Help!

It isn't just the title of a Beatles song and a movie. Let me spell it out here in plain semaphore: we really need your Help! PLEASE link to CoverTogether.com. This site has been in operation for about eighteen months and it only gets about ten hits per day. Problem is, the search engines simply won't send anybody here. At least not for free... If you've gotten here by clicking on an ad, it's not a coincidence: we've been playing Google's little game recently.

Google's got it all figured out. Their famous "PageRank" algorithm causes them to return search results only for web sites that are linked to by other sites. So, a new site won't appear in search results. But since a new site can't get found, nobody can link to it. The only way for the poor webmaster to break the cycle, of course, is to advertise. So, I've been advertising CoverTogether recently. But I can't afford to do that for long.

I created this site primarily because it was an itch I had been wanting to scratch. I had wanted to put together something like this for years. There were other sites that covered Beatles covers, but there wasn't anything that was truly comprehensive. So it had to be done. It took a solid six months of my spare time.

I was never planning to get rich, but I hoped to make just a tiny bit of money on it - or at least break even. The revenue model for CoverTogether is that we get a small kickback when you buy stuff from Amazon through this site. However, with virtually no traffic, this site's revenue last year was - no kidding - almost exactly one dollar. And that's less than I'm now spending on advertising in just one day.

I'm more worried about the traffic than the revenue. My theory was that the revenue would take care of itself if the content was good. I figured that any site about The World's Most Famous Band would attract some sort of traffic. But since it's founding, this site has been getting - no kidding - about ten hits per day. So, if you're a Beatlemaniac in any form and you think this site has any merit whatosever, the NUMBER ONE thing you can do to help is to link to it from your web site, from Twitter, from Facebook, or whatever. Heck, tell your Aunt Gertrude about it if you have to, and maybe she'll link to it for you. Incoming links are the only thing other than paying Google the so-called "protection money" that can get them interested in this thing. And I can't afford to pay them for much longer.

If you can't link, you can help on the revenue side by purchasing stuff from Amazon after clicking through to it from our site. You don't have to buy an MP3 - buy anything you want. Buy new guitar strings. Buy diapers. Buy an exercise bike. I really don't care, because CoverTogether gets a tiny cut of anything you buy from Amazon, as long as you start from here. There's no extra cost to you. And with a little more revenue, I can feed the Google monster for a little while longer.

Don't get me wrong, though - I'd much rather you link to CoverTogether than buy stuff.

If you you think this plea sounds a bit pathetic, I agree with you - it is. But there's a reason Google makes a zillion dollars, and it's because they've got a nice little racket going. Who knew that the classic chicken-and-egg thing could be so lucrative? Those guys at Google are really smart...