I just finished listening to an audio cd of an interview between Keith Baxter and Jack Humphry and I knew I would listen to it until the end when Keith introduced Jack as the first marketer of “authority sites”. Just so you know, you can get this same audio CD for free at Nothing Held Back - Software Lead Generation. So, his mentioning authority sites caught my interest and brought back memories of the “Absolute Authority” project Dane and I started way back when in 1998.

Absolute Authority was basically a directory of vertical portals made up of authority guides building their sites by adding related links, articles, affiliate programs and more through an easy-to-use online control panel.

Authorities could even view their traffic stats, tap into a resource section packed with traffic generation and marketing tips, advertising information, a contact manager to manage their own subscribers and so on.

By the way, we didn’t have the ability to add Adsense ads because this was happening before even Google was around! We did include Commission Junction ads because they were one of the first to offer affiliate program links.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the Internet bubble burst and we couldn’t close on our second round of funding from angel investors and we had to let go of all our programmers and eventually sell the site. That was a bummer. We did learn to never again use Cold Fusion for developing web sites! It’s all PHP these days. I’m sure we’ll have more posts on Absolute Authority - I don’t want to get too depressed right now. I want to get back to writing about Jack Humphry because he wrote a very informative and comprehensive resource on creating authority sites and using Web 2.0 social media sites to bring in traffic. You should download the free resource at Authority Blackbook. BTW, he’s launched a new site called Bending The Web, which I haven’t even had a chance to check out yet.

I’m a big believer in promoting through social bookmarking, social networking, video sites and other web 2.0 sites. I think there’s a lot of potential here to tap into some great traffic, if done right. There’s a new coaching course called SMARTS that looks like they’ve got social media marketing all covered. Check out this Social Marketing video by StomperNet.

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