Internet Dating Affiliates

FriendFinder Updates It's Affiliate Agreement

FF -- Dec 21 -- Here's a copy of AdultFriendFinder's affiliate agreement for 12/22/07, and here's a copy of AdultFriendFinder's affiliate agreement from 9/13/06. There's a considerable addition courtesy of their settlement of charges from the FTC. Here it is verbatim...

You may NOT link to, display or by any other method utilize any photos, videos or any other information pertaining to any of our member(s) on your site. You are strictly prohibited from using any spyware or sexually explicit ads or promotions to advertise our sites, goods, and services. You agree that you have received, read, and agree to comply with the FTC-Various Order signed by the FTC on December 5th 2007 and understand and agree that engaging in acts or practices prohibited by the above FTC-Various Order will result in your immediate termination from any of Various Incorporated's affiliate or other marketing programs and a forfeiture of all monies received or owed. You agree to fully cooperate with our compliance in the FTC-Various Order. You agree to immediately notify us of any complaints you learn of regarding alleged sexually explicit ads for our sites, goods, and services using our online complaint form located in the footer of every page.
You agree to fully cooperate in any investigation we choose to perform for compliance under the above FTC-Various Order or to determine any violations of our Affiliate Program Agreement, including but not limited to, retaining for 8 years and immediately providing to us on our demand with any copies of historical web pages/URLs or online ads that contain(ed) on such web pages/URLs or online ads sexually explicit advertisements or promotions of our sites, goods, and services.

TRUE Live On CX Interactive

FF -- Dec 20 -- TRUE canceled their Commission Junction affiliate program and relationship and I just got a heads up that they have started up with CX Interactive. They canceled with CJ because, they said, they had an unacceptably high level of fraud. CX have just run their first couple of million impressions with TRUE.  They're running all standard ad units. CX seems keen to ad more dating offers from other providers.

Friend Finder's Letter To Affiliates

ANDREW CONRU -- Dec 13 --  Penthouse acquired Various, which includes Adult FriendFinder, FriendFinder, Cams.com, Streamray and Medley.com. Various will continue to run independently from Penthouse, so all  linking codes, advertising tools, and all sites will continue to be operational. Checks will continue to come from Medley, and all contact information will remain the same. READ THE FULL LETTER

Are Affiliates Stealing From The Cookie Jar?

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD -- Dec 13 -- Internet publishers, affiliate networks and e-commerce sites are caught up in the deceptive activity, called "cookie hijacking". Zango struck a $3 million settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission for installing its Trojan ad software on computers 70 million times. Once the Trojan software, called adware, is active on a computer it "contextually" tracks the content a user is viewing and serves "pop-up" advertising which overrides any other content. Adware also allows online operators to manipulate the cookies of others with their own and then claim the commissions. Commission Monster has been criticized for harboring affiliates which have been manipulating cookie trails. Similar claims in the US led to a class action against the US affiliate network, ValueClick. FULL ARTICLE @ ADOTAS

PubCon Live-Blog - Organic Keyword Research and Selection

FF -- Dec 6 -- Developing keyword lists is a mission critical step for organic search engine optimization. This panel reviewed how to mine keywords, research keywords, expand keywords, and refine keywords.

- Look at popularity, click-thru rate, quality (conversion rate), competitiveness, current ranking, track organic conversion, Trellian, WordTracker, Keyword Discovery
- Use Competitive Intelligence tools - Hitwise, Trellian, KeyCompete
- Purchase "broad" and exact keywords

Competitiveness
- Use SEO Quake plug-in, Yahoo backlinks via Site Explorer

- Run a ranking report for all keywords you use, if you have multiple domains, run ranking report with "your domain" - "keyword,www.yourdomain.com"

- URL to register for new Microsoft Excel plug-in. This new adCenter tool helps optimize keywords to improve advertiser campaign ROI.

Search API's - "Application programming interface" - suggests keywords in same topic, search rankings by keywords, you can get list of keywords found on your site.
- Yahoo Web Search API
- Windows Life Search API

Keyword Rank Tracking: Advanced Web Ranking XML Reports - cheap, reliable, easy to manage for small jobs, pulls keyword data via API's, downside - bad for automating large and numerous projects with multiple keywords group.
Yahoo Term Extraction API
WordsFinder.com Keyword extractor API

PubCon Live-Blog - Effective Affiliate Strategies

FF - Dec 6 -

Affiliate programs must offer
- Pixel Tracking
- Pay on Re-order
- Control your exit traffic
- Ability to optimize the site

Affiliate marketing strategy
- Build information and Comparison Sites
- Info about a particular product or service
- Compare 3 different products, rate them
- Create your personal testimonial site

Test your marketing campaign
- Test everything - keywords, languages, landing pages, headlines, PPC search engines

Sign up for multiple Affiliate programs

PubCon Live-Blog - Video Search Engine Listings & Optimization

Crawler based VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) - make sure your video has target keywords, title, description, clip info. Don't use Flash video. Upload your video in mov, avi, wmv, (mySpace AOL, Youtube) TubeMogul.com - allows you to upload one video to 12 engines - one upload, free service.

- Use metadata with all files you produce, include channel info, links to your channel.
- Add unique brand tags to control related videos, keep them on your content.
- Add other peoples unique tags to in-drivers.
- Make video replies - reply to most viewed videos
- Frame counter - create a frame count video, upload, check thumbs, use FFMPEG to change just 1 keyframe
- Create buzz - digg, get timely videos up fast, provocative thumbnails, humor
- Get a signed release form for anyone in your video

Video may make you $0 but they add a sign of quality to your site and helps build your brand.

PubCon Live-Blog - List Of Top Video Search Engines

Yahoo's Video Search Engine - http://video.search.yahoo.com

EveryZing.com - Provides site search and navigation applications for multimedia content
Publish search engine optimized multimedia content pages
Make content discoverable on EveryZing.com

Truveo - Owned by AOL. Truveo currently powers video search for AOL, Microsoft, CNET's Search.com, Brightcove, Qwest, Kosmix, CSTV, Infospace, Excite.

Blinkx - New product: Broadband TV

Microsoft Video Search - Services: MSN Video, Life Search, Windows Live Mobile, Zune device, Microsoft TV,..

PubCon Live-Blog - Design Your Site For SEO

Mark Jackson, CEO of VIZION Interactive

• Research which words matter to your TARGET audience, talk to them
• Find out how often those words are searched, use WordTracker, Keyword Discovery
• Do a competitive analysis (Know who you are)
• Don't target the most competitive keywords

Avoid images or javaScripts, and allow space for content. Use images reasonably and include "alt" and "title" tags. Static URL are preferred, so avoid ?,=,& in URL strings.  Use opportunities for internal linking. Add a blog

Lyndsay Walker, WesJet/Lyndseo

- Avoid Flash - use HTML, JavaScript, StyleSheets (CSS)
- Images vs.Text - pull off images you don't need
- Use your stats - take a look what browsers your audience is using, where are they going from your site
- Design for browsers - test and design everything in Firefox (tweak for Internet Explorer)
- Landing pages are the key - focus on ranking of landing pages

Must have: Title tag (unique on every page), description tag, header tags, strong code-to-content ratio, external JavaScript and CSS, DIVs vs Tables.


Paul Bruemmer, Red Door Interactive

Organic site structure

1. Server configuration: Include robots.txt, redirect codes, 404 error pages, internal broken links, canonical duplicate content, dedicated IP address, Alias URLs

2. Website Architecture: Pay attention to your inclusion ratio, directory structure and naming conventions, internal linking structure, dynamic and persistent URLs, site map, and have a privacy statement

3. Content Generation: Take a look at your competition. Offer video, images, user generated content, press releases, industry news, white papers, blog posts, product reviews, statistics, tutorials. Promote your content (blogs, forums,..)

PubCon Live-Blog - Domain Names & Trademark Issues

Clarke Walton, Walton Law Firm

Domain Name Law - Be aware of UDRP and ACPA. 

UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) has a binding arbitration procedure with less formal rules and no hearings.

Benefits: Fast (decision in 30-60 days). Works against international registrants, and has fixed costs (filing fee is under $1500, Attorney fees $2500)
Downside: The only remedy is transfer of the domain name. You can't recover damages or attorney fees.

ACPA (Anti-cybersquatting consumer protect act) is based in federal court, has very formal rules about procedure and evidence and live court hearings are common.

Benefits: You can get get domain names transferred, recover damages and court costs, and get emergency relief.
Downside: It's difficult to estimate costs and is a slow process. 3 - 6 months is common, but it can take years.

3 likely outcomes if you file ACPA
    1. Settlement: 80 -90 %
    2. Default Judgment: 10-20%
    3. Verdict at trial: less than 1%

Advice:
* Register your trademark - stay away from trademarks of others, domain privacy services won't protect you - Internet lawyers will track you down
* Check your static files (how people get to your website) and register names with spelling mistakes, register all top level domains: .org; .net;.info; etc.

John Dozier, Dozier Internet Law P.C
- When you buy a domain name with trademark, it doesn't mean you can't use the domain.
- You can't lose the UDRP procedure if you start a business under the name and don't compete with the company. You can protect your domain under "free speech" if you have simply set up a forum about the company. i.e. Gaydarsucks.com.

PubCon Live-Blog - Communities

FF -- How to use Facebook and Open Social Apps, distributed communities.

Lawrence Coburn, Rateitall - Distributed Community
Four pillars of a distributed web strategy
- Widgets - Photobucket, MyBlogLog
- Toolbars/Extensions - Google, StumbleUpon, Adaptive Blue
- Apps: Facebook and Open Social - iLike, RockYou, HotorNot
- API - Yahoo Maps

RockYou has 78 million apps live on Facebook. 95 milion across other networks. 150 million page views a day. They'll add an ad network on their app to make money.

People have a lot of time on their hands on Facebook. It has unmatched user acquisition potential.  Like SEO and PPC, it's another distribution mode. Distribution is not the challenge on Facebook.  Engagement is the challenge.  So they key question is, how do you make your widget more useful.  There's 6,000 apps available on Facebook at this stage.

* Open Social is live on MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn, ning and Orkut amongst others and is the answer to Facebooks platform.
* Facebook lets you keep all the revenue that you develop on you web app on Facebook.

Think about how the social aspects of your site could be plugged into existing networks of people.  Identify your best content an functionality: modularize it and set it free. Buy an initial installs base from RockYou. (Rateitall cost 50c a user to seed.)

- Engage users immediately
- Mimic the look and feel of Facebook to use the trust levels
- Enable self expression
- Make it dynamic
- Expose friend activity.  See what friends are doing.
- Browse the social graph.  ...and their friends of friends.
- Drive communication
- Build Communities (e.g. carve-outs)
- Solve real world tasks

PubCon Live-Blog - Landing Page Optimization

FF - Dec 4 -- Writing a good advertisement is only half the job. This session discussed the process of cleaning up your landing pages to produce more sales. - Irena

Mona Elesseily, Page Zero Media
Do multivariate testing of landing pages headlines and offers

- Use words like "try", "get"
- Test using URL with www vs. URL with no www
- Test using URL with sub domains vs. URL without any sub domains
- Test different landing pages

Free testing tool - www.adcomparator.com
"Mastering Panama Report" available at Page Zero Media for $89.

Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo
Landing Page Best practices:

• Keep it simple - no scrolling, stay on targeted subject matter
• Capture data in a database, not just in an email notification
• Use multivariate testing - test everything on the page (layouts, messaging,..)
• Incorporate your analytics - use analytic tools

Great Resources:
"Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook"
"The Paradox of Choice"
"The Big Red Fez"

PubCon Live-Blog - Email Marketing

FF -- Dr Ralph Wilson is an expert on email marketing.

Why use email? 
It has the highest ROI of any advertising approach. It helps build relationships with customers. You can continue marketing over customer lifetime.

But...take permission seriously. See Seth Godin's Permission Marketing.

- Use double-opt-in. 
- Make sure you have a privacy policy: what you're collecting and what you're going to do to it.
- Offer information in an ezine format. Offer incetives to subscribe and link to your privacy policy. Don't ask for too much info.
- Renting lists cost 4c to 40c a name. Work through a list broker to get the best lists.
- Use Server Side Includes (SSI's).

* Get sign-ups using co-registration through Co-reg complete.
* Beware of commercial co-reg.  Pick your own co-reg partners.
* Keep your list clean. If you get too many bounces, you'll get blocked by ISP's.

Three basic types of email sending methods
Desktop, CGI software, or ASP hosted apps with monthly fees.
ASP is preferred because they handle worldwide deliverability issues.

Deliverability tools
PiperSoftware, ReturnPath.boz, eDelierability.com, DeliveryMonitor (recommended).

ASP's email delivery services are:
Got Campaigner and Campaigner Pro help you track the best customers and segment based on customer behavior.
Constant Contact is the biggest
iContact has a nice interface
Lyris is a great app.
AWeber is popular with direct marketers.

1ShoppingCart handled ad tracking, autoresponders, listerv's and costs $30-$80 a month.

Check out AutoResponse Plus 3 ($197) for autoresponding.
Gammadyne Mailer ($147) connects with many databases and the emails are sent through your ISP.

Formatting Tips
- Text is slightly less subject to get filtered out as spam, and some government and corporations prefer text.  But HTML emails have double or triple click-thrus, and the click-thrus can be tracked. 
- Send it out as multi-part MIME. Don't send bare HTML.
- Watch the graphics and type size if you use HTML. 
- Make sure your type size is large enough for smaller monitors and older eyes.
- Keep the length shorter, tight, focusd and brief.  Unless it's for technical information in which case you can make it longer.

* Personalized subject lines (Dear Andrew) can increase email opening and reading 50%. It helps build relationships with subscribers. Don't over do it.  Just mention name once. 
* Hire a copywriter.

Newsletter frequency
- Send it out regularly.  Quarterly is not often enough.  Monthly is minimum.  Weekly is possibly too much.
- Repurpose the emails by archiving back issues, and syndicating out to other sites.
- Send on Tue/Wed/Thu for B2B. Test for your recipients to see when the highest open rates are.
- Autoresponders send emails out in sequence. They're great for following up with people, and for training.  Use AutoResponse Plus or Aweber.

70-80% of email is now spam.  Spam filters types
1. Keyword triggers - Spamassassin
2. Reported spam - Cloudmark Desktop
3. Challenge-response - SpamArrest
4. Sender Certification - Habeas, Sender Score Certified

Deliverability and reputation
- Reputation with ISP and subscriber
- Use a reputable email service provider
- Unsubscribe your bounces
- Use Multi-part MIME instead of bare HTML
- Minimize graphics
- Avoid spam trigger words (most ISP's don't look at the content as much as the reputation)
- Ask subscribers to whitelist you (e.g. AOL, MSN, Gmail)
- Study delivery reports.  See where you're having problems and try to correct the situation.
- Monitor blacklists to see if you appear on them. Use BlackListMonitor.com, MX Toolbox.  Ask to be removed from blacklists.
- Employ SPF and DomainKeys.  There's a way on your domain to tell ISP to see what emails are authorized to send out emails. 
- Reply to challenge-response emails
- Sign up for the feedback loops available from some of the major ISP's.  ie. AOL will tell you when someone reports your email as being flagged as spamming.
- Reputation service provider.  Use Goodmail, Haveas, Sender Score Certified (ReturnPath).  Puts you on white lists that ISP's check.  But very pricey.
-  Offer text alternative
- Send only relevant/useful/high-value emails.  List fatigue occurs as the the open rates decline as users become disinterested. 
- Control frequency.  Set a frequency and then don't exceed it.
- Try to woo back inactive subscribers.  Special offers.
- Send emails in short spurts
- Keep your send and return address consistent

http://www.wilsonweb.com/speaker/pubcon-lecture.pdf

PubCon Live-Blog - Link Building

Jim Boykin, Webuildpages, Blog JimBoyking.com (Link building blog)

Things that have always worked

• Good content
• Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, Business.com and few "industry related" directories
• Make intelligent comments on related blogs and forums
• Advertise on major industry portals
• Write great linkbait articles, create free tools, widgets, videos
• Analyze high rankings sites backlinks via Tool Analysis

Steps:

1. Check Pagerank, Google Cache and decide if it is a links page you want.
2. Make a list of sites you want links from, then contact them.
3. Contact the owner and request link via email or phone, prove you're a human.
4. Tell them why they should link to your site.

The value of a link - Important factors:

• How relevant is the link?
• How old is the site? Links on older websites have bigger values.
• How many and what kind of back links the website has?
• How trusted is the website?
• How well interlinked with the main site that page is?
• Do other sites link to that exact page you are getting a link on?
• Who else does that page link to?
• Will the links be in the body area?

Greg Hartnett, Best of The Web

Link Building Via Directories - Good Directories:

• Have a history
• Contain great resource,
• Have populated categories,
• Are designed for the users,
• Add lots of sites on their own - not paid submits

What kind of traffic can I expect?

• Minimal comparing to search engines
• More targeted
• Converting

You can list your website multiple times. One site, one listing but you can submit more links (deep links) from your website. The most trusted directories are Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, and Business.com.

How to get into DMOZ?

• Read the guidelines
• Find the most relevant category
• Describe your listing - don't use phrases such as "great discounts" "#1 website"
• Submit and move on or become and editor

Roger Montti, Martinibuster.com (Blog: martinibuster.net)

Alternative Link Building Strategies

• Find blogs that are open to advertising
• Add links on YouTube,  put your URL first in the description
• Buy Websites
• Run a site of the month program
• Offer a newsletter

Good places to find links: Industry Associations , Charity Groups. Concentrate on .org" and .edu.

PubCon Live-Blog - Reputation Management

Cameron Olthuis - Factive Media
What should you monitor?  Industry, Company, People
Where should you monitor? Google & other search engines. Google news. Blogs. Social media sites: YouTube, MySpace, Digg
Key sites? MySpace, youTube, flickr, Delicious, Digg

What can you do?
- Link out to sites that speak favorably about you. 
- If someone said something bad, reach out to them to see if they are willing to change/pull their post/comment.
- Put out fires early so they don't spread?
- Monitor your Google top ten on key search terms.

Andy Beal - Tracking Your Biz Buzz
- Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Management Reputation book due out early 2008.
- To monitor industry-wide, use moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html or Yahoo feeds by industry.
- For mainstream news use news.google.com.
- To track news buzz use Digg.  Or dig deeper with labs.digg.com/bigspy to get an idea of what is popular.
- Technorati is great for blog posts. Google blog search also.
- To track conversations use co.mments.com. 
- To see if others pick up on blog conversations on other blogs use Blogpulse.com/conversation.
- For blog trends use blogpulse.com/trend.
- Del.icio.us/popular is good for tracking bookmarks.
- For searching photos use Flickr alerts.
- Video.google.com is handy for video search across the video sites.
- Tags, use Keotag to browse across Digg, Delicious, Furl, Reddit and subscribe to an RSS feed for a particular keyword.
- Forum posts are tough to track but you can use BoardTracker.com tracks ~25k+ message boards.
- Wikipedia is an important site to monitor.
- For customer reviews, epinions is important to monitor.
- Amazon.com/tag/iphone is handy for tracking tags on new products.
- Use Google.com/trends for trend tracking.
- Don't like RSS?  Use Google.com/alerts for email alerts.
- For tracking page changes use Copernic for $50.
- Pipes.yahoo.com also does tracking and forms an RSS update. 

For crisis management online i.e. dealing with comments on forums and blogs.  Move it off web, into phone conversations.  Its tough to defend a position online. Reach out to the community manager also. Hold out an olive branch.

The Rip-Off Report is in business to make money off negativity. If you have a negative item up there, consider spending $10k+ with them. They might put a no-index on the page or change the URL of the negative item.   

Here's ten ways to fix your Google reputation.

Geoff Livingston - Managing Your Brand (Mop Up Work)
You can't control negative comments, particularly if you're in the consumer business.  Prince can't, neither can you.  Old techniques are losing strength.  Enter the new era of PR (WOMM).  Dell has a 23% negative comment ratio now.  Before is wa 49%.  George Allen Introduces 'Macaca'

- Squidoo helped get The Buzz Bin to the top posting. 
- Monitor your activities.  Use Radian6, Buzzlogic and Cymfony.

Crisis PR: Monitor the web ad media 24/7. Give up control of the message, but know you can respond. Timely responses can quell the storm.  See popcorn's diacetyl crisis.  The organic alternatives started commenting, identified themselves and wond ground.

- Acknowledge wrongs and the steps taken to correct the problem. Don't repeat errors.
- Publish a co-joining statement.
- If someone is complaining and you can't affect change, acknowledge their remarks.  Make them feel heard.
- Little guys matter, too! 
- Consider the source (trolls will be trolls). Trolls are negative all the time and track people/companies incessantly.  If you click through their web site and see a litany of negativity.  Don't lash out.  Don't go into attack mode.

Don't wait for a crisis before you start responding.

PubCon Live-Blog - Monetizing Social Media Traffic

FF -- Where's the money in social media? - Mark

Vanessa Fox, Ignition Partners
- Make it easy for people to see what your site as to offer.
- Bear in mind that social media visitors don't convert as well as search visitors.

Michael Gray, Wolf-Howl Blog
- Sales should not be your big focus with social traffic.
- Products generally do better than services.  Consumer goods do better than B2B products.
- Impulse purchases do better.
- Low or door buster prices do better, especially on tech items.
- Monitor what people are saying about you and don't ignore it.  Do some damage control.
- Let customers choose mode of delivery of info, email, RSS, web.
- See Diet.com's videos, biggest losers.
- See StyleDash as example social site.  List clothes seen in the media at the lowest costs.
- Use Twitter: see Carnival Cruise and Southwest Air and Jet Blue channels for examples.

Alexander Barbara, ReidBrown - Monetizing Digg Traffic
- The longer an item has been live, the more Diggs it needs to make it onto Digg.  30-40 votes to get a post up in the first couple of hours.
- Be ready to handle the traffic.  Redirect traffic to a Coral cache, or the Google cache.  If you want to use Google cache, post it a week ahead so it can be cached properly.  Make sure to redirect before you get the traffic spike.  If your site goes down, Digg will pull your entry.   With Coral cache, make sure to forward before your server crashes, otherwise Coral will show the crash page. 

- Digg users don't click on ads.  They have extreme ad blindness.  Alex suggests pulling ads, then putting them up after day 3.  - Click throughs work well for the referral traffic.  Wait for the Diggers to come and go, then put the ads up.
- Use the Digg traffic to boost your RSS subscribers and incoming links, rather than trying to push ads to the Diggers.  There's also huge branding value which will effect long term earnings.
- Understand your audience.  Offer plenty of deep links based on what your audience is looking for.

Laura Fitton, Pistachio Consulting - Building Last Value Through Social Media
- Ads are out.  In the future you will be able to make money helping people buy.
- Find communities that are a fit for what you are an expert on. 

Live-Blog Of PubCon Session On Social Marketing

FF -- Irena and I are live-blogging Webmaster World a.k.a Pub Con. - Mark
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Rand Fishkin, Demand Media - 30 places to place live links, in descending order of importance. 
Flickr, DeviantArt, Care2, Dfinitive, Adultswim, Fanpop, Sphinn, Tweako, Mixx, BlogGoogle, CouchSurfing, CoMagz, BallHype, QoolSqool, BuzzFlash.net, ChipIn, ScoreGuru, Blogs4God, DNHour, Hugg, Sk-rt, MemeorLame, ShowHype, PhotographyVoter, PixelGroovy, PlugIM, SmallBusinessBrief, Babblz, VideoSift, 23HQ,

20 domains with strong profile rankings.  i.e. for reputation management
Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Wikipedia.org (participate), MyBlogLog (very strong lately),  Technorati (strong for tae pages especially), SlideShare.net (huge rising star), YouTube (make a channel), Amazon (create a profile and rate stuff), DeviantArt, LinkedIn., BookClubs.BarnesandNoble.com, Delicious, Epinions, Yelp, Last.fm, IMDB, Blogger, Tribe.net, StyleHive.

12 site to promote and market your viral content
Fark (pro acct is $25 a month, worthwhile), Slashdot, Yahoo site of the day,  News.YCombinator (Hacker News for web, programmers),  Adobe Showcase, Askmen, CSSBeauty & CSSVault (good to promote your site if you have CSS, Newsvine, Meneame.net, BoingBoing, Techmeme (need to have other bloggers link to you to get mentioned, heavy hitters read this).
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Michael Gray,  Atlas - Thinking Beyond Digg, Reddit
Use Digg, Propellor, Sk-rt, Liferhacker & DIY, Hugg.
Consider the calendar and current events. i.e. Tax time, holidays, news.  Plan stories and customize them to the target site.
Google looks at link churn. Build links built over a longer period.  Join communities for the long haul.  Comment, link to blogs and email them to let them know, cultivate readership.

Top Tips
Use eye catching engaging titles and images above the fold
Don't make pages dead ends, include links
Link to other people
Be topical and time sensitive to trends
Solve problems
Add widgets to your pages and encourage voting
Minimize advertising on landing pages
Everyone loves top ten lists
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Neil Patel, ACS - The Dark Side
1. Pay for votes
2. Join social media rings, i.e. quicksprout,
Join multiple rings, the bigger the better. Don't vote right away so it appears more like natural growth.  Don't vote on everything. Don't abuse the ring.  Don't abuse the ring, only email the good stuff.  Use hxxp instead of http.
3. Use social media apps to vote.  Hire a developer rather than using real people.
Check out blogs: Brentscutoras, Wolf-howl, Techipedia
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Cameron Olthius - Factive Media 
News, useful tools, humorous and/or controversial, and informational items get linked to. The best thing to do when considering a Linkbait piece is do your research. When creating content, keep it simple, create lists and make it scannable, and use videos and pics wherever possible.

Once you have the content, you'll need to seed the content. Use power accounts.  Accounts that already have a good reputation. Think out good titles and descriptons.  Submit to the proper categories with the most appropriate tags on targeted sites.