George Files

Let’s recap.  We have our niche on the lower level, and created a middle tier just before we get to our authority site.  We are working with Wordpress as our platform of choice to write our contents.  To monetize, we’re using eBay Partner Network to create our niche site.

Well and good.  The previous articles focused on our own network.  This time around, let’s create an activity hub.  For a start, a little bit of history.

During the early days of internet, we use single document page that are written much like a word processing document, interlink together by what is called ‘hyperlinks’.  Then came the database driven pages.  What it means is that web content that is displayed on the browsers are taken from stored data that is on the database server.

Previously, pages that are created for the web are being written by so called web designers.  The second wave of internet paved the way for users to create their own content and use readily available snippet of codes to create a more user generated content to the user delight.  And this platform is what Friendster, MySpace, etc is all about.

This 2nd generation of web is called Web 2.0.  It allows the control of creating contents to any user without having to worry about what the backend platform is all about.  All you need is to subscribe to the site, create a profile, make your page pretty, become part of the internet community, discuss anything that you can write about and network with other people in the world with the same like and dislike that you have.

Web 2.0 brought internet to the finger tips of anyone.  This fame did not come without fault.  Some unscrupulous people have use this medium to exploit the naiveness of some users, specially on MySpace.  Privacy was not a big issue then, and you could almost learn and chat with anyone on the network.

What does have to do with our network?  This activity is going to aid our sites to allow traffic from this activity hub to our niche sites, or mid-tier sites.  There is an underlying psychology in Web 2.0 and that is ‘Relationship Building’.  This is where Web 2.0 is described as a medium to establish relationship in the internet, which is know in the internet world as Social Networking.  The medium of interaction is generally known as Social Media.  Social Media sites are the web sites where you could network with one another.  Social networking is the activity that you do on these sites.

Now that we have a fundamental understanding of Web 2.0/Social Networking/Social Media, we will tackle the different Social Media (SM) types.

We’ll take a break right here.  The discussion of SM types will take a couple page by itself.  We’ll reserve it for the next post.

George Manlangit

I will continue on with the discussion on Niche Sites.  Although, we started out with our discussion on eBay niche sites, bear in mind that you don’t necessarily need to create eBay sites.  The only reason I decided to discuss or use eBay is because of its popularity.  You could use whatever content sites that you wish to use.

As we progress with our discussion on the Structure, it can be overwhelming to some new comers in the internet world.  Just digest the information that you get as much as you can and I’ll try to keep it simple.

The rationale behind creating a network site is to be able to create the maximum number of links to the major site of the network.  The end result = traffic.

Let’s say you want to create a sports network.  Judging from the outcome of the Olympics, sports is a huge market.  So therefore, creating a Major site that discusses all about sports will compete with gazillion of similar sites on the internet. 

So what do we do?  We create a site for basketball, baseball, hockey, football, soccer, etc.  The goal is to create as much content on these sites that will link up to the Major site.  As you provide content, the search bots will be crawling these niche sites leading up to your Major site.  Although you may only have a single link on the footer of these sites, it is enough to allow the search engines to create a grade on their database as your contents grow. 

Now, you could create additional tiers upward.  In the above example, you may designate summer-sports-site and winter-sports-site.  Above these sites is your Major site.  Below these sites are your niche sites.

You can cross promote or link the niche sites up to the middle sites but DO NOT let the middle site link down to the niche sites.  If you work on this structure, the end result is that your Major site would become what search engine specialists calls ‘Authority Site’. 

Authority Sites become your money sites.  If structured diligently and carefully, with the proper content, your authority site would create tremendous amount of traffic that you could use to promote other websites.  This is how the major players are using this network scheme.

As your niche sites are updated with content and as I said on my previous post, (we would be using Wordpress), the niche sites will be constantly pinging the ping servers, sitemaps generated which will in turn signal the search engines that there are new contents, and consequently traversed to your authority sites to provide more link juice.  Also, you will also have to make sure that you are also providing necessary content to your authority sites.

We have only discussed linking from within our own networks.  We have not even tackled the latest mode of interaction that is so popular nowadays – Social Media.  That’s another story.

To your success,

George Manlangit

P.S.  I know I have been late in continuing this series, but lately, I have regained back my focus and have decided to concentrate on my own networks that I am discussing.  I have some sites that I will be promoting but mainly it will be internet marketing related.  I’ll keep you posted.