When surfing around the net today I came across a website created by Alex King that I thought was being managed by Barack Obama and his administration as a promotion.
I found the link to the site at alexking.org where it looked very patriotic so I had a strong urge to click to see what it was all about.
If you want to get some really good ideas on how to market a site with very little cost then you should read the rest of this article.
But before I continue maybe you don’t know who Alex King is… Let me quickly explain
Alex King is a Denver based web developer that specializes in the WordPress platform and the creation of plugins such as Twitter tools. He is also the founder of the site Crowd Favorite and has a very popular blog and following of people online.
So What Does The Alex King Website Really Do…
Besides showing you a different quote from Barack Obama each time you re-fresh the page, which is the patriotic part, it then asks you to place one of the many banners on your site which all point back to America09.com.
Again at first glimpse I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with taking part in this and went to copy a banner for my own blog site.
However I Decided To Investigate Further …
As you can see from the screen shot above there is very little on the site and it definitely gave me the impression that it belonged to Barack Obama or at very least some sort of marketing campaign the now US President was involved with during his campaign. It is apparent also that this site went live before Barack Obama became president by the President-Elect statement.
In a nut shell what the website is asking is very simple and straight forward and really hits home for any webmasters that are American patriots.
Then I scrolled further down the page an immediately I realized that something was not right… Especially as it had Alex King with a link to not one but two of the websites he is associated with.
So I did a who is search and found this America09.com
So being an affiliate marketer myself I would have to say that this was a very good idea to capitalize on all the people searching for information about the President Elect Barack Obama. And then adding a banner to their site in support. I am sorry I did not think of it first.
So Is Alex King A Marketing Genius And American Patriot
Well you would have to think so if his intention for doing this is to bring a nation together and also raise money for charity as well. Imagine literally millions of websites hosting a banner showing their support for there country (America). I am not sure if this has even been attempted before but the idea sounds very good to lift the spirits and hopes of millions of people in these very tough times.
And not to forget the actual benefit to the rankings of this website America09.com. Which of course then links back to both sites that are associated with Alex King.
Or Is Alex King Simply Just Trying To Build Page Rank For Free
What is the most important aspect of having an online business is getting links right, and not just any links you want one way links that have a high PR value. How do you get a high PR value for your website, simply by getting as many one way links pointing to your website as you can. And to do that can take hundreds of hours of work and even more in monetary terms.
As you can see with this site it only does two things and only has one page. First it asks you to be a patriot and place a banner on your site which then gives this site America09.com a one way back link for free.
Then if you scroll to the very bottom of the page you will see a PayPal Donate button where you can contribute money to what I initially thought was to help Barack Obama and his campaign. That’s right I am no different to any of you, I didn’t read the text as I had already assumed that it was to help the President and simply clicked the button.
When I clicked on link the email address was paypal[@]alexking.org which is what prompted me to write this article in the first place. Just to be clear the site does state that the money will be used for hosting costs and any additional money will go to an appropriate charity. As you can see above.
My thoughts on this is the very simple fact that the button was placed there for the sole purpose of giving the site some credibility so as people would without thinking grab a banner and place it on their site,not donate money. Saying that I don’t really believe that Alex even thought that anyone would use it.
At the end of the day Alex has constructed a site that is probably today still building one back links and if he is lucky having the site funded by the paypal donate now button. I would have to say that this is so simple that he would have to be a marketing genius by using one of the hottest topics of the year (2009) to build links to a site that virtually had no content at all and for free.
Tell Us What You Think!…
Make sure you go and check out the site America09 for yourself and let us know what you think about this page is it simply Marketing Genius or do you believe that there is some other benefit to this site.
You know, I think people don’t give Obama enough credit. He’s done WAY more for this country than people admit to. Why is it that the certain media groups try to focus on small thins and inflate them way out of purportion whilst the bigger issues Obama “IS” taken care of get swept under the carpet? It’s like the Republicans are paying people off to try and make him look bad. Some kind of personal vendetta maybe? I just don’t get why so many people ignore the good he’s done & only focus on the small potato’s I suppose.
Hi and thanks for posting…
The article is not so much about Obama but how the election and all the hype was used by Alex King to draw in a lot of traffic to his website.
But thanks for your thoughts on this anyway…