Money for Nothing and Your Clicks for Free

Terrible post title, I know, but recently I have been asked many times over about the general theme of where do I find high quality free easy to get links. But when you are brand new to a network you can't add up all those pieces and expect it to work. Here's why If I know unique and innovative ways to pollute the web for personal profit why would I share them for free with someone who does not have any passion for what they are doing and wants me to value my time at $0 to help them make money?

To be fair, some of the people who asked me were also paying customers, but the reasons I don't push the get as much as you can free without thinking angle are:

• if you are doing the work for a client and your client has no marketing budget and/or values your time at next to nothing then they are a client worth firing. if they want marketing to be free they should do it on their own dime and time.

• I think to be good at profiting from algorithmic holes you have to have an analytical mind that is good on picking up on patterns. If you can't identify the obvious algorithmic holes by looking through the search results or looking at this then I am not certain what I can tell you that would help you.
• as time passes more and more of the easy money market is getting chewed up by vertical integration
• most sites that are marketed in that "all I can get for free that is easy" manner are low quality sites
• many people market sites in that manner and leave obvious trails of where they have been
• search engines probably notice some of those patterns ;) ... you are the company you keep. Sometimes less is more.
• it may take a year or more to rank if your market is competitive. it may never be attainable if you are not focused on trying to create value
• it never builds any tangible value. you don't catch and pass the competition just by following them.
• if you do well and your work is easy to replicate then many others likely will.
• if your work is easy to replicate a program will probably replicate it thousands of times over, so in essence you are valuing your own time as being worth less than that of an automated software program. is that any way to live?

You can't do well long term just going after the holes unless you know how to spot them and predict them and quickly capitalize on them yourself.

Switching Costs:
While the only 1 click away theory is a nice theory there are real switching costs to changing web services. the same can be said of finding new people / channels worth regularly reading or linking at.

Finding / Creating Unique Content:
If you are trying to build from scratch you need to be conceptually unique, not just textually unique.

If you take the time to look outside the typical sources that most people in your vertical scour over then there is a ton of low hanging fruit for creating / recycling / inspiring ideas

There’s something exciting about coming to musicians when they’re just names, when you’ve no idea who Derrick Harriott looks like, or what his reputation is - considered naff by real dub fans, maybe ? Derivative ? Or maybe ground-breaking ? I know the Stooges were ground-breaking - maybe that’s what has been putting me off. The weight of knowing already how good it’s meant to be. With this compilation, I’ve just ploughed through all these faceless names, liking things I probably shouldn’t (covers of soul songs! Spanish guitar solos!) and maybe finding nothing I like by the supposed classics

Sites like Del.icio.us, Digg and Techmeme surely have a techy slant to them, but they surface ideas that interest people daily. Sure some of them will be spam, hype2.0, or garbage, but occasionally some of them will be interesting, and give you ideas of how you can related your site to the link rich populous. Even casinos are doing a good job of it.