You may remember that I was trying to think of a way recently to increase our income so that we could buy a really big ass server (more accurately I wanted to increase our storage from 2TB to 4 or 5TB) and then start to add PS2 and GameCube roms to the database. We discussed increasing the donation amount but most understandably thought this was a step too far. Well, I spent the weekend thinking about how I could raise the money to buy the 2-3 extra TB we need. That's when I had an idea. This idea can work but it will require everyone here that gives a dam to do some hard work.
Here is the idea.
We currently make some money from advertising, its not a huge amount every month but when we add it up over the year it's is better than not having it. In order to increase the amount we get from advertising we need to increase our visitors. In order to increase our visitors we need to improve out Google position for certain key words and key phrases. I spent many hours going over the stats for the site and the server and have concluded that the following four sections would yield the best results with the least amount of work.
1. SNES ROMs (currently position 1 page 2)
2. NES ROMs (currently position 5 page 1) (we were position 1 for a long time but this has recently fell)
3. MAME ROMs (currently position 10 page 5)
4. N64 ROMs (currently position 8 page 3)
If we are able to push any one of these key phrases to the NO1 position in google we will most likely make enough each month to justify the spend. If we can push them all to NO1 spot (no easy feat) we could really make some cash that would change how we grow the site over the next few years.
So what do we need to do?
Well its actually very simple, just time consuming. We need as many backlinks to each respective page from as many different sites, blogs, forums, pages as we can think of. Each link back needs to be carefully worded and correctly linked. That is all there is to it, the problem is however that we need lots and lots of backlinks to move up a position.
So where do you come in?
For the first time ever, I can not achieve this myself, I simply can not make enough backlinks to make a difference. I am only one person and I have used every site/forum/blog that I can already. I need YOUR help, I need YOU to all use your sites/forums/blogs/pages to link back. One advantage you guys all have is that you can join up to new blogs and start adding links there. Everyone of you most likely have different forums and sites to me anyway and this is also good.
If everyone created just 10 new backlinks each we could add 50-60 backlinks in 24 hours. That would have an effect for sure. If we continue to look for and add relevant backlinks we all should be able to make 20+ and that will quickly have an effect.
I am not going to post instructions yet. I wanted to raise this topic of conservation first with all of you and try to get a show of hands from everyone. If you are willing to help, please post below and if possible please also state roughly how many different incoming links you think you could add. Please also remember that if you have already made some backlinks to here (I know a lot of you have) they need to remain in place as they are already helping the figures listed above.
Why would I do this?
This is a request. I ask it because I don't know what else to do to raise the money and I also can not do enough to increase the backlinks on my own. I have to finally admit that I need some help. By doing this you would be helping me more that you can imagine. This is why I have also considered adding a new rank to the system just as a reward to those that hit certain numbers of backlinks. I was thinking of a rank that would show just how well the member has done. I am also considering offering a reward in cash for backlinks. Not a huge amount but we could afford to reward people with $40 for every 10 good solid backlinks. A more fun idea would possibly be to get toc t-shirts or mugs made and give these as an exclusive gift.
These are my ideas and I welcome you all to have your say. Remember to also post if you want to pledge to help.
I await your responses.
