advertising space sale question

[lacantina]

Ciao all,

Just got an advertising offer from an online casino media buyer. They're asking us to place a ten line link on every page of our site (except our homepage, they gave no details on location of the link on each page) for 6 months.

They want to know how much we'd charge for that. Since we've never sold advertising space this way, I have no idea of current rates.

So how much would you guys ask for?

Thanks for your help!

lacantina

[keltin]

It really depends on your traffic & even the google page rank which it sounds like what they may be after.
Does your site have any PR?

[Sam I Am]

It also depends how many pages you are talking about; is it 5 or more like 5000?

Personally, I am wary linking to any sites that are off topic (as well as casino, pills etc sites), just because I think they add very little to the users experience on our site and for the money they deliver, it's just not worth it. On the other hand, if you're talking a multi thousand page site with a high pr, it's worth good money. Just make sure they pay in advance for the whole period...

Sam

[ReviewGolf.com]

Rule of thumb: Charge what will make you happy!

[G[dot]com]

Originally Posted by ReviewGolf.com

Rule of thumb: Charge what will make you happy!

How ironic... I never would have expected such answer from someone who quote themselves in their signature saying: ""Web design is the area saturated by amateurs that confuse software capabilities with their own talent." ~~ me"

Funny thing.

Now, back to the question... a ten line 10 link to a casino in each of your internal pages? How do you think a search engine will interpret that? Surely as a spam technique or other obscure manipulation.

My answer to your question is a question, I am sorry: How much does the integrity of your website cost if you put it in risk? Calculate that and you will have the money you have to charge for the advertising. IMHO.

Needless to say what I would recommend you, right?

Good Luck.

[ozchris]

Why not see if you can find the "commercial" market value of such links from someone like textlinkbrokers.com, whose business is selling links?

[Aldo]

Ciao

I don't think these links will help with the perceived credibility of your site and you can bet your life that they will want them somewhere near the top of your sites pages to help with SEO and click-throughs. Also remember that Google judges you by the company you keep.

That said we all need to find ways to pay the bills so if you really want the extra income from this Casio, I would take ozchris advice to get an idea what the space on your site is worth then add an extra 50% to that amount and try my luck, if they say no it was probably not meant to be,

Stammi bene,

Al

[lacantina]

Thanks for all your replies guys!

Well, we're talking about around 20 pages.

Traffic we get is not high, but very targeted thanks to our GoogleAds. So more about quality than quantity.

PR, for some mysterious reason, is still low. I add our site to directories daily, but it just doesn't seem to rise to a respectable level. We haven't been involved in any blackhat SEO and Google hasn't banned us, but it nevertheless fails to recognise our value...!

As for checking the current rates on textlinkbrokers.com sounds like a good idea. If we DO go through with this, I definitely don't want to undercharge them.

But on the other hand, I agree with the relevancy issue and I have thought about Google wondering what the hell a casino link is doing on a hip hop production website. I also feel sort of "bad" morally for promoting online gambling, but like some of you said, if it pays the bills...

I guess I'm going to ask for A LOT, because the risk is big here.

But out of curiousity, how much would you guys charge for your own websites?

Aldo - Grande! Finalmente ho trovato un'italiano anche su sti forum! Di dove sei??

[zbatia]

You said:
"Google ...but it nevertheless fails to recognise our value".

...and it won't with the links to the casino web sites.
The value is presented by your web site content. If you have a problem with it better work on increasing the value by adding the related content instead of risking the integrity of your web site.

Do not submit often because the SE don't like it.

I would not charge any fee because I would not like to place the spam like casino links on my web sites. It almost always indicates the low quality content.