Question about paid backlinks

I've noticed recently some blog posts about donating to open source projects in order to get linked to from their donations page. Open source projects are generally high PR, so this would seem to be a good SEO technique.

Has anyone had much luck with this technique?

I have to admit I'm reluctant to donate to a project for the sole purpose of getting a backlink. It seems a bit shady.

Jay

 

I don't see why it should not work. I have some donation links already

 

I took a look at your site, and the sponsor a post idea. Interesting! It's inexpensive enough there's no real downside to trying it out once to see what happens.

Jay

 

Thank you - your link will be placed later today!

 

don't see what's wrong with donating for getting backlinks. It's a fair mutual exchange, which is the basis of most activities on the web anyway. Why do you think most ppl post new articles, content on their sites? Purely interest and being generous? I don't think so. It's to get more pages indexed by G, which is beneficial to the growth of their site.....

 

It's more in the context of open source projects that I have my reservations. Those folks expect donations to be from people who like their work enough to support it, not from people who want backlinks.

Smaaz's links, on the other hand, are offered for the purpose of backlinks.

It's just me, I'm sure, but there seems like there's a difference there.

Jay

 

Just paid for one too! Lets see how it goes eh?

Ryan

 

Can you give me one example of this. I just made a quick search for sourceforge but could not find any project which accept donation and agree to list your web site.

 

Try this one: http://moodle.org/donations/

Jay

 

wow...interesting man...do you happen to have lists of any more. Its an very interesting concept

 

if it's good project, yes it's worth sponsoring. same case with wordpress theme or phpld theme sponsoring. those are good investment and sure will got traffic back in return.

 

Nothing wrong with this but they tends to be a lot of links stuffed on one page.

 

Yes, in terms of relevancy, you're not really getting anything from an open source donation link. Sponsoring a theme seems like it'd be better, since you'd have fewer links on each page.

In terms of traffic, I've gotten a handful of visitors from the Moodle donation link. Not really enough to justify the donation if I didn't also like the project enough to donate.

Here's a link to a blog post that lists a few other donation sites: http://www.linkrain.com/articles/how-to-get-some-cheap-pr7-backlinks-with-anchor-text/

Jay