Link building/increase feed count campaigns – How good are they?

Do you see all those link give away campaigns happening around?

“Subscribe to my feed, I link to you” – “Comment on my post, I link to you” – “Subscribe to me, I give 100 bucks” goes the hype.

Now that he page rank thing is abused, and carries less weight, bloggers are focused on the feed count.

What’s the catch? Clearly, the owner wants to increase his subscriber list and is trying all that he can to pull you in. Fair enough.

But, does it work all the time? Is it a sure shot strategy to win you readers? Can everyone copy the same strategy?

Well, yes and no.
Yes because everyone who wants to increase their reader base or get more traffic can copy it. It does not require any investment or any particular wealth. All you need is a well planned strategy and an attractive “reward” for participants.

Many a times, it’s a linkback or cash. Some bloggers prefer cash while some prefer linkbacks. I think linkbacks works best for grabbing new and young bloggers while cash works for established ones.

No – because the campaign is just a number focused game.

True that you get to increase your reader base (in numbers), but apart from the numbers does it give you real value and quality?

Are these readers likely to read your articles and comment on them regularly? Yes they are. But hey, they would do it even if you didn’t offer them a backlink or money. 

Ethics – Another concerning factor is the blogging ethics part. Running a campaign is not really unethical but sometimes Google thinks that they are. Remember what happened to John Chow, running the “Review me-I link you” campaign..it got a backlash from Google. And anybody who links to John now are likely to be counted as bad neighborhood now. So these campaigns carry a risk of penalty from Google, since they are counted as “artificial methods to get backlinks”. An increasing feed count campaign may not be treated as one, but yes there is some amount of risk as the links are involved.

Bottom line – Loyal readers subscribe to your blog willingly. You don’t have to offer them anything to. The reader base you collect offering a reward is probably second quality. They are not your loyal readers.

Mohsin from Bloggingbits inspired me to write this post. He’s running a “Link giveaway” scheme at his blog, where if you subscribe to his RSS feed, he’s rewarding you with a linkback. Young bloggers who are looking for linkbacks, can try your luck there.