Why are we building Backlink Cafe
First, let’s describe once again what Backlink Cafe is. It’s a community for monetizing your website content and link building. Link building is not talked about much online and even considered a “black hat” by some. But links are still a core part of ranking in most modern search engines and it certainly still is in Google. Ahrefs, Semrush, Backlinko and other SEO authority sites have articles talking in-depth about how to do it, what to do and not to do and why… Make no mistake, companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on link building efforts: via PR, outreach, paying for links and so forth.
If you ever tried doing link outreach yourself (or if you have a high traffic domain and you’ve been asked to post a guest posts or add a link to an existing article), you certainly know who annoying, painful and even stressful the email back-and-forth is. With Backlink Cafe, we are reducing all this pain to 1 click.
Let’s go into detail and explain what’s happening during guest post or link placement from both perspectives: from the point of view of website owner and then from the outreach (link builder) perspective.
Frustrations from Website Owner perspective
You’ve been working long and hard and finally your domain has a DR of 50+ and by that time, you start getting spammed by cold emails, asking you to mention someone in your blog post, or if you’d be open to post a guest post. Sometimes these outreach emails will even offer money and ask you “how much?”. Some site have strict policies against it, some say “yes” on case by case basis, others say “yes” + have a bunch of specific requirements on how the link can be placed, how much they’d charge and more. And all these cases are a frustrating email back-and-forth with the link builder. You name the price… then ask them to pay upfront (because you’ve tired of chasing payments last time you posted without a pre-payment). Or maybe they paid via PayPal and filed a charge-back… Not fun.
Before I go into explaining how we are solving this, let me explain what the other side of the table is experiencing — the outreach person.
Frustrations from the outreach person (link builder) perspective
So you are promoting your own website, or part of an SEO agency and building links for clients… If you are at an agency, you probably have a massive MailShake / Pitchbox / Buzzstream pipeline and you reaching out to hundreeds / thousands of webmasters. If you are mentions for your own site and taking a personal approach to contacting sites one by one (honestly this worked better for me, slow, but effective). In both scenarios the pain is the same. You spend time finding the webmaster’s email or contact form, then you trying to write a personalized email that would get a response (provided it doesn’t fall into spam) and waiting hours days for a reply. Webmaster then typically replies that we don’t do that, then changes their mind. Then sends a price and several terms… Some sites don’t do updates and fresh content only. Okay, assume you’ve agreed on the format. Some sites often offer a prepayment. Here, the trust is low on both sides. You never know if the site admin will just run away with your money and not publish a link/article. Maybe you can file a charge back… but if you paid with crypto — forget it! It’s stressful. Ah! And then turns out the published or updated article is not getting indexed (you don’t know if it ever will). All in all, it takes a 1.5 weeks on average, to get ONE link placed.
And the cycle repeats… Pain.
How can this be better for both sides?
At its core, the idea is not new. A backlink exchange network. Sellers (website owners) share their rates and look for opportunities. Buyers (link builders, outreach people, website promoters) place orders for the guest posts and articles they want to get published. What we are doing, is taking into account more nuance, adding reputation system and an escrow. And, of course, automating 90% of the process, and letter the website owners just accept or reject each opportunity.
How exactly this works?
I’ve written in the previous articles how it works for website owners, how to install our monetization plugin and how to build backlinks with Backlink Cafe for outreach specialists. I’ve also created an extensive FAQ section where I covered as many questions as possible.