One of the hardest things in online marketing is probably to get your online business of the ground and let it run on autopilot.<\/p>\n
Although I’ve done it before, it is still a big challenge for me whenever I start a new website.<\/p>\n
Today, I’m going to show you how a new website put a simple twist to an old concept and achieve extraordinary results in less than 3 months.<\/p>\n
The website that I’m talking about is Qassia.com.<\/p>\n
Qassia is a new website started in January 2008. But today, it ranks 4,762 in Alexa ranking and has more than 4000 webpages listed in Google.<\/p>\n
So what is Qassia?<\/p>\n
Why are people crazy about it?<\/p>\n
More importantly, what are the marketing mechanisms that are making people crazy about it?<\/p>\n
Let’s see……<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n If I were to break down Qassia into its simplest form, Qassia is nothing more than a combination of an article directory and a link directory. (For newbies, some examples of article directories are ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com, and some examples of link directories are DMOZ and Yahoo!Directory.)<\/p>\n If you were to start another article directory or link directory, chances are you are going to fail because the idea is no longer novel and there are thousands of them out there.<\/p>\n Think about this: If you were to start an article directory, how are you going to find thousands of people to submit articles to your directory, especially when you are just starting.<\/p>\n But Qassia has done it. Qassia is hardly 3 months old, yet thousands of people are happily sending their unique articles to Qassia and eagerly promoting it to other online marketers.<\/p>\n The secret lies in its credit system. <\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n Qassia positions itself as a free link directory that gives you unlimited one-way backlinks to your website for free. Why do webmasters like one-way backlinks? Well, backlinks are good for two reasons: 1) for direct traffic, and 2) for better search engine ranking.<\/p>\n The catch is in order to achieve better ranking for your backlinks, you will have to earn credits.<\/p>\n The more credits you earn, the higher your website ranks in their link directory, which translates to more web traffic to you (both direct traffic and search engine traffic).<\/p>\n See the twist in the system? That’s why people are working hard to submit articles to Qassia.<\/p>\n Similar to all other successful websites, Qassia also has a referral system. It’s the same old story. The more referrals you have, the more credits you earn and the higher your website ranks.<\/p>\n Does this concept work?<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n Check out its Alexa ranking. It’s moving up superbly fast. This means the website is receiving lots of traffic.<\/p>\n If you do a search on Google.com by typing in site:www.qassia.com, you can see that it already has more than 4000 pages ranked in the search engines. Most of these are articles submitted by its members.<\/p>\n Whether this system is sustainable or not is too early to conclude. But it is set for a great start and I believe there is a great deal we can learn from this website, especially its marketing strategies.<\/p>\n This website is currently in closed beta and everything is kept secret to the public (I’m not sure if it’s another well-planned marketing strategy). There is no way you can signup Qassia unless you are referred by an existing member.<\/p>\n