Topsites

Topsites are site lists focused around a common topic, for example clip art, pets, music etc. Sites on these lists are ranked in order of "votes" - the site that gets voted most gets the top place, the site that gets the 2nd biggest amount of votes gets the second place and so on. The voting system is simple; each topsite member places a link back to the topsite on his site and for each visitor that clicks the link, the site gets one vote.

Naturally, most of the traffic that comes into the list goes to the high ranking sites, although usually many of the lower-ranking ones also get a decent share. The biggest part of traffic coming to topsite lists usually comes from the sites on the list, but high-quality topsites normally get pretty nice traffic on their own, too. Topsite lists are a somewhat similar method as reciprocal links; the major differences are that with topsite lists, there is a "middleman" and that it's more difficult to control which sites you're exchanging traffic with.

One of the problems related to these sites is that in order for visitors to be able to "vote" for your site, you need to provide a link to the topsite, usually in the form of a picture. This might cause some difficulty; if the link picture is too big and in a too prominent place, your site will look unprofessional and ugly. If it's too small, you might risk people missing it and have trouble to get enough votes to rise on the list.

In overall, do they work? Sometimes, but not always. It pretty much depends on the quality of the topsite in question. If you decide to have a try, find one that doesn't have any pop-up windows, has a lot of sites that are very closely related to the subject of your site and has its own domain. After that, you'll just need to monitor the traffic you're sending to the list and the traffic you're getting from it. If it looks like you're continuously on the losing end, resign and find another topsite or just forget about it and use other promotion methods.

If your site is big enough to grab the first place, you're going to want to send enough visitors to claim the top, but no more. If your placement is #1 after sending 1000 visitors and #1 after sending 5000, why not stop after 1000 and replace the voting link with a paid advertisement until the topsite resets and you need to send another thousand? This can be done manually, but a CGI-script would make your life a lot easier.

To find a topsite list related to your site, look at sites dealing with the same subject as you. Some of them are probably members of one, if one exists. Search engines are also useful as always. You can also look for one at the topsite list directory, but make sure it gets enough traffic before joining!