bartering

I’m going to run a little experiment on this site with all of you.  I’m going to trade 15 minutes of social media or SEO consulting time for one link from you (15 minutes can be used however you want).  If you then share this post on twitter/facebook/etc. then you get more free consulting time.  For every EXTRA link you are able to get for this site and for every place you share this you get an extra 5 minutes of consulting.  The more you share the more free consulting you get.  So for example if you link to my homepage and share this post on twitter, facebook, and linkedin; then you just earned yourself 30 minutes of free consulting time (for the 3 minutes it’s going to take you to share this).  I am going to set the max time at an hour but I will reward those who go above and beyond with as  much time as I can.  I’m merely setting a cap to protect myself in case I get 1,000 responses.  Consulting can either take place over the phone (skype)/chat/email, this will be your choice.

Simple enough right?  So here’s what needs to happen.

  • you link to my homepage using the anchor text: “social media consulting” OR “social media consultant” (there are plenty of other anchor texts you can use but let’s keep this simple and stick with these 2)
  • you leave a comment on this post and/or email the link so that I can see it live
  • the link can come from either the body copy of a post or from your blogroll
  • the link can’t be nofollowed
  • if you share this on twitter please use the hashtag #CFAL (consulting for a link)
  • once I verify that the link exists I will contact you to set up a time to chat (make sure I have your contact info!)

You can say something like:

  • Jacob, a “social media consultant,” had an interesting post up today…
  • Jacob is willing to trade “social media consulting” for a link…
  • Is “social media consulting” worth a free link?  Jacob seems to think so…
  • etc.

To make things easier you may even want to link to this post to help explain what I’m doing (but the link that’s counted is the one to the homepage!)

Pretty straight forward right?  I have no idea how many responses I will get but either way it should make for an interesting experiment.  I’m doing this for a few reasons.  First, I want to show the power of social media and SEO and how the two can be used together.  Second, I want to do what I can to help people out who are tight on budgets, instead of charging an hourly rate I figure it’s only fair to exchange  a link.

So now the challenge is to see how many consulting hours I can give away.  Let’s see how you guys can make me work, start sharing and…bring it!

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