheVeryBestChocolate.com

    Posted by: Ana Seidel
    December 11th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

  11. Hey Jeff…yeah, right now that the offer is up, the PDF seems gone…I am working on trying to get a new link for that PDF. Stay tuned…I’ll let you know…

    And Thanks for your support, Ana!

    cheers…matt

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 12th, 2008 at 9:50 am

  12. Hello Matt!
    I purchased the Arbitrage Conspiracy course from you and I got a question: I am new at this and I made a lot of mistakes with my Google Adwords account. My account history will be affected and so my quality score. Do you think it would be a good idea to open a new one and start brand new when the class begins?Thanks for your advice.

    Nathalie Veilleux

    Posted by: Nathalie Veilleux
    December 21st, 2008 at 8:13 pm

  13. Hey Nathalie!

    First, thanks for the support!

    And to answer you question, I personally WOULD create a new account for this (assuming that your history of the current account is not spectacular). I have been playing around with this stuff myself and that is what I did (even though some of my Adwords accounts have very high quality). Start from scratch, though. For the few dollars it costs to set up, you are better off to begin with a fresh template. (Also, the way that the Arbitrage Conspiracy works, you will be creating a lot of Groups, too…this is just going to keep you more organized in the long run). cheers…matt

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm

  14. Thank’s Matt for the advice, I will follow it , delete my old Adwords account then create a new one.Have a great Holiday! I will keep you posted!

    Posted by: Nathalie Veilleux
    December 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

  15. Hi there Matt, I just came across the arbitrage conspiracy IM opportunity a few days ago and am very excited! I noticed the sign up/registration just closed (as of 12 pm PST) YESTERDAY! Is it possible that I come on board still? Please advise. Kind Regards, Nikki.

    Posted by: Nikki D
    January 7th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

  16. Nikki,
    Sorry it is currently closed but keep posted for any last minute re- openings. cheers…matt

    Posted by: Matt Bredel
    January 7th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

  17. Matt, why don’t you come up with a similar course as Arbitrage Conspiracy, as you have most of that expertise yourself (maybe better). It’d be useful for newbies like us who missed out the Conspiracy Course.

    Posted by: Ojus Kishore
    January 12th, 2009 at 11:12 am

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