Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

What is viral content? any content that others will pick up, mention and write about leading to increased links, traffic and recognition, this content can be audio, video, image and text content or a combination of these types.

Lets take a small example of how useful viral content can be, my previous virtual haircut post led to an increase of about ~700 unique visitors to my blog (screen shot below), considering that this blog usually gets around 2000 uniques a month, that was a huge increas in traffic, I got a bunch of new links, and that post currently ranks on the 1st page on Google for the term virtual haircut which according to overture data gets around 600 searches per month.

Now imagine if a blog with 2000 daily unique visitors posted that file, how much traffic and links would that have generated? ALLOT! how much traffic would it generate if you own the content? allot more!

Creating link worthy content that could go viral isnt easy and usually takes lots of time and effort, this is only a small example were I posted a file that passed by through a friend, so the return wasn’t so big, viral content can also be things like a new online tool, allot of webmaster related sites use these methods to gain popularity traffic and recognition, some examples are iwebtool.com (PR prediction tool), seomoz.com (page strength tool), seologs.com (fake PR tool) and many others.

Following up on WH-D’s launch, the launch has been a great success so far, the website has generated some good buzz till now, and the marketing campaign I’ve planned for the website haven’t even started!

The press release has been mentioned in some big hosting news sites, such as:

WH-D Unveils Social Directory Site

WH-D.com Introduces First Ever Social Web Hosting Directory, Enters Web 2.0 Era

WH-D.com Introduces Social Web Hosting Directory

WH-D Unveils Social Directory Site

Dan Goron from Press Advance (he’s the media contact for the press release) told me that Devshed contacted him about a possible review for WH-D, which is great, I sure hope they do that review!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WH-D.com Introduces First Ever Social Web Hosting Directory, Enters Web 2.0 Era

AMMAN, Jordan (May 14, 2007) – WH-D.com (http://www.wh-d.com) today unveiled the first-ever social web hosting directory, featuring dynamic host listings that change positioning based upon user votes. The concept diverges significantly from traditional hosting directories, which often rely on static, pay-per-click advertisements to power the site.

WH-D.com allows site visitors to search for web hosting providers serving a multitude of categories, including managed, budget, Linux, Windows, reseller, and VPS hosting. Within each category, visitors are presented with a list of posts for various hosts, and visitors can then vote for posts that they find reliable or helpful. Ultimately, the positioning of each post in the category changes as new votes are submitted, with popular posts quickly reaching the top of the page.

“It’s about empowering our users,” said Sohaib Thiab, CEO and co-founder of WH-D.com. “There is a universal shift in logic in the way information should be organized online. As the ideas of Web 2.0 continue to proliferate and become reality, it grows apparent that site patrons—and not site administrators or a marketing team—should determine how content is organized. Without patrons, even the best designed site is utterly useless.”

In addition to categories for web hosts, WH-D also offers listings of current coupons and hosting related news and how-to articles. In keeping with the user-driven theme of the site, these categories are also sorted by votes, and not paid positioning.

The site has been in development for about 2 months, and site administrators hope to roll-out new features and tools as they become available.

For more information about WH-D.com, please visit http://www.wh-d.com.

About WH-D.com

Founded in 2007, WH-D.com is a next-generation hosting directory and news portal built around the principles of Web 2.0 design and development. Featuring post positioning driven by community votes and not paid placement, the site encourages visitors to take an active role in shaping search results.

Official press release can be found on w3reports here.

PR update settled down and here are the results on my main websites:

1. Premiushosting.com PR5 -> PR4
2. wh-d.com PR0 -> PR5
3. sohaibthiab.com steady at PR5
4. Funnyvideohub.com PR3-> PR4
5. Wallpaperfreedom.com PR1-> PR3
6. Money4action.com PR0 -> PR3
7. Myspacelounge.net PR1 -> PR4

Most websites increased in PR besides premiushosting, this was a good update.

Selling Myspacelounge.net 

I am currently looking to sell the arcade, its currently getting around 1000 unique visitors per day, and its increasing, website has some excellent rankings, for full details, check out my thread on WHT here.