Black Hat Experiments is a new section on the blog where I talk about ideas I (or someone else) had that seem like a good idea.  I haven’t scaled them, tested them, or really done anything – I just think it’s a good idea.  Here is the link to the category section where you can “see” them all.  Black Hat Experiment Category.  Side Note: Guest posts are welcome to BHD right now – either for this section, script contributions, or discussions. It’s a great way to get some exposure to your blog, service, etc…  I don’t charge for guest posts, and I won’t take ones that just promote some service.  Contact me if you are interested.  I won’t post another one until we get a few comments (good or bad) on each volume.

Abusing Slideshare and Scribd

I’m not sure if you are familiar with slideshare or not.  Basically you create a powerpoint presentation and upload it to share with others. It’s searchable and all that fun stuff.  You get a profile and “about” area just like on youtube.

Here is one of the cooler parts – you can add audio to your presentations and really do some ‘wow’.  The catch of course is to embed links to your things – affiliate things if you are counting on people watching your slideshow – links to pages if think you will be scraped.

Scraped – why would you be scraped?  Well slideshare has an api and anyone can display things on their sites..  learn up on the API both for content for your site, and for ways of getting your stuff out there.

You are going to need ‘good stuff’ on slideshare to really get anywhere.

Scribd is another place that lets you upload PDF’s.   PDF’s are treated by good differently than html pages – but they still get crawled and spidered.  In my experience a link in a pdf is worth dozens of links in worpdress comments, etc…  Now the way that scribd shows your stuff the spiders might not read the links in your pdf’s.  So rely on linking to the original in your description or linking to it from your own sites.  JUST get some PDF’s up – and also put them on scribd and see where they rank.  I think you’ll thank me.

Ohh – open office is free and open source.  When you make a document just click the handy dandy pdf button and that’s what it will spit out.  I’ve found that people REALLY enjoy mind maps of processes and step by steps -  and there are a number of mind mapping software programs out there.  It’s also really easy to embed your links in them.

IE at this stage you need to buy a power drill.   Walmart sells them for $.35 cents.  Here is a link:  xyz affiliate link

You have to know how to do something.   Even if it’s just tying your shoes.  No drills needed, but probably a good place to dump links for your on-line affiliate shoe store.

Disclaimer:  I use pdf’s all the time to create “resources” for my white hat sites. Of course they have links in them back to the white hat site.  Yes they do get spidered and ranked.  I have very few things on scribd, and nothing on slideshare – hence the experiment section.