Selling text links is a risky business if you live or die by Google’s traffic. Google can punish you in 2 ways:

  • slash your Page Rank by one, two or even three notches
  • make you disappear from their Search Engine Results

Of course Google’s open war on sites selling links is clear now so you can either be defiant and be ready to suffer the consequences or abide by Google rules and try to survive.

If you are one of those who were burnt because Google lowered your PageRank for selling links, here’s a good alternative to Text Link Ads. I first saw this on 5xmom.com.

It’s called TopSpots by Scratchback.com and I’m trying it out now on my sidebar. Everytime someone buys a text link from my TopSpots, their links goes to the top while pushing the rest of the links down. This is different from Text Link Ads where you typically buy a spot for around USD 20 or more per link and it lasts a month. TopLinks lets you set whatever price you want per link (Min: USD1 per link). Everything is automated so you get paid automatically when someone buys a topspot.

Nofollow
Another big difference compared to TLA is that each link has a “nofollow” so this will not try to game the PR system. No passing of PR juice means keeping Google happy. :)

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