Link Back only?

I don’t profess to be anything other than a complete novice when it comes to this whole advertising malarky. Historically I’ve relied almost entirely upon word of mouth to put groups together. So this may be a rather daft question but I’m going to ask it anyway.


Why do some people opt to have advertising forums that only allow ‘link backs’ and not ‘first time’ adverts? Does it really make that much different? What do you achieve with such things?

 

I've not run into it myself, but it might be that they want to control where their advertisements get to and don't want to play host to bunches of adverts from places they don't think they're like the recruits from. It's the only potential logic for it I can think of right now...

 

When I had an ad board, my solution was to use a robot to pull their ads from an RPG directory and post their ad on my ad forum, then I (manually) posted a linkback that had included a link to the ad on my site so they could see it was a real linkback. If you found their ad, you could do this manually by posting a copy of their ad on your ad board, then posting in their linkback forum.

Alternatively, you could just avoid bothering with their site and move on to the next one.

As for me, I recently deleted my ad board. I don't think it did my site any good to exchange ads with other RP sites. We've got to bring in new people from outside the RP community, not feed on each other's boards like cannibals.

 

I absolutely agree with this. I've just been trying to figure out the best way to bring in fresh blood. I want to make posters and fliers, but I hesitate to do so until my site is at least a little more mobile friendly. I'm working on a compromise on that front right now, because I don't know enough to do it from scratch in the near future.

 

I've been tempted to do this myself. It just seems like everyone just goes round in circles posting ads. But I'm not convinced that any players really make much use of it. I think affiliates are great. Like minded groups linking together, but then we have very few and are pretty picky about who we link with. Some boards seem to have hundreds.

Fresh blood is exactly what we need. I'm just not sure what the best way to draw that fresh blood in is!

 

My thought is to post flyers in game stores, comic shops, and conventions. My hold off currently is Nova isn't very mobile friendly yet (Nova next says it'll fix this, but there's no target release date), so I'm trying to improve this before I create my flyers. I also thought that writing classes at community colleges might not be a bad place to advertise.

 

Honestly, I think some people just don't want to do site-to-site adverts but still want to ensure they have a chance at pulling in some members from it. I don't actively link to other sites unless I feel like it (it's a very nice, calming, and repetitive task which I find helps me calm down or if I'm unmotivated) and primarily link back.

 

I no longer do site-to-site advertising. Instead, I focus on directories and communities (like this one) to get the word out. Discord advertising directories are also a great place to find people who are interested because all it takes is one click of the button to join the Discord, and the link is always provided in the same post.

 

For my site, there's a few reasons.

- Some sites advertise like crazy and will post once a week on your site even if you haven't linked back. Especially if their ad moves to the second page. But if I link back to them two or three times, they would have an issue with that.
- I wasn't doing the link backs often enough to keep up. I would log on to catch up on them and it would take me an hour plus. I want to write not spend my online time c/ping my ad and doing the captchas.
- Proboards ignoring your 'no proboards rules' (we're a 3/3/3 jcink site) and posting anyway.
- Hosts that I am unfamiliar with their posting format, posting. I'm not figuring out how to adjust my ad to post back on your site.
- I would rather advertise with similar sites, I know a lot of people look for side sites and tend stick to the same genre.
- Overall, I really just prefer directories or resource sites. I do site to site posting once in awhile. Sometimes it helps, other times it doesn't.

Even with being a link back only site, people still do first posts though. I'm a bit petty and do delete their ads. It's the principle for me, lol.