I have a top 1000 Alexa Gaming Network - No idea what to sell links for, Help :)

Hi All,

I have an Alexa top 1000 gaming news network with over 100,000 hand written articles and a ton of other content and I've recently decided to start selling text links at the bottom of the pages but I have no idea where to start. The network is divided into sub-domains and I wanted to sell the links by sub-domain. There are 20+ pr 5 sub-domains all with tons of back links and indexed pages in search engines. For example;

Google: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,400,000
Yahoo: 1 - 10 of 2,040,000
MSN: 1-10 of 1,340,000 results

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

 

Once you have been an active member for a sufficient period, and with high enough post count, you may offer your links on a thread in BST Links. You'll have to make more posts and wait, be sure also to read the rules about bumping before you start here.

A PR 5 sitewide is worth anywhere from $5-30 month here; depending on traffic, number of other outbounds, and niche. You'll find some buyers, but be careful to only place links to related sites or you will likely face search engine penalties. Carefully screen the anchor text and destination sites or you could face problems. Never link to a site which has a Google ban.

 

I have been a member here for long time, I'm just not much of a talker.

As for traffic let's just say this is a network capable of $60,000+ monthly just from Google Adwords alone. I thought the millions of indexed pages would also add to the value since that sort of thing also provided so much weight with the 'other' SEO tool DP was famous for.

5-30 bucks a month doesn't really seem very intriguing. Any one else else confirm that's about all that I would be looking forward to?

 

If you're talking about Co-op weight, I don't think that's really still big around here.

If you can make that from AdSense, you'd be a fool to risk Google penalties by selling links. You'd probably do better with text-link ads if you want to monetize the PR.

Text ilinks are usually sold for PR, if you want to sell based on traffic, you need to sell for traffic.

 

Why would you risk having your site slapped by Google for selling links

Google frowns on this and although they don't admit to it, they are slapping websites that partake in link selling or link buying

Do some research online and you will find Many, Many complaints from people who's sites have suddenly plunged in the rankings and lost their PR for no apparent reason other than the fact that they have either recently bought or sold links

Here's an interesting article on the subject of selling links

 

I was just more trying to explain all of the benefits that would come with the link. I believe the only reason co-op is not so popular anymore (this is only what I've heard from a few people) is because some are saying that the networks code is being tracked by google and penalizing the sites, not that the methodology isn't solid. I am not looking to sell anything else above the fold (i.e. text ads) and the only thing I potentially saw that would be worth decent cash under the fold would be anchor text links on a monthly subscription. I'm thinking $50 a month a link per site, you don't think I could get that?

 

( in reply to: vstar -- I can't quote, I keep getting some error about signatures and not being able to do that yet, someone needs to learn how to set up permissions correctly in VB )

Selling a link is basically selling advertising / monetizing your site. I personally don't believe google is going to ban you for selling advertising on your website. I think more hearsay about stuff like that is floating around than any actual facts. Perhaps buying a link from a publicly advertised link directory or something like that, then maybe, but just selling a few links by hand, seriously doubt it.

 

You are absolutely right with your line of thinking, However, that has never stopped Google... they pretty much do what they want and just deny, deny, deny

In my opinion there are just too many instances to simply be pure coincidence

The thing is... Google has no right to tell you not to sell something on your website, however, they assume that text links are being bought and sold solely for the purpose of trying to "game" their algorithm (which usually is the case)

So you can say all you want about what's legal and what's not... Google doesn't give a Sh*t, Plain and simple

And you better have extremely Deep pockets if you ever want to challenge them

P.S
As for co-op linking... Don't even consider it, there is a huge foot print that Google can follow and they will catch up to you quickly

My 2 cents

 

Good. I'm glad somebody said it. If you've got this sort of exposure in Google you don't want to jeopardize it by selling links. You will not be happy with the consequences.

 

Ok, so how exactly would google know I am selling links if I am transacting every thing in private? I mean I already link other domains and I am simply considering the private sale of some more anchor text links. I totally understand what you're saying, Google is god and they can do what they want but how would they even know is my question? How would they know I am selling those links and not just linking to other sites in my network or other sites I own as a cross site promotion? I am not planning to put these in a link selling store front nor am I planning to publicly advertise the domain I am selling from, so I don't understand how Google would even find out to begin with.

If anyone knows some secrets about how Google would come to find out the specifics of what I am doing, please tell me. Beyond that unless someone was being stupid and very public about the sale of static anchor text links for the purpose of building PR in google AND google cares enough to go hands on to investigate this and determine they were doing it, I don't see how any automatic filters would catch this.

Any more details are appreciated, thanks.

 

You raise a very good question, but how does Google finds out half the things they do... who knows?

Although in your case it is highly unlikely if it is all done in private... all it takes is one snitch.

 

My guess is that it is based on relevancy. The whole algo is geared toward classifying related content, too many unrelated links may trigger a manual review.

So private, related links to sites which are not Google banned might be okay.

 

If you have a ton of traffic I would suggest simply selling banner advertisements, etc. rather than text links. Text links are pretty much for low traffic high PR sites.

 

Ok, well that's what I wanted to know. So there's no secrets to this, basically just saying IF Google somehow found out it's POSSIBLE something could happen but highly unlikely Google would find out or would even do anything if they did.

For the gazillions of sites out there selling anchor links on their sites I'd think Google had many more, very much more public sites to slap long before they came anywhere near sites that are selling privately and discretely.

Anyhow, any more input on this or what the value of the links would be worth (other than based on PR value which I'm told isn't even as big of a factor anymore)

 

Gallito---

I do sell tons of banner real estate. I am just trying to monetize below the fold a lot more. I was told for how much search engine saturation the network has people would pay a fortune for below the fold stuff. PR to the side, anchor text linked from sites on our network pop up 1st page of Google consistently lately. I figured that might be worth buying a subscription for to some people and thought if I can sell a bunch of links and add to my monthly revenue, why not?..

 

woooowwwwwwwwwwwww

 

Well thanks for adding that, I'm sure Evershawn now has a clearer view of what he needs to do now that you have contributed

Evershawn, if most of your traffic coming in is from Google, then you are relying on them for at each end: to give you the traffic, then to monetize them as they leave. If this is the case, and you are already earning $60k/month I would not go anywhere near selling text links and risk the wrath of google.

Depending on how badly goes after you for breaking their rules, you could end up de-indexed (extreme situation buy why risk it?).

Even with the number of pages you have indexed you could not make even 5% extra income from selling links, so the risk/reward here is absolutely not worth it.

 

Google does send some traffic from organic results of some of our keywords but in no way do they send most of it. I think our site has reached the point where we have expanded beyond traffic from search engines based on our keywords in the SERP's. We get traffic from all over, many search engines, referring sites like digg, technorani, and a ton of it just from word of mouth, ect.

As for links; with the price that I have seen links going for, at similar (actually lesser ranked/indexed/trafficed sites), it would add a substantial amount of revenue to my network (selling a maximum of 20 links per site) it would appear I could add 20%+ increase to my monthly revenue. This could enable me to hire a lot more staff and make a lot of upgrades sooner than later to my CMS, ect.

If I label these links at sponsors to the site, it technically does not violate Googles rules, I read up on it and asked a few experts. Things just did not make sense and a lot of comments seemed overly paranoid, it was just too hard to swallow.

What I found out the majority consensus was: If my main business focus is that of selling links or I associate myself / do business with a site / business that's main purpose is selling links for the purpose of cheating, manipulating or exploiting Googles ranking system, then it is 'possible' to have a site warned or black listed from Googles index until it is corrected.

Moral of the Story: If you're going to sell anchor text links on your website, that is in no way a violation of any of Googles policies. That would pretty much be like saying, if you want to advertise and make money off your site, you can't be in googles index!
If you list your links for sale or associate yourself with a business that's a known link seller, who sells links for the sole purpose of manipulating Googles system, then you might have something to worry about.

Feel free to leave feedback about the above.

-Shawn

 

When you say gaming site is it gambling type ?

 

Shawn I honestly think at 20% extra I wouldn't take the risk. If you are breaking it down and selling seperate links on each subdomain then you are going to end up with a lot of links being sold, each one increasing the chance of someone complaining or filling in a paid links report (you need to be logged in to view that).

Sure you can label them as sponsors, but then Google would expect you to use nofollow on them. Since most people are buying links for the search engine benefit, the price you can then get for the links drops massively. If you think you can get 20% more with dofollow links, I think you might struggle to get 5% extra nofollowed. But if you can its 5% thats absolutely clean and not risking anything at all with google.

Of course if your main traffic source is not Google then you might be more open to breaking Googles regulations and do whatever you please with link sales.

If caught the penalties could be:

• Stripped of the ability to pass pagerank
• toolbar pagerank reset to zero or lowered (Statcounter.com got hit with this for selling pr9 links)
• site punished in the search engine listings
• site de-indexed completely

I've had a few sites punished in the serps, dropped down 40-50 places for every search term because of link sales (buying). I've had another sites toolbar pagerank reset to 0 because of blatant link selling.

If you have a spammy or throwaway site, the more likely Google will come down on it far harder if they catch it. Sites like Statcounter and various student newspapers selling links have gotten off lightly - toolbar PR reduced but no further action. It sounds like your site is not in the spammy category, so I wouldn't imagine any massive punishment if you did end up caught.

Just remember, for every single link that you sell (assuming you don't use nofollow) you are sending someone up the search engine rankings. If they are then ranking first, there are 9 other sites on that page all hovering their mouse over the report paid links button. Even further back in the serps people might complain but it tends to be more ruthless the nearer the 1st page you get.

Sounds like you've got a great network going there, so good luck with whatever you choose to do with it.