If I emailed you today and said, “I’ll give you $1000 dollars for 6 permanent links on your blog - Not on your homepage” would you accept it? That is the exact thing that happened to Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net (Story) and he declined the offer. Obviously a blog of his magnitude would not accept such a low payment for 6 life time links.
A long story short, the “Underground Text Link Seller” offered Darren $400 a link totaling $2400 and he still denied it. Anyhow, until all of us bloggers get to that stage of 6 figure blogging, we can look at the link sellers first proposal. $1000.
Pros:
- You get $1000 to spend on whatever you want! (Wooo!!!!)
- If the links are written well, people barely notice them.
- You make a estimated profit of x50 on your domain name (perhaps + hosting?)
Cons:
- Google will slap you across the face in their search engine results.
- Lower traffic because of first point, lower Alexa ranking and perhaps less advertisers.
- Shows that you can be bought for the “Right” price.
I’m actually teetering on the whole prospect just because of the numbers that are involved. Unless you actually know how to make money online with blogs, this could be a major payday that could be used to help you in all sorts of life’s situations.
Then again, they are getting the best deal on the internet because over time, the cost of that text link for the buyer decreases with each passing month. Since you agreed to the terms, it would be dishonest and negligible to take the link off or charge them more.
What would you do if the situation arrived with you and your blog?
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7 Responses to “$1000 For A Link? - Selling Yourself SHORT of value”
Hey thats a pretty cool post and out of all the so called HIGH level bloggers?where? we will be soon be,?the only one I really see as a role model is Darren .Oh and next time you take a break just post with a cell phone.
How much is a free link from a comment worth?
Once all the smoke clears and all my competition has been offically smoked
I will be going mobi style
Hey I’m moving into a rented building the first real step in WORLD DOMINATION
John Sullivan’s last blog post..Summer Time LOVE TECHNOSTUMBLEMEDIGCOMMENTLUV POTPOLITICS STYLE
It really depends for me. If I thought that the links were in some way useful to my readers, I don’t see why I wouldn’t go through with it. $1000 would be great to come by, and could help me run some marketing campaigns for The Tech Juice - but alas, I can’t see this happening any time soon for me.Fortunately I blog for fun, not for profit.It is definitely something to think about though.Cheers,Sean
The Tech Juice’s last blog post..How to Upgrade Your Macbook
I can see why Darren would have rejected the proposal. His blog wouldn’t have been as good as it is now if he had adopted this link selling strategy earlier. In the long run it would be a bad idea.Thanks,Sarah.
I am curious about two of your cons. “Google will slap you across the face in their search engine results. Lower traffic because of first point, lower Alexa ranking and perhaps less advertisers.”
Can you explain why/how linking to someone else’s content can negatively effect your alexa/google ranking? Also, I’ve started my first hosted WP site (I’ve always used blogger before) and I was wondering if you would care if I linked to some of the tips you’ve given (many of your posts are very good). I’d like to share them on http://www.tystips.com (assuming they won’t hurt my Alexa/Google ranks)
Oh, and one other thing, since joining your Technorati train my authority on http://www.snigit.com has jumped from 0 to 28! Woot!
I’m not exactly sure what I would do if someone offered such a large amount of money for links. I would feel pretty conflicted at that point…@TylerI’m not 100% sure, but I believe Google does penalize for linking too much, but that’s only if you link to other pages to the spam-blog level. One link shouldn’t be the equivalent to a pagerank crash.
Shantanu Bala’s last blog post..Firefox 3 and Safari 4: Javascript Interpretation
Heh, for me, it would be an easy choice. The question is - do I like the site and the content I am linking to? If so, I take the money and run with it. Otherwise, its not worth selling my integrity over. Perhaps for a short time…..
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