Selling Text Links

[deronsizemore]

I came across this article talking about methods to make money from your site, and it had this quote:

The third method is selling text links. This is a practice that is frowned upon by search engines, especially google, but it still goes on and is a viable way to earn revenue. Once your website has reach a PR5 and above you can sell 10 -20 links.

What is the general idea with this? Why would someone want to buy a text link from someone?

[webcs]

We've had people buy a few text links from our sites for years. Cheap, around $25, but seemed to work for them. As far as google frowning on it, why? Links are links.

[Cutter]

There are two ways to see purchased text links:

a) solely from SEO purposes. This is what google doesn't like.

b) text links that readers actually click on. For example, CollegeHumor sells text links for several hundred dollars, but they get lots of clicks.

There really isn't a black and white difference between the two. If your site is new don't think about selling text links for a while. Text link buyers are looking for traffic and/or Pagerank (and lots of it.)

[deronsizemore]

I still don't know if I'm understanding...I'm sure this is just flying over my head here. For example, collegehumor sells text links...so they are selling a text link space on their site? Hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to pay for it, I could have a text link to my portfolio show up on their site? And in turn I should see better SE ranking since my text link on their high traffic site would be considered a backlink?

[Masetek]

I still don't know if I'm understanding...I'm sure this is just flying over my head here. For example, collegehumor sells text links...so they are selling a text link space on their site? Hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to pay for it, I could have a text link to my portfolio show up on their site? And in turn I should see better SE ranking since my text link on their high traffic site would be considered a backlink?

Yep that's right, they are basically selling a text link space on their site. Yes it's seen as a backlink, and if the page it's coming from has high PR you might even get a small PR jump. But like Cutter said, if you bought that sort of link (esp for that price) you would be doing it for the clicks value not SEO.

[Cutter]

As long as the text link is crawlable by a search engine then it should help you out.

A single link alone technically shouldn't have a huge impact, but I don't really know. For example, if you have a brand new site with little to no good incoming links, then it should be a nice boost for you.

College Humor text links will send you traffic, but it probably isn't the kind that you want. (example, if you have a web design business you want other small business owners thinking about getting a website to visit it -- not bored college students.)

Also, if you go to college humor they have text links on the side as well as links under the main article. The side links will stay there for a while. I can't remember, but you buy them in week or month chunks.

Still, a link that shows up for a day or two on a site as big as college humor will have an impact. For my first site, which was a gaming site, it didn't really take off until I had several links in news stories on the front page of big sites such as PlanetHalfLife and Slashdot -- none of which I had to pay for.