Sure! If you find a site who metrics - traffic, niche etc - that you like, you can send them a request to write about your site/product in exchange for a fee. The fee is set by the owner of the site.
When you get a request for cross-promotion, you can see the metrics of that site (traffic, niche, age etc). If the metrics aren't to your liking, you can simply decline the cross-promotion request.
Also, it's actually not about exchanging links - in fact, we strongly encourage all users on our platform to nofollow the links. This is about teling your readers "Hey! There's this interesting blog you should check out" - and getting the same in return.
This reminds me of the highly-untargeted spam emails that I get all the time from people asking if they can write blog posts for me. Naturally, they would contain a lot of links to some other site. The idea has definitely been done before. Think PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, etc. Sounds like an excellent way to get yourself deranked by Google.
I've used those sites before. This seems different in that they're not gaming advertising but actually exchanging like-kind content. Google doesn't derank for that.
'highly un-targeted' is the keyword in your comment. With TrafficGun, there's no spamming ppl with unwanted requests. Every user on the platform is amenable to cross-promotion.
As for PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews etc - our focus is primarily on cross-promotions b/w bloggers who vet each other.
Finally, re:Google - We encourage all users on our platform to nofollow all links. TrafficGun isn't about SEO/links. Its about gaining real, live visitors.
Content for the sake of exchanging traffic by means of links. I'm not convinced this is much different (if any different) than what I mentioned. SponsoredReviews focuses on bloggers writing ads for products. Your idea is to have the arrangement be two-way so that both sites write about the other but then you have the issue of all these sites stacking up two-way links which looks like link exchanges. I doubt Google is going to be thrown off by the nofollow links. It's been abused to stop pagerank 'leak' to the point of losing its original meaning. I don't think emphasizing the use of nofollow is going to save anyone from Google realizing sites are putting out farm-style content.
Just created an account and ran into a bug almost immediately.
When I added my GA account it pulled all of the websites under one specific GA account, I'm assuming the one that has somehow been marked as the default. Within GA I have multiple accounts, but they're all under my one google apps account. I'm unable to see (and thus add) any website that's not grouped within this account.
For example, pretend within GA I have the following groupings:
Personal
Work
Customer 1
Customer 2
Each one of these 'sub accounts' within GA contains the websites I've associated with it. With TrafficGun, it only see's the websites under 'Personal' and not Work, Customer 1 or Customer 2.
Ah web-rings! I remember they were quite fun and interesting at first. I'd actually click from one site to the next in a ring to check them all out. Of course that was a time when there were limited numbers of sites for niche topics, and discovering them was a more "word-of-mouth" thing. I was also surfing on a 56k modem.
Not to poo-poo on what seems to be an honest effort with TrafficGun, though. I don't know if the sharing spirit of website owners is the same as it was back then, but it would be nice.
What makes "3a. Cross-Promote" something other than a zero-sum game? Does it presume that most people have more time to devote to reading stuff online?
Does it presume that most people have more time to devote to reading stuff online?
On a niche-by-niche basis, yes. For instance, I keep a list of personal finance blogs that I check out regularly. When one of those blogs features a personal finance site I haven't seen before, I check that out as well and consider adding it to my list.
One of the best ways to grow your blog traffic long-term is getting other bloggers in your niche to write about you. TrafficGun makes this easy.
Yes. If you find a site who metrics - traffic, niche etc - that you like, you can send them a request to write about your site/product in exchange for a fee. The fee is set by the owner of the site.