Having your blogs listed in the adult blog directories is pretty important to the adult blog publisher. Adult directories provide traffic to your blog. There are other good ways - search engines, link dumps, link trading, etc, but if you want fresh readers (and readers who want to read your blog but have lost the link), then you need to be on the top pages of the directories.
When you first submit your blog to the directories (and if you go to the Adult Webmaster Resources page, you can find a blog submission form for over 15 directories there), it will be on the front page of the directories, with a little yellow star saying "new" next to it - so it really shows up. The result? for a few days (a couple of weeks if you are lucky...) you gets lots of new visitors to your blog and if your entries are good you could well get a few sales out of it (after all, that is your main intention!).
Of course, some adult blog directories won't take your blog. For example, No Splogs only takes hand written blogs, or at least blogs with mainly hand written content. Others, like Silver Adult Blogs and Gold Adult Blogs, want good and excellent content, so a rather amateurish looking blog, however good it is for sales, or how highly ranked it is by Google, if the directory owners think your blog is not good enough for them, they will not accept it. And there are loads of other permutations.
There are many places to search for directories to submit your adult blog to. You can find links to these on most adult webmaster forums, so you are never short of places to submit , and this is quite good if your blog is falling down the listing on your original submission sites.
However, there are drawbacks to this system.
First, every directory you submit to insists that you place a link to them on your blog and in a fairly prominent place. Fair enough. But while you wait to see if your blog has been accepted (and this takes between a couple of days and a couple of months), these directories are getting free advertising. And if you are not diligent (or just too busy to check), you could end up with a whole host of links in your blog sidebar that are doing you no good at all, as your blog either hasn't been accepted or is still waiting....
Under these conditions, a list of links to blog directories can become very long, taking up space where you wish to put other links, banners or pictures, and (some say...) causing you problems because you have too many outbound links on one page (evidently this could lower your page rank in the search engines, although the jury is still out on that one).
And the adult blog publisher needs to have the vast majority of outward links on his/her page going to sponsors or their other blogs/trade links etc. So this long, endless list of adult blog directories can present a real problem. It is not a case of removing a few links either, unless you are absolutely sure that your blog is not listed with particular directories, or this could result in your blog (and your other blogs) being banned by that directory and all other directories in that particular chain. You see, most adult blog directory owners have a number of different directory sites...
Okay, so you keep all those links on your side bar, only removing those you are absolutely sure are not listing you. But then you face the next problem:
Those reciprocal links are there for a purpose. The directory owner wants your readers to visit his/her site(s). This is because their sites are paid for by sponsor links - usually to dating sites or porn sponsors - and they hope that the odd surfer will click on those links and sign up. Therefore, many adult directory owners have set up a rather back-to-front way of listing blogs on their front pages. It doesn't matter how many people click on your blog link on a directory - it will count for nothing in the directory ratings (this doesn't apply to all directories by the way - but to many...). If people reading your blog do not click on a directory link (or two or three...) and go to the directories in question, your blog will fall down the listings and eventually disappear.
Sounds a little unfair? Damn right! Especially when you have some good blogs with high page rankings, that are nevertheless, being hidden on the final page of a directory, or not listed at all. Although, having said that, I can see the reasoning behind it......
So what do you do in these circumstances?
One way is to get family and friends to go to each of your blogs on a regular basis and click on the directory links - a time consuming method at best (and one which my family and friends tend to be a little remiss with...).
The other way? I've yet to work that out.... although I'm looking into this at the moment....
Copyright Zani 2007
