Just recently, I sold one of my websites for a good chunk of change and am looking to take some of that money and reinvest into a new site. The new site I'm working on is an article directory. I don't know if I should spend most of this towards backlinks or what? I know this is kind of an open ended question, but I'd love some advice on how to spend this money wisely. What are the right things to invest in if I'm starting up a site from scratch again?
Backlinks and content. You can get both without money of course, but offering a few incentives will go a long way.
You can get a lot accomplished with $500 if you outsource some tasks. Reciprocal Links: You can get these for around $2-3 a link One Way Links: You can get one way links from good quality high PR sites for around $3-10 a link. Directory Submissions: Look around there are people who offer submitting your site to hundreds of directories for as little as $30-40 Squidoo Lenses: You can outsource the creation of some lenses for around $20 and get more links from Squidoo Forum Posting: Get people to post on forums or Yahoo answers for around $1-2 a post I am sure you can find people on this forum who will do this type of work or go to elance.com or rentacoder.com
Maybe pay for a lot of custom ~350-400 word articles to initially fill your site with? You could probably get around 30 articles.
I would for paid directory submission and purchasing links... for pr, and seo not sure how you could get direct traffic for that kind of site though purchasing unique articles would make for plenty to search for
You can save the money doing the work yourself. If you really wanna spend, spend on SEO and link building. That will help you get organic traffic for long time.
Backlinks sounds like a big winner. Does anyone have a good list of highly reputable directories to sites that are worth submitting to? I know of Aviva and Alive, but what are the others? Also, are their other methods by way of money that I can gain valuable backlinks aside from submitting to directories? Is directory submission the best way for backlinks?
How about offering a contest of some sort to those that bring in the most articles or most backlinks. You can use some of the money to go towards a prize and invest some of the remaining funds into purchasing a few high quality articles and backlinks as well as a PPC campaign once things are up and running.
Buy links , forums signatures, blog posts and insert your directory in lists of directories.PM me to give you a good source of links(not my business)
Marketing is a good way to spend it. Back links sounds like your best bet given what others are saying too. But articles wouldn't be a bad idea either