Hi All, Just wondering what other directory owners do with these sites. My original thought was to only accept those sites that sell a single eBook if it is the original author's website; meaning no affiliate sites. Now, I'm not so sure. I imagine quite a few of them are here today and gone tomorrow if their product doesn't sell well. And so many of the ebooks out there are truly terrible. Suddenly everyone is an author. Those of you that do accept them, do you put them in the usual category or create a subcategory called ebooks like most folks do for blogs? I have one of these sites in my pending queue and they failed to submit their site properly. But, I do visit sites like that anyway if I think my site visitors might benefit from the listing. I can't help but wonder if my prejudice about these sites has more to do with being a writer and less to do with being a directory owner. So, my fellow directory owners, what do you do with these sites?
Do the websites offer content that improves the internet? Is the content unique? Are the websites well done and professional looking? If not delete them.
If you're talking about the ones with that dreadful long sales letter format, I've never listed one. But I do sometimes add websites devoted to a single book or series of books, if that's the way the author wants to present their work. However, I also tend to have the policy of one listing per person or business, unless it's an exceptional circumstance. So I would be inclined to look up the author and list just their main site, if there is one, rather than the one submitted.
To clarify, I'm talking about those 1-3 page websites where the homepage is a long-winded sales pitch and the other pages only contain contact information, testimonials or an invitation to become an affiliate for a single ebook. The actual page content offers no information other than about the ebook being sold. The quality of the sites vary but typically have very little styling other than text formatting to highlight features and the sales pitch.
I hate them sites, but they must work because there''s so many of them. I'd say if it's relevant to a niche in your directory, and might be useful to users of your site, create a sub-category ebooks and place it there. Or you could decide you don't want those sites in your directory as they're rarely updated, may be replicated and offer nothing useful to your users. At the end of the day it's your call
If your asking me I say - don't list them. I have also been seeing some "review sites" where the site is set up to extoll the virtues of a product and give a cloaked affiliate link to purchase it. Typically one page trying to get the visitor to click an affiliate link. I don't list them either as they offer nothing of value to vistors.
Now now Steve Sales letters. Yum. Look at earth4energy.com. It's one of the best selling clickbank ebooks around at the moment. The owner is here gathering affiliates in DP and I have sold three of them myself. Yet like most clickbank product, it has an averagely designed sales page. It all depends if you would list shops or not. Would you list ebay? At the end of the day ebay is just an ecommerce site - it has no articles or anything like that. Same goes for ebook sales pages usually. I don't tend to list commercial sites for this reason. Especially in a free directory, it makes the review process so much harder. When does an insurance provider look legitimate? When does a $47 ebook sales letter not turn out to be a scammer? I'd want a decent review fee if I was to determine that or not.
Interesting points Mikey. I do include shops similar to ebay from a site called Etsy and a handful of lesser known sites for crafters. The primary difference is that the items are made by the shop owners - shops from flea market type sellers are not accepted even if they sell hand-made items. Shops with supplies are considered on a case-by-case basis. Many crafters sell their items on these types of sites and I would be missing out on some really talented artisans if I did not include the shop sites. Both of my directories have commercial sites. Somewhere on both sites I have included a disclaimer that I have not done business with the sites listed. I do use my own judgment and if the site smells so much that I would never buy from them, they get the boot. I haven't spent much time looking at the whole ebook affiliate concept. Do the affiliates simply run the same sales pitch as the ebook author's original site? Do they typically offer downline programs? (The one submitted today had an affiliate page.) I'm wondering if I decided to include them how hard/time consuming it would be to identify the author from the affiliates. Sounds like most here hate them as much as I do and are not accepting them.
I like that reply, off topic it is a personal, at the time evaluation probably with no real clear answer. I remember one similar thing, it was not that flash, and i questioned the owner, it turned out he was a normal person who worked hard on his own thing, and gave his best in a fair way, so it won. but further from that is most (not all) also run ads be it from whatever company, these same people then would question or argue if these types of ads should be shown in the directory (as above) and if to approve them or not. Yet auto approve all ads running in a way by having them there and i would say at least 50% or so connect to these types of sites through the PPC system, but they never question these ads their content or site appearance etc and is like a blind eye that seems OK as it earns them some $.