Comments on: Should You Be Selling Links To SEO Services?

By: Blogercise

Blogercise — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:37:39 +0000

I also think, as someone who prefers to build long term recurring income, one off micro payments are a drain on resources. If you start selling links here and there you need to start dealing with the emails, negotiating terms, track where the links go, keep your side of the deal limiting future updates, etc.

I’d rather use my time elsewhere. For the same reasons I turn down ad hoc ad requests too. I prefer to use mainstream automated systems such as Adsense which manage themselves.

By: Leigh UKFlashBanners

Leigh UKFlashBanners — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:54:53 +0000

I receive these e-mails each week and just don’t think the risk is worth taking. The moment Google discovers the links on your website, the site is likely to be banned. Weighing up the cost of this in comparison to the quick £££ from link selling just doesn’t seem worth it.

By: Graham Keen

Graham Keen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:49:07 +0000

Interesting post. I agree with the other comments that the risk outweighs the gain – however playing devils advocate how would Google find our that a link’s been paid for?

By: Lee McCoy

Lee McCoy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:36:11 +0000

I’ve had a few of these and ignored them. In a perfect world bare links should be given based on the merit of the content you’re linking to and not incentivised in any way.

However, we don’t live in that world. Useful reciprical linking is almost dead, but that still doesn’t stop mate’s swapping links where no cash has swapped hands. To my mind, that’s acceptable. But saying here’s something (cash, content, access to wife) for a link/PR is just plain wrong.

By: John Cronin

John Cronin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:28:59 +0000

It’s not worth the risk in my opinion. Running the risk of adversely affecting other sites in your portfolio by selling links on one “neglected” site isn’t worth it.

Suppose if you can get paid for no-followed links then it’s not so risky?

By: Kieron

Kieron — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:03:13 +0000

I get absolutely tons of these emails every week. My advice? Don’t touch with a barge pole. Sure you’ll lose out on a bit of cash but it’s better than being banned by Google for link selling.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:01:01 +0000

It is tempting, but I guess if someone wants to advertise on your site to engage your audience as opposed to just gaining Pagerank, then they’d be happy to pay and accept nofollow in their links (I guess). Although that then begs the question how does Google and other search engines differentiate between an ad for pagerank vs one that’s for attracting your users to their site purposes?

By: Fraser Edwards

Fraser Edwards — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:55:36 +0000

Good post and I’ve stuck with your philosophy too although now I think I could be selling half a dozen links a month at £50 if I accepted the offers and £300/month would be a nice little extra but it’s not enough to make me risk the site in googles eyes.