Paysite Vs Blogs Question

I have a question... For each site that processes transactions (ie. membership site, vod site, etc. - We have XXXDTO.com which is a VOD site, We have PhillyFratLive which is a live cam paysite).

We are working on blogs for each paysite. Such as: http://blog.xxxdto.com and http://xxxdto.com

I am requesting suggestions for a few reasons:
a) Blogs are a great source of trading traffic.
b) Should we not trade links with them and offer affiliates to link to them?

Should we only offer these blogs to affiliates. Or should we scratch that out and trade links publically. A lot of affiliates will not promote a site which has traffic leaks (ie. trading links).

I just don't know so I'm asking for suggestions...

What are your thoughts?

IMHO, you should do both. Setup affiliate blogs and more importantly rss feeds, and then setup your own network of in-house blogs. Ideally, your in-house blogs should have unique text for best SEO, but you can set them up to use your own rss feeds and then use software like Blogs Organizer to do morphing on your in-house posts.

I agree. You do what you need to do to reach out, attract and hopefully maximize traffic. If you like the simplicity of Wordpress, may we suggest ours for your CMS?

I would link from the blogs to your paysites (http://blog.xxxdto.com links to http://xxxdto.com) and not the other way around, because:

1. You want to generate traffic for your paysite from that blog and you don't want visitors on your paysite leaving to your blog.

2. It won't cause a traffic leak and affiliates are still happy to promote your sites.

I agree with Luke, I always wonder why more paysites don't run an off-site blog in their niche and grab some of the traffic directly. Of course, adding the same text to all is not a good idea. You really need to be adding original text for everything to your paysite and all blogs, otherwise you'll just be getting a fraction of the traffic and that's only after you've had to work a whole lot harder to build organic traffic.

The site has none of the same text anywhere else.

I guess you guys are right. We'll add RSS feeds and trade links. If affiliates should want to send traffic to the blog, I'd let them go for it. :)

Thanks so much for the feedback everyone! :smoker: