Link Scout
Link Scout is an amazing resource, but there’s so much there it’s hard to understand and use properly.
The basic idea is that when you signup at Link Scout through Marketing Pond, you get a suite of web pages created for you. You get a search engine, an FFA page, a matrix replicator, and an affiliate directory. You can also build a mailing list by allowing signups from any of those pages.
The best part about Link Scout is that you get traffic to your pages without even trying. When someone goes to LinkScout.com, they actually go to a member’s page, selected through rotation. So your pages will get traffic to them without any work on your part.
You’ll even get people signed up under you at Link Scout who found your page by going to LinkScout.com. Free referrals!
Doorways
This is a feature of Link Scout that will make a special page whose sole purpose is to get into search engine rankings of other search engines. It contains a single link that will take visitors to one of your web page. Link Scout will automatically submit your doorway to lots of free directories to give it exposure.
While results aren’t great with this, it’s free so you might as well create a doorway for your Marketing Pond page and submit it to the directories.
Search Engine
You can use points (you get some free to start, and get more as people signup under you) to bid on keywords. This controls the order in which links appear in the search engine. So if you wanted to promote Marketing Pond, you’d bid on keywords like “paid to surf”, “free money”, “make money”, etc. Then, when someone used the Link Scout search engine for one of those keywords, your link would come up in the results.
FFA Page
A Free For All page is an advertising resource where people can leave links to their websites for free. You own this FFA page, so when someone leaves a link, they get an email from you. You can do whatever you want in this email, including try to interest them in Marketing Pond.
Results are not generally good through the FFA page, but every little bit of exposure helps. As the FFA owner, you get to put links into it that are marked PRO and can use a different background color.
Matrix Replicator
This is like a viral traffic exchange. Your opportunity you’re promoting (Marketing Pond) goes into position 1 in this page. The opportunity of the person who recruited you goes into position 2, and so on. You can have more than one opportunity you’re promoting, and they’ll rotate through position 1. When someone joins under you, your opportunity goes into position 2.
This is an opportunity to promote your links to the people who signup under you at Link Scout, and to people just surfing the web.
Affiliate Directory
This is a listing of affiliate programs, with options to signup for the programs. If people you refer don’t enter an affiliate code for a program, then yours will be used. So if you get free referrals through LinkScout.com, and they aren’t part of Marketing Pond, your Marketing Pond affiliate link will be used in their affiliate directory.
Affiliate programs must be approved before they’ll show up in the directory. Approval is very slow, and Marketing Pond is still waiting for approval. So this is only really useful for those programs that are already approved. You can go ahead and add Marketing Pond by selecting it from the programs list, but it won’t show up until it is approved at some time in the future.
Note that when you add Marketing Pond, it will ask you for your referral id. That’s just your Marketing Pond id number. For example, mine is 6365, so that’s what I put in as my referral code.
You can also add the traffic generation programs that are part of Marketing Pond to your affiliate directory on Link Scout, and you may get some non-Marketing Pond referrals to them. That will give you more credits to use to promote Marketing Pond.
Clickbank Products
Link Scout advertises various Clickbank products. In the “My Clickbank Links” section of Link Scout, you can put in your Clickbank ID to get the money for any sales made through your Link Scout pages. You can get a Clickbank ID for free, so it’s worth doing.
First Steps
When you first login to your Link Scout members page, it’ll show a list of steps. The first is to put in your Clickbank ID, while the second is to add your websites. Your websites are what is used as search engine results and in the matrix replicator. You will want to put your Marketing Pond splash page in as one of your websites. If you have other opportunities you’re promoting, put them in as other websites.
Don’t forget to bid on appropriate keywords for your websites so they show up in the search engine results.
There’s also a banner exchange, where your banners will be automatically rotated on other members’ Link Scout suites. Use the banners from Marketing Pond here, but use your Marketing Pond splash page as the destination. Don’t send people directly to the Marketing Pond website.
Don’t be stingy with points! You get quite a few to start with, and you want your pages to show high in the search engine results. So bid high to get the traffic.