So I have been trying to look around on the net for sources around how to create a successful (even money-bringing) topplist but alas have not found anything. Do you guys know of a good plays to start?
Well, yea the start is difficult and its as hard as with any other kind of website if you dont have the experience.
I must say i always had exteme luck on my choice on topsites. I started a niche topsite on an popular keyword right on time when only a very few had one of these lists.If you happen to have that luck, your start wont be to hard as only a few members gives you good search result, leading to more and more.
If many of these lists exist, like game toplists, you will have a hard time. You need to overcome so many established lists, which might spent months, years to make their position (also suffered on this once)
That aside, a small start is
- submitting to other topsites in that niche (only the popular ones) until you have grown a little, dont want to send them your valueable members do you?
Maybe you gain a few members by this, maybe not. If you do, chances are high that other sites follow. As you properbly know, many webmaster check out their competors, doing the same as them.
- Another good start is link exchanges (based on niche, more valueable)
Emailing web owners is also good, dont waste your time on extremely popular sites on that niche though, chances are almost zero that they will enter a small toplist. Put your focus on the real small sites as a start (going through other toplists helps finding these), on time higher your focus to bigger ones.
- If you have the money advertising.
- Forum signatures with your link, forum posts, blog posts etc etc
Will it bring the site up on google for example? How about the members on my list?
Many Members, especially members (sites) with pagerank will boost your search results big times for keywords you target.
On the other side, the member will gain visitors, Pagerank / better search results
- The rankings member out links are marked with rel=nofollow, meaning that google will not follow that link, therefore not bring the member anything beside visitors. That is, because your topsites pagerank value is divided between allllll the links on that page, giving them almost no valueable meaning anyway.
Instead google can now follow all your other topsite links giving them a higher value, where our eye lies on the stats page, if that page gains Pagerank of 1 or 2 its so more valueable for the member than a follow link on the ranking page. And the stats page is all his
When I (hopefully) have a large amount of visitors - do I treat it as a successful blog when it comes to advertizing and similar?
Partly, in my opinion
on a topsite many visitors and many link clicks is what counts. Pagerank doesnt have high meaning to me
On normal websites, where ppl often sell links/ads the pagerank is often what counts( better Pagerank = higher price, to boost the website from the ad in search results ).
I am one of the less % of site owners who sell ads for visitors, not pagerank. Search engine boosting by links should be made by natural growth (Good website = fans placing your link on various places)
Google also suggest to use rel=nofollow on sold links / advertising. Because you are practically selling your pagerank which is not suggested - ill approve with that statement by now
But its up to whoever run the website to take the risk of selling ads without nofollow to boost the website from the ad in the search results, or not.
But iam entering a big topic here, and could continue forever, so i better stop for now
Hope that helped a little
