Oh man! Da Hustler burst out laughing when he checked out the details behind a web startup. Check this out, there is a company that wants you to PAY for links to your website! Now if you’ve been online for a while and you operate a website, you know the importance of having other sites link to yours. It’s good to drive traffic to your site, and it’s good for that Google PR (PageRank) love.
However, instead of earning links the old-fashioned way (producing good content and getting people to visit because of value), some people want to take the easy way out and simply pay to play on the internet. This isn’t unheard of, and sometimes it may make sense, but let me give you the skinny on this site and it’s business model, because I was included in the beta testing last year:
Basically, to get a link, a website has to have a link to your website located somewhere on theirs. If you operate a blog, this will come through as an incoming link, pingback or trackback. These are good because it says that not only are people coming to your website, other people are actually writing about it!
Well 20 links is (was) a collection of blogs that can offer links back to your site. However, there’s one big problem: YOU have to register for the site, upload one of your articles (or short description of an article you wrote), include your own link, then publish it. So it’s basically like you are operating two sites (your own and this one), only you didn’t pay to set it up or register it. Furthermore, you have to do this on EVERY SITE in the 20 links network.
You can see that after a while, this can get REALLY time consuming.
Da Hustler did this for a while and got decent results, but I only want to operate the blogs I own, not explicitly help someone else build up their network. Now these guys are back with basically the same business model, only they want you to pay a MONTHLY FEE to get links to your site! You do ALL the work, and pay them for the privilege! Can’t believe it? Check out this snippet from their FAQ:
Question: Won’t I risk a duplicate content penalty if my article gets published all across the network on umpteen sites?
Answer: No, because it won’t be. Every submitted article is published only once within our network. So, to get 600 links a month you’ll submit 600 unique articles. No duplicate content allowed!
And following that question, here’s the next:
Question: Where will the articles come from?
Answer:You are responsible for creating your own articles. If you don’t have the time, the resources or the inclination to attend to this part of the link building process yourself, we suggest you outsource the task.
WTF?! If this isn’t the biggest load of crap that I’ve seen in a long time, I don’t know what is. Who writes 20 articles a day? I don’t know ANY website – including MSN, Yahoo! and whatever else – that has 20 updates or additions on their page throughout the day at best, maybe 5 or 6, but they are NEWS sites, not blogs). Trust me, writing that much per day will drive away readers, not pull them in. It will seem like a desperate attempt at gaining attention. Oh, and the pricing? Please, if you are drinking or eating something, please remove it from being near your computer, and finish chewing or swallowing before you take a look at this:
20 Links A Day™ Standard Account Subscription • $157 per month (avg. $5.2/day)
20 Links A Day™ Premium Account Subscription • $197 per month (avg. $6.5/day)
So basically for a little less than the price of AN ACTUAL DOMAIN on 1&1 ($6.99), you can get a link to your site. Oh, excuse me, you can get up to 20 links, that is, if you publish 20 articles in a single day. On another website. AND your own website. Copy and paste from yours to theirs 20 times. then do the hokey pokey, and turn yourself around, cause that’s what it’s all about. I’m telling you, they should take this comedy act on the road! Please, for the love of God, do not give away your money to this company. If you must, give to the less fortunate, give to Da Hustler, heck, give some to a Nigerian Prince. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.
**UPDATE: Looks like the owner or someone who works for the site felt compelled to defend themselves below in the comments. Be sure to check out what they said, and then Da Hustler’s rebuttal.
