Viral Bookmarking – Interview with Colin Klinkert of Viral bookmarking.com

Daniel McGonagle Hi Colin, you run a social bookmarking service called ViralBookmarking.com can you tell me briefly what it does, then later we can go into more detail on certain aspects of it?

Colin Klinkert: Hi Dan, ViralBookmarking.com allows users to get backlinks and social bookmarks for their sites FAST. Search engines give a lot of weight to social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit – We make it simple to get people from unique ips all over the world, bookmarking your content and getting it indexed and ranked

Daniel McGonagle Ok, I’m going to have to give you a hard time about this part here, “social bookmarking links are weighted heavily, ie highly valued” by the search engines? I can see how they can be considered helper links that add variety to overall inbound link profiles for sites, and I know that some search engines value these kinds of links more than say… Google does…. but do you have data or case studies showing just how much value these links have for increasing rankings?

Does social bookmarking work better with Bing, for example as opposed to Google?

Colin Klinkert: My promotions have always been aimed at getting high rankings in Google, the others were a bonus (until Bing took off recently). I have domains that I have tested with other services similar to ViralBookmarking, but with many short comings, which is why I decided to create VB in the first place, out of desire to get my own sites bookmarked.

These test sites have not only been indexed, but based on bookmarks also been ranked quite well! Bookmarking should be of your pillars in a promo campaign, but it is an important one. I have also had an aged site drop off the rankings, and I then ran a bookmarking cpaign and it shot back up. Then there is what Matt Cutts has stated as well that Google is trying to become more of a social search engine – Bookmarking, is when a user decides he/she likes that peice of content and this is a way of letting the search engines know that it is not only the site owner saying it is a good website, but many people the world over

Daniel McGonagle OK, so suffice to say it’s something worth doing not only for adding variety to sites’ inbound link profile which affects overall rankings, but also to boost SERPS to a certain extent, either solely through bookmarking or in conjunction with other methods, and types of links?

In my opinion, social bookmarking IS needed to have a comprehensive and complete inbound profile, but due to the value of it, (in my opinion), it should be automated, or semi-automated at very least?

Daniel McGonagle If you say it’s been effective for you the way you’re doing it, that’s fine by me, as I’ve never done exclusive tests on using just social links alone….

Colin Klinkert: Well, my view is you do need a complete inbound link profile, as you stated. Bookmarking is one of those, and yes in conjunction with other methods, better results and as important faster results are seen in my promos (I have around 100 niche sites at the moment)

Colin Klinkert: Regarding Semi-Automated, yes, but like anything else, time should be put into it. We want to get real people around the world, bookmarking our stuff

Daniel McGonagle Ok, moving on….

Colin Klinkert: The trick is to do it as effectively as possible )

Daniel McGonagle You mentioned unique IP addresses earlier and what you’re referring to here is that the member’s accounts are deemed (by these social sites) as having originated from unique people, ie real accounts, correct? These are real accounts by real users….

Colin Klinkert: correct

Colin Klinkert: including (currently) 25 sites that are do-follow, backlink boosted and all on unique c-class ips that can be bookmarked with the single click of a button

Daniel McGonagle OK, how many accounts can members sign up for to use with this system, and why those places, ie ReddIt, jumptags or whatever?

Daniel McGonagle ok 25 social sites, all Dofollow?

Colin Klinkert: we have 5 main sites that are very trafficked – Such as Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Mr. Wong, FriendFeed and a Twitter module too, plus the 25  do follow sites

Colin Klinkert: So each credit can get you 31 bookmarkings

Daniel McGonagle OK, so there’s a mix of DoFollow and NoFollow with the NoFollow entities in there because they’re valuable for other reasons, ie, highly trafficked?

Colin Klinkert: exactly

Daniel McGonagle OK, what’s the Dofollow/NoFollow ratio by the way?

Colin Klinkert: I would say 27 are Do-Follow and the other 4  are no-follow, I’m counting Twitter in the Do-Follow list, that is an optional module, people might tweet your offer, but no guarantee (we offer them 20 % more credits if they choose to)

Daniel McGonagle OK, so how do members sign up for these sites if they want to create new accounts, are there bots that do auto- registrations and verifications, or do you have a special offer for new members to get these accounts set up for them AND imported into Viralbookmarking, also can they use pre-existing accounts and logins, and if so how does that work, file upload, import, or manual entry?

Colin Klinkert: Currently we provide a service for $25 where we will setup all your accounts & add3 projects… but to setup the logins is fast. You can use current account and for 25  of the sites, you can sign up just by entering in a username you would like, our system does the rest! So it really is only the 5 main sites and if you have logins you jsut enter those usernames in your profile.

Daniel McGonagle OK, I know people hate doing those registrations so that’s a good, necessary feature

Daniel McGonagle You mentioned earlier something about FriendFeed and Twitter syndication-re-syndication can you expand upon that a bit?

Colin Klinkert: when setting up a project, you can add a ‘tweet’ that you would like other users to send. This will include a linkback to your Money Site of course. Then, when users get your project to bookmark (takes about 2 minutes to bookmark a project) they get the option to tweet your message for a 20% credit boost. If they do this, your tweet gets posted in their feed, and is great extra exposure and additional inbound link.

Colin Klinkert: in my case, when i bookmarking with the system and see a tweet related to my niche, I tweet it. I have 27,000 followers so it is not bad extra exposure )

Daniel McGonagle OK, nice glad to see you’re thinking outside of the box and not solely focused on just social bookmarking links, but rather, social media exposure and what not, which is helpful for additional traffic generation, increased SERPs or not… added traffic always helps, right?

Daniel McGonagle So, here’s the questions my readers will wants answers to… How many projects, how many links, how’s it all work from an end user standpoint? It’s semi-automated so what exactly do users/members have to do to use this service effectively?

Daniel McGonagle If there’s videos explaining this OUTSIDE of member’s area, then no need to explain it here but people don’t want to have to watch to watch a video to find out how many backlinks they can generate with this from the get-go….

Colin Klinkert: The join level is Silver and that allows 3 projects at one time. Users can change projects whenever they like. We also then have a gold upgrade that allows 10 projects. This is the cost to enter the site, use the system that has cost use close to $10,000 to build. A closed community of people helping people. To use the system effectively members should bookmark other members sites. When you are watching TV, or doing some other work or have a few minutes to chill. I personally enjoy doing it, you can earn credits quite fast and in turn, other members from all over the world will bookmark for you!

Colin Klinkert: And Dan, for your readers only. I doing something special. Normal cost to join is $17 a month, I’m taking the “1″ off the front and your readers can lock in with your affiliate link only for $7 a month. Even cheaper if they choose the yearly offer )

Daniel McGonagle OK, good we like discounts! ) but I still have questions…

Daniel McGonagle Is this a credits-based system, is there a set amount of links you can get and give, is there a limit or is it basically, the more you/they/us/we do, ie bookmark and tweet, the more we get in return?

Colin Klinkert: Credits based. Credit gets someone else to bookmark your project. As a silver member you earn .8 of a credit when you do a project and as a gold member it is a 1-1 ratio

Colin Klinkert: You have the option of buying credits too, but the system works when users take the time to bookmark for others, as I said, it is a fast, streamlined process, I do it, and also get my VA to do it in between tasks too

Colin Klinkert: Think of it as a Social Bookmarking Exchange on Steroids )

Daniel McGonagle OK, makes sense, now when people use this they’re presented with specific urls to bookmark and tweet inside the member’s area, right? and then they go off and manual bookmark and tweet, so the automated part is basically getting the “favors” returned by other members doing manual tweets and bookmarking?

Colin Klinkert: We make a step by step, you click a button, we take you to the page in a new window, setting the referrer as ‘none’ so that these sites don’t know you are coming from us you click ‘digg’ or whatever, close the window and the next step loads

Colin Klinkert: it is as automated as possible, while still being manual

Colin Klinkert: remember, you bookmark to 25 with 1 click behind the scenes too

Colin Klinkert: so it is 1 click for those 25 , then it is 5  clicks ( for each of the other bookmarking sites) and a tweet, then you are done

Colin Klinkert: you keep doing that till you have earned enough credits

Daniel McGonagle OK, so while manual it’s not a time-suck to do this, it seems

Colin Klinkert: no, its both fast and fun )

Daniel McGonagle One thing I didn’t mention because it might seem self-serving ( to others) is that if you refer people to ViralBookmarking.com and there’s people signing up under your aff link, you also get some free credits for that, along with the affiliate commissions?

Colin Klinkert: Yes, 15% of your personal referrals credits as Silver and % as a gold member )
Colin Klinkert: and referral commissions are higher then that,30 % for Silver and 50% for gold members

Daniel McGonagle Thanks for your time Colin

Colin Klinkert: thanks for the interview

Colin Klinkert: Discount Link

Use Promo Code MEMPROMO_M for discount on monthly membership (save $10/month)

Use Promo Code MEMPROMO_Y for discount on yearly membership