Can your Link Be Bought? If so, Earn $5 Here FREE...

Read on if you want to participate in an experiment and win some free money.

The 1st, 10th, 25th, 50th and 100th person to link to this post will receive 5 dollars. You can only win once. I will determine who wins by looking at this technorati link. Link to this post, not to this blog.

If this works, It'll prove the following:
- When money is at stake, people will link.
- It doesn't matter whether your weblog is popular. If you promote it, people will come.
- Every blogger counts when spreading a meme.
- Most bloggers aren't journalists and don't aspire to be. There doesn't need to be a separation between business decisions and editorial decisions. We can handle it all by ourselves, each of us.

When linking, please include the full path you took to get here. For example: Found via Johnny, via Joanny via Chachi.

(If you are not a member of technorati or your blog doesn't get indexed by them, register at technorati now and claim your weblog.)

Comments

[Heath]

I'm not going to participate, but it's an interesting idea. I got here via Blog Business World.

[Scott Allen]

a) Why does Technorati currently say that this post has 4 links from 1 source, and then proceed to show 20 results?!?

b) If someone really pays close attention, and actually wants the $5, this method is counter-productive. If someone goes and checks the list and sees that there are only, say, 10 links, they're going to think, "Hmm... I'm going to wait a little bit so I have a shot at being #25." Everyone does that, and three days after posting this, even with a pretty well-read blog, and you still haven't reached 25 links! Maybe not that many people are really interested, but on the other hand, maybe people really ARE that interested, and are waiting to link until they think they have a good shotat #25.

My point is, the design of this experiment actually slows down the linking process. Good idea, but a major design flaw in the experiment. A better approach would be to give $5 to #1, then someone randomly between #2 and #10, and someone else random between #11 and #25, etc.

Beware what metrics you put in place, because people WILL optimize for the metric.

- Scott -

[Geoff]

Agree with Scott strongly. I came from Steve Rubel Micro Persuasion rss feed

[Peter Caputa]

Very good point. I was thinking that. It is also difficult to tell the order that people linked and which number they are, because technorati lists my posts at links.

And I have noticed that the technorati "there are # posts that link to this link from # of unique weblogs" isn't always accurate. Not sure what is up with that.

As far as people not linking because they are waiting. Do you really think people are doing that for 5 bucks.

Quite a few people have linked to it, because they like the point behind it: that we are challenging the purists that say people shouldn't make money from weblogs.

If it doesn't get to 100, I'll try something new. So far, though, it is the most viral post I've written. And has been pretty fun.

Thanks for your thorough and insightful feedback!

[Oklahoma Wine News]

It was a really good idea for a blog promotion experiment, I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

[jon]

Purist say people should NOT make money from blogs?

Is that part of this "experiment" - two fingers up to the purists?

If so i'm glad i stuck up a link then ;)

Cheers, J

[Peter Caputa]

"two fingers to the purists" = possible next tag line.

[Rental Car Canada]

Its a good idea to earn lots of money..

[rajsamand]

it is a very nice idea to earn money, but when will that day come .

[the head lemur]

i am a little late to the party again....
no I didn't get the memo

[Bob]

http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2004/06/can_your_link_b.html
Ok there is your link posted just like you asked send my five bucks to the
http://www.kristenfoundation.org/
To help find Kristin Smart or many of the other missing and exploited young women.

Oh Yeah my link is http://bobonit.com

[Akhmad]

hi how u doin today?