Review: Lifetips.com - Organic search entry pages on steroids. And more.

Lifetips comprises thousands of pages which are written by 'gurus' in hundreds of different subject areas. (Lifetips attracts about 2 million visitors a month.) Become a Lifetips Guru in your own subject area, and use your Lifetips site to refer large volumes of qualified traffic to your existing, revenue-generating site.

I have known about Lifetips for a few years. Go back a couple of years and you'd find hundreds of different 'subject gurus' delivering useful tips in their various areas of expertise.

Recently, the business model has changed.

If you want to become a Lifetips guru, you'll now stand a better chance of being accepted if you also have an existing site that generates its own revenues.

With package prices now starting at $3,599, this is no longer a service for the little guys - it's a heavy-weight tool for companies that want to generate substantial additional sales.

To explain, let me use the example of a site I have a stake in: Coffeeandteawarehouse.com.

Naturally, I want to drive more qualified traffic to the site. I want people to buy coffee. So I applied and was accepted as the Lifetips Coffee Guru.

First, I had to write between 50 and 100 tips about finding, buying and brewing coffee. I created ten categories and wrote the tips. The top ten tips then appear on the coffee tips 'homepage'.

Organic search

I also had to write a page title, description and keywords for every tip. Then the same for every category. And the same for the homepage.

In other words, every single tip and page is optimized for organic search.

(Also, a link to the coffeeandteawarehouse.com site is included at the end of every tip.)

So what's the big deal? One of the biggest deals is that Google visits the Lifetips site every couple of days. Which means your new site and all the tips will be indexed within a day or two of going live. (Lifetips.com is listed at about 19,000 on Alexa.)

For my pages, the largest volume of Google traffic doesn't go to my Coffee Lifetips homepage, but to a category page all about how to make a great espresso, cappuccino, caffe latte etc. I guess I got the key words just right on that page.

The key here is that Lifetips is comprised of thousands of highly optimized pages.

Thousands of people entering coffee-related phrases at Google end up on my Lifetips pages and a good number of them then click through to Coffeeandteawarehouse.com.

Organic promotion

Traffic to my tips pages doesn't arrive just through the search engines. It also arrives through people simply finding the 'coffee' listing on the Lifetips homepage directory.

Someone may come to the site looking for gourmet chocolates, and then click on my page simply because they like good coffee too.

So the site also offers all the benefits of a well-crafted directory site.

There is also a newsletter tool. Visitors to your pages can sign up, and then you can send a weekly newsletter, including both a tip and promotion for your revenue-generating site.

Pay per click

You pay to have a Lifetips site, with the various packages starting at USD$3,599 a year.

Here's how it works. As I'm selling coffee, I looked at the other guru sites and found 20 of them that related in some way to what I am selling. Like the Chocolate, Gourmet Food and Grocery sites. I then placed a banner ad and a text ad on those sites. I also placed text ads in their respective newsletters.

In other words, I am targeting my ad spending (all free so far) on related Lifetips sites only.

Each ad clicked takes the reader to the Coffeeandteawarehouse.com site.

The admin tools then allow you to track your clicks and see which related guru sites are converting the most traffic. For about a week I was trying a large number of different sites for my ad placement, until I settled on a group of 20 that offered the best conversion rates. You can also adjust the cost per click to increase the exposure of your ad on the best-performing sites.

In conclusion

If you have a site that generates sales and you want more traffic, here are three things being a Lifetips Guru can do for you.

1. You get to create dozens or even hundreds of highly optimized 'entry pages' that attract organic search engine traffic and generate referrals to your revenue-generating site.

2. You are given a substantial sum in complementary PPC ad exposures.

3. You get to position yourself as a trusted expert in your field.

Ask me...

If you have any questions, email me and I'll be happy to tell you more about my success with Lifetips.

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