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How to successfully launch a website with a premium domain and only $100
Posted by k | Posted in Black Hat, SEO | Posted on 22-05-2008
Lyndon Antcliff recently helped a client achieve over 1500 inbound links in under a week with a story designed to grab attention.
The article – 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers – appeared on money.co.uk as part of Lyndon’s linkbaiting campaign, and it was certainly successful.
The story soon appeared around the world. Digg users pumped it up to a total 2452 diggs, driving tons of traffic to the page. Then news outlets started leaping on the story. In Australia News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, and more all publicized the story, driving hundreds of links and thousands of site visitors back. Back in the UK, best selling newspaper The Sun published the story in their pages. News services loved the story of what American teens can get up to. In the states, Fox News aired the story, later spread wide through YouTube.
But the whole article was fake. Now the fun part began. Lyndon couldn’t resist himself and made the classical mistake: gloating. On announcing the hoax on his own website, he created a buzz all over and the discussion is still going on how unethical the move was.
My intention is not to discuss if he was right or wrong, he ruined it all anyway, Matt spoke and so no linkjuice from Google now. The only, most important part of the puzzle was the domain name and no one seems to acknowledge this! Well, almost no-one.
On Sphinn story comments page, scroll down the page and you’ll find this:
[…]checked the originating website and saw it was money.co.uk and went ‘wow, it’s true.’ It’s there. Read the comments. There are close to 150 of them and only about five call it a fake. The rest want to canonize the kid. They discussed whether it was fake and decided it was true. Based on the website.”
Yes, but it was not based on the website, it was a decision based on the domain name! Solely based on the domain name! That finally brings me to the title of this post: how to successfully launch a website with a premium domain and only $100, with just two simple steps:
- 1. Write a funny fake on-topic story and publish it on the premium domain. You can also copy one already posted and give it a twist; TheOnion is a great place to get started looking for cool fake stories.
- 2. Buy some Diggs for the story. Current exchange rate is $1 a Digg. 100 Diggs will win the initial inertia and after that, reaching the homepage is easy. I want promise it would go Fox News or The Sun but, as seen on TV, your chances are very good.
Interesting story. What if someone published a mostly-true linkbait story like this, and rode the wave as it circled the interweb. Then once popularity died down, the author published a follow-up to say it was fake? Even if it wasn’t fake, wouldnt that still be a good method to squeeze more out of a dried up story and get some more links?
This case also shows how sad the ‘traditional media’ are. What the hell are we paying them for, anyway?
Interesting article, surprised the domain name alone had such an impact…
[...] what only a few people have mentioned is the role of of a good domain in all of this. With the right authorotative domain you can get [...]
#1 The decision on the domain name was made because money.co.uk has thousands of articles of trusted content. Not because it’s money.co.uk. The value becomes associated with the domain via content, not because it’s a 5 letter domain.
#2 Buying Diggs rarely works nowadays.
Thanks for your comments.
Mark:
#1: You missed my point. My point was WHY people believed the story to be true. It was mainly due to the high profile domain they saw the story on.
#2: I do buy Diggs on a regular basis and it DOES work. As long as you have a decent story.
nice story … something worth brainstorming
Thanks – I was just wondering, can I use this content on my page, if I provide a backlink to your site?