Selling monthly or one time links - can it be penalised by Google?
- SEO |
I have this semi popular health site and I am really in need a way of ratcheting up revenue. The site gets several thousand uniques a day with excess of 10K page views, regular comments, returning visitors and so on. While Adsense was doing really well until the end of October, since the start of November it really has seen a big dip in terms of both CTR and ecpm. Adsense sent me message in my account that some of the pages are not loading quickly hence the drop. But I don't see the pages loading any slower than other sits. Site speed tools give me under 3 seconds and when I visit myself, the pages load quickly enough, not by any means slow that people will leave the site because of speed.
Since I get requests here and there from people wanting to buy guest posts for $100 to $150 one time payment, which I always refuse because I want my site to be impartial, but now I am having second thoughts because of Adsense's lackluster performance in the last 3 months or so.
I have been tempted to sell guest posts, or simply links at the end of articles of their choosing.
I can easily charge $200-$300 I reckon because the site is popular, PR5 and has return traffic value. I have seen people sell links on much lesser sites for up to $200 for a yearly link, so I presume I can charge much higher for a lifetime link than the $200-$300, maybe as much $700-$800.
But here is my concern, since Google makes up around 70% of the traffic, can it accrue a penalty from Google search selling links? Personally, I don't see it any different than selling advertising space.
By the way, I am currently making money off adsense on this site (but lot less than pre-November) and also few hundred dollars a month total from Clickbank and affiliate products.
Since I get requests here and there from people wanting to buy guest posts for $100 to $150 one time payment, which I always refuse because I want my site to be impartial, but now I am having second thoughts because of Adsense's lackluster performance in the last 3 months or so.
I have been tempted to sell guest posts, or simply links at the end of articles of their choosing.
I can easily charge $200-$300 I reckon because the site is popular, PR5 and has return traffic value. I have seen people sell links on much lesser sites for up to $200 for a yearly link, so I presume I can charge much higher for a lifetime link than the $200-$300, maybe as much $700-$800.
But here is my concern, since Google makes up around 70% of the traffic, can it accrue a penalty from Google search selling links? Personally, I don't see it any different than selling advertising space.
By the way, I am currently making money off adsense on this site (but lot less than pre-November) and also few hundred dollars a month total from Clickbank and affiliate products.
Check out StephenWaldo.com