Finally, what were the conditions for the sale? Is the link permanent (I never do this) or based on remaining live for set period of time (1 month, a year etc).

I rarely reach out to seo agencies but they all find me through the various lists that I'm on.

Cheers,

Todd

The Single Saver said:

I'd do it as long as the site being linked to isn't offensive or in contrast with the message you are trying to give.

How do you all get private ads?  I'd love a few of these to keep The Single Saver profitable! 

This is a question I have as well. Do you normally reach out to advertisers or have them come to you?

 

In the past the advertisers reached out to me.  I have recently begun reaching out to advertisers myself.  

They also email me directly. I want to start being more proactive, but I have had enough to be busy with thus far.

______________________________

LaTisha @ FSYAonline said:

The Single Saver said:

I'd do it as long as the site being linked to isn't offensive or in contrast with the message you are trying to give.

How do you all get private ads?  I'd love a few of these to keep The Single Saver profitable! 

This is a question I have as well. Do you normally reach out to advertisers or have them come to you?

It's another way to get a text link.

How do they want the credit?  Is the photo hosed on their site?  Are you basically hotlinking their photo and giving them credit?  OR are you downloading the photo and hosting it yourself and writing Photo by xxxx underneath it?

Do you know for sure the photo is theirs? What happens if three months down the line you get an email saying you took someone's copyrighted work?

When you credit Flickr, I'm sure the search understand understand the link and find it relevant.  I would worry how it would look to be linking somewhere else entirely that has nothing to do with the picture or your article.

There was a recent JC Penny fiasco where they were getting links anywhere and everywhere in order to rank.  This kinda reminds me of that.

Now to the original question - is buying links legitimate? Legitimate what?  There's nothing illegal about paid links without a nofollow, it's just against the Big G's TOS.

The Single Saver said:

I'd do it as long as the site being linked to isn't offensive or in contrast with the message you are trying to give.

How do you all get private ads?  I'd love a few of these to keep The Single Saver profitable! 

This is a question I have as well. Do you normally reach out to advertisers or have them come to you?

They email me directly.

I'd do it as long as the site being linked to isn't offensive or in contrast with the message you are trying to give.

How do you all get private ads?  I'd love a few of these to keep The Single Saver profitable! 

This is a question I have as well. Do you normally reach out to advertisers or have them come to you?

How do you all get private ads?  I'd love a few of these to keep The Single Saver profitable! 

@Suba--No...they didn't ask for any anchor text. Just the link for the photo.

Even though the link is unrelated, the picture totally works with the post. And the link is a real link and nothing that I personally am opposed to linking to. I too give photo credit to random flickr profiles when I get my pictures from there.

Thanks for your help. I just made an easy few $$.

I may be behind the times, but that's actually a creative way to buy a link lol. More to the point, yes, advertisers will approach you selling links/banners. I've made around $2,000 in the past year of blogging. A tiny bit of that total is from Adsense, but the rest is private ad sales.

I am too :) I have never seen anyone ask for this before. But it is a very creative way of getting a link. And most of the time, the photo credit need not be related, I mean I link to flickr all the time or to a random person's portfolio if I got the picture for free. Did they ask you for a "anchor word" to their link or just their website? The more google/SE try to find these links, the more the advertisers come up with innovative way to link lol...

If you don't mind selling text links and as long as the link is not shady/too unrelated it is ok I guess.