I really appreciate your input. I'm definitely seeing a trend in these responses! I suppose a trial and error method might be best to see what works better for my blog. Thanks again for the info!

Timothy

As far as advice to you WealthArtisan for text link ads, I would just echo what others have said in that most advertisers will not pay for a nofollow link. If they do, it will be a much reduced price.

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The Single Saver said:

What I want to know is... when will Google be updating their PR again????  My site is now getting good visitor counts and has been active for many months and I still get a 0 PR.  Very frustrating!  C'mon, Google... throw me a bone! 

Thanks,

Timothy

Google's been up to all kinds of algorithmic games lately.  I'm starting to think that text link sales aren't as bad as multiple huge Adsense blocks…Google's Panda update has supposedly started to take into consideration the ad-to-screen ratio in ranking individual sites, which is very interesting, to say the least.

There's been other threads on this, but it boils down to:  text link advertisers will either pay less or choose not to advertise at all if you use nofollow since they really want to Google juice.

I'd suggest either choosing to ignore Google or follow Google, but not straddling the line - less headaches and heartaches.  :-) 

If it helps to know, there are a bunch of Yakezie on both sides, so there is no wrong answer - it's totally a personal choice.

I totally agree with this. Decide which way you want to go and stick with it. You can't really play it safe, because no one knows what the "safe" is. Some people with textlinks have higher PR and with no textlinks lower PR. For some, the moment they add text links, the PR drops down. So no way of know what is acceptable by google for you to keep it in a balance.

I chose to not do text links. As Crystal says, it is a personal choice I made when I started to monetize a couple of months ago. There is no right or wrong way. Just your way...

I believe there was only one advertiser offered through the Yakezie channels (i.e. someone from Yakezie got them interested in us and did a campaign) where they allowed a no follow. Honestly though, I cannot remember which advertiser it was...

It's not normal that they would allow that because then they are getting really little out of the deal--let's face it, advertisers aren't interested in most of the audience sizes that we have (100-300 daily visitors), but rather in the link juice.

I'd suggest either choosing to ignore Google or follow Google, but not straddling the line - less headaches and heartaches.  :-) 

If it helps to know, there are a bunch of Yakezie on both sides, so there is no wrong answer - it's totally a personal choice.

I'm looking more at Text Link advertisement opportunities, but Google loathes people selling links.  Their suggestion is to give a nofollow link instead.  For those that have tried this, has this method basically killed any deals that you've tried to form?  How have your potential clients reacted to suggesting "nofollow?"

A lot of things that I've read have simply suggested that you just make the links look as legitimate as possible such as mixing it in with non-paid links, and ensure that the link is related to your site's content.  I know we've got many people who don't care what Google thinks, but I'd really like to strike a balance if it is equitable.  Thanks for you input!

Thank you,

Timothy