I am designing full websites and most cant even make $0.07/day and there fully indexed, getting 50 visitors a day mostly. I am guessing I dont rank, I honestly don't see how to get links, are you guys manually submitting to hundreds of these directories? I have emailed alot of webmasters like (500) I get 20 replies back, 5 that actually exchange, my page rank is like 2-3 for the main page. I dont see how people tell me they build one site, "sprinkle it with 500,1k links" and just let it sit, where do these links come from?
It would be helpful to know your URL so that people could look at it and give you feedback. You must rank for some keywords if you are getting 50 unique visitors a day. When emailing webmasters for link exchange you need to be sure that you are emailing relevant/related sites and that your site is of a good quality. Also how you word the email and title it is important, but overall those direct link requests usually have a low return. There are many services on here that will submit your links to website directories for a reasonable fee...most of them use software to speed up the process. Or, you can check the directories solicitation and announcement section and do it manually yourself. Other sources of links are article marketing, forum signatures, blog comments, and best of natural linking. edit: I forgot to mention that you can use digitalpoints keyword position tracker tool to see where you are ranking for your targeted keywords.
Your topics would have a lot to do with it. Do you have topics that have high cost per click keywords?
Getting 50 visitors a day isn't that bad for a new website. What matters isn't how many visitors you got, but whether the number is growing. But you did get something right: getting good links to your site is hard. What you perhaps missed is that it takes good content to get quality links. And it takes being personal and a good salesperson to get people to actually read your 'link exchange'-e-mail. For many niches it makes more sense to just mail people that they might be interested in your site. If they are (and their site is good), the next step may be to exchange a link, but that should not usually be the starting point of the conversation. I get way to many 'would you exchange links with me' e-mails myself - and most are just totally unrelated to my site. Most can be deleted without seeing them. A good e-mail is - unique - has a subject header that tells people why they should read your e-mail in the first place - is targeted to the site in question - explains what about your site is interesting for the person you are e-mailing I don't do many of these myself, but when I do, I do follow these steps. Don't forget the time issue either. I started my site in 1999 (or something) and was oh so proud when I reached the 'hundred people a day' mark. Not sure when it was, but it wasn't within the first 6 months (probably). I'm at roughly 5000 page views a day now. The web is fuller now, more competitive. It takes a while for google to take sites seriously. Don't rely only on google to get your first visitors - that's just not going to get you anywhere fast. These forums are very good for suggestions to get the word out about your site. Oh and do check your grammar before posting...
They are probably buying links! Other than buying links, there are scores of ways to acquire links. Social networking sites, article submissions, posting to blogs that interest you, etc., to name only a few methods of garnering inbound links.