Is Selling Links a Good Idea? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I just wanted to add a quick thought. A few people have mentioned not accepting TLA because they care more about long term growth/revenues. I'm not sure it's an either or type of decision. If you sell TLAs, you can always stop. I doubt Google is going to continue to punish you after the links are removed. If I recall, some of the bigger PF sites used to sell TLAs back in the day and they (obviously) are still/now are successful sites. 

Interestingly enough, today I received a request for advertising (text link) from a site that is PR4. Based on the discussion above, does that hurt me if I sell the link? I am PR2 and the site I would link to has no Google AdSense…

When I think about it … Can Google penalize everyone else trying to advertise? I guess they could, it would make them the evil empire with a monopoly :) Would they is another question … I guess that's partly why they are getting investigated in Europe for antitrust brought to you by none other than Microsoft (which consequently was put on antitrust with IE by Google). http://news.cnet.com/8301-3068…..9-265.html

I would think the key here is moderation – both in terms of paid sidebar links and in terms of paid posts/reviews.  But I don't say that from Google's standpoint – I say that from a visitor's standpoint.  I don't mind seeing an occassional paid post on sites I enjoy but I tend to feel disconnected if they happen too often.  As for paid sidebar links, I see them no differently than I do ads and again, a few are okay but not too many.

@TPIE – Google is perfectly cool with selling text links with the "no follow" attribute.  

@JT_McGee

Good point. That's what I did with the current one I have up.

Consequently, how different is a paid link versus a link to another blogger in a blog roll or somewhere else without the 'no follow'? Is linking to a blogger with lots of paid links now a negative for your blog? I think the jugement has to do with the site you are linking with as opposed to simply think whether it's paid or not. 

In any case, if you can, just use the no follow attribute. That officially works.

Post edited 4:59 pm – April 5, 2011 by JT_McGee

@Wojo – No follow is worthless to advertisers in terms of Google, which is the point.  Some people do buy links for the purposes of traffic, but in most cases, banners/buttons tend to provide better branding power as well as visitor numbers. Dollar for dollar, someone looking for visitors probably wouldn't care very much about a text link.  And no one would for SEO.

This is definitely one of those tough questions that every blogger has to answer for himself – whether or not to sell text links. As I mentioned previously – on my first site, I sold text links for quite a while – and the income was nice for that first year or so.  It helped me to grow my site, buy better hosting/etc.  I don't really regret doing it. By the same token now that I've built the site up to be much more successful using other advertising means – ones that google doesn't have any issue with – CPM Ads, adsense, affiliate marketing/etc – I'm not willing to take the risk that google may start penalizing sites for selling text links – not only in page rank, but possibly in search rankings. 

I mentioned before i saw my Page rank drop while I sold text links, but i dont' really think i saw much affect on my search rankings.  But you never know when google might change that and start having that affect search rankings as well. 

My second site – smart on money – I never sold text links and I feel like the site has shown quicker growth than the first site in some respects. At less than 1 year old it's already bringing in over $1000/month – mostly from adsense.  Granted it helps that I've already built a successful site and know better how to do it, but I think not doing some things like selling a ton of text links has helped as well.  My page rank for Smart On Money is at the same point my other site was when it was docked for selling text links – but it hasn't dropped like the other site did. Again, I'm assuming it's because of the difference in text links (but of course we'll never know for sure).

I've been in the same camp and reluctant to sell text links for fear of the long term consequences.  However, I'm curious, do folks here see the sale of text link (a keyword-rich link inserted into any post) the same as a sponsored post (an entire post from an adveriser with the keyword-rich link embedded)?

My thought is that they are slighly different, but I'd like to hear opinions.   It seems to me that the sponsored post may be a little less dangerous to search rank and a quick way to earn a buck.  Of course that may not be true if the advertiser is known by Google already as a link buyer.  On the flip side, most of the sponsored posts I see have nothing to do with typical blog themes and can appear out of place and piss off your readers.  But that can be mitigated by quickly moving the post from your front page, or post-dating it.

Any thoughts?

I'll let you know, I have one coming out tomorrow. I am labelling it "Sponsored Post" up front to make it clear.