This author’s open-source marketing plan, as announced on June 29, 2005, is mainly for small and medium-sized businesses. By keeping it simple, this author hoped it can be useful to businesses with a limited budget, can get "more bang for the buck".

The objective is to gain 3000+ inbound links within one year by sending:-

1. 48 free-reprint articles in one year.

2. 4 free e-books in one year.

3. 4 free software similar to corporate gifts or freebies

4. 6 press releases in one year.

Getting many inbound links is vital as a hits generator - sources for new visitors. Sometimes, internet users on reading the articles, e-books or using the freebies may visit the originating site directly.

The site www.seecrets.biz started in early May 2005 with one article. In the following two months, ten articles were submitted and two press releases were issued. All these are available at this author’s site with the dates concerned.

After two months, over 350 inbound links were obtained. It is difficult to be accurate because Google does not list back-links from sites with PageRank of less than three. During the first few weeks, counting was easy when the number was less than 100.

The results from the Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines on July 9, 2005 at 0800GMT are as follows (the figures within the brackets represent the total competing pages):

Note:

The first number is the ranking.

The bracketed number is the total competing pages.

NR means not ranked in the top 20

* the ranking obtained referred to the Press Release sites

The first three keywords (seecrets, stan seecrets and joe nogood) are important to this author’s site’s brand.

The keywords (joe nogood, rebrand software and open source marketing plan) were only introduced in late June 2005. The last two are relevant to the site’s activities.

These are the preliminary results. Readers can always inspect this author’s website and decide that no unfair or illegal methods were used. Knowledgeable readers should be able to see the meta-tags with ease.

This author’s take

Whether these results are good or not, it is up to the readers to decide. It can be a useful guide for website owners to improve upon and hopefully report back to the Internet community.

This is the first step of a long journey. There will be more mountains to climb, battles to fight, obstacles to overcome and so forth. This author is satisfied that the chosen brand has taken root. Whether this root can grow to support a giant redwood tree or just a bush that will wither away in the next few years, is yet to be seen.

This author wishes to thank the fine people behind rushprnews.com, isnare.com, ezinearticles.com, bloggeroff.com and many others for making this tumultuous journey for this techie-turned-Internet writer, a smoother one.

Stan Seecrets Postulate:

Where we originate is the same – our mothers’ womb.

Where we are heading is the same – six-feet under.

In between, we communicate.

(Inspired by George Santayana, Spanish-born American philosopher - There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval).

[This article may be freely reprinted provided it is published with the author’s bio and activating the link to the URL below. It can be edited, summarized, expanded, and translated into any human language provided the literary integrity is maintained. In the case of print media, the same condition applies except that the URL must be printed in bold letters.]

About the author

The author, Stan Seecrets, is a veteran software developer with 25+ years experience at http://www.seecrets.biz which specializes in digital asset protection and total website management. You can send your views or criticism by e-mail to Stan at seecrets.biz. © Copyright 2005, Stan Seecrets. All rights reserved.