I just have a question that maybe some of you veterans can assist with. Do you buy signature links to promote your directory? If you do is the purpose for the traffic or for the link? What do you look for in a sig link or all they all pretty much the same as long as they complete a lot of posts? Personally I think that the links primary purpose would be to generate traffic, but also would be a permanent link. Maybe a low quality permanent link, but a link. Also that the particular member posting the link does not really affect the quality of the link. I could be wrong though and if so, maybe you can straighten me out.
I think its not a quality link but the main purpose of buying signaure link is to create 'buzz'. And it must be a 'buzz' because its more about marketing than link building.
I dunno, you would have to ask chris and mike as to why they bough my signature links. Maybe that will throw some light on your question ?
They are bought for all the reasons listed in previous posts - "buzz", link building and traffic. I cannot speak for the "buzz" portion, but I do get many Google Alerts showing that Google has identified a link within the DP Forums (which is always nice), so I am assuming that also means Google has identified and indexed the link (it may not show up in the back links Google will share with you possibly because of the lower quality/PR) and my analytics programs let me know how much traffic the forum posts generate (which is not a ton, but it is a good amount). Hope that helps...
Look at it this way, a signature link of an established member costs $25-$35 a month. For most directories if you sell one or two featured links because of that signature it pays for itself. I would not be surprised if a signature link could sell 5-10 links a month. And yes you also get the benefit of 'buzz' or 'promotion' or whatever you want to call it.
Thanks for all your comments! I appreciate the information. I guess what I really wanted to clear up in my head was if there was any difference between a sig link from say a member who has posted 5000 times and one who has posted 500. Especially when they both put up the same amount of links in a day.
Just as an example: I see you bought a 1-month signature link from a fairly new member. Just a quick peek at their recent posts and I notice lots of them are under General Chat and most are 10 words or less. It looks like this member is padding their post count and eventhough the cost was small ($4) I don't think you will get much value out of it. That is one of the advantages of buying a signature link from a more established member, you will get a higher quality of promotion and a better chance of making conversions and getting visitors to your site.
The value depends on the member's activity in the forum. (some may think it also depends on the member's reputation though I don't see any direct reason for this) If you buy a sig link on someone who is very active in the forum, I'm sure you get a lot of traffic to your site. People also buy the avatar space for the same reason. It's all about advertising
Signature links from older members help boost a sites visibility, especially from respected members. It also helps with link building as it appears on all the posts from that member. Very good promotional technique, IMHO.
Oh and most importantly if user has a pagerank for their profile like say : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=23008 ,you also end up getting a pr juice to your site. And not to mention some of the older posts of their also have pageranks, thus giving more and more pr juice for your sites. Since signatures are not with nofollow tag, once they are like that, there will be no more signature link sales and anthony cea would be all happy.
I didn't think of link juice from profile page. True, old members tend to have high PR in their profile pages. In addition to profile pages, some have sticky threads. Mine has PR4, so I guess this also for link juice? (as well as traffic)
i buy sig links for 2 reasons. I want to make sure as many DP members are aware of my site as possible - brand promotion. I then buy them to get traffic. on a good day i get 100 visits from DP alone, just by renting a few sig links. As jg mentioned, i tend to buy from people with 1k posts and higher. I want them from people who make nice, interesting posts in the proper forums, as when people make a nice post, people tend to read around and notice thier sig links more. Thats why chetan and the two guys in this thread display my sig link.
Yes it can help promote it but it also helps increase backlinks and if you buy lots of them then it creates a lot of buzz for your site.
Ofcourse signature links do work. I myself buy lots of signature links and avatar for my directory... (and sell too ) 1 - sig links give traffic (so look at the posts/day count of the member - is he posting regularly ? ) 2 - gives backlinks too... 3 - Increases PS and PR too..