Make money selling text link ads

The reason why people buy links should be obvious by now to most of you. As a summary some buy links for the traffic it can bring to their site, some buy to increase their PageRank and some buy to make google see them associated with a frequently searched query phrase. If you want to read more on this please visit my post on selling links.

Some people that have been around for some time might have noticed the recent crackdown by Google on paid link publishers and advertisers. The internet community has divided itself in two camps because of this, one that is welcoming such actions from google and the other one that is calling them hypocrites. I am not here to point fingers at neither camp. The truth of the matter remains that links are still being sold and bought but not out in the open anymore.

If you have a site that has either good traffic or a nice PR then you can certainly find link buyers for it.

Depending on the traffic on your site, your PR or the theme (niche) of your site people might be willing to pay from $1 to a few hundreds dollars per month for a single link.

How do you find advertisers/sponsors for your blog ?
The easiest way that I have found is through the webmaster forums. Lots of people visit places like DP V7n and WMT on a daily basis to post their links offers or find such offers. In most forums you can find such deals in the "Buy Sell Trade" Business section.

For easier browsing the abbreviations used in the trade forums are WTB (=want to buy), WTS (=want to sell) and WTE (=want to exchange) so one can easily find niche specific offers using the appropriate abbreviations and the niche topic using the built in search (i.e. WTB travel).

Text link broker services
Finding your own advertisers is probably the most profitable way to sell links but it is time consuming. If you want to be free from the burden of finding advertisers for you sites there are professional services to do just that for you.


The way this usually works is:

• you submit your site for inclusion
  
• you copy and paste a code snippet in your sites pagess
• your site is evaluated to see if it is worth to display any text links
  
• after approval it is entered in a directory of publishers for prospective advertisers to see and purchase links
• when advertisers are interested you get a notification and approve their links which are automatically displayed on your site
• if you reach the minimum payout for the month you can withdraw your money with paypal or other means
  

This is just to give you an idea of the process. These steps are not always there, and each text link service will have their own step by step guide to set them up.

I have tried numerous text link brokers in the past, some have not accepted my sites, some have not delivered any advertisers and that is why its worth to try a few and see which ones are working for you.

The two automated link selling programs that I have used successfully in the past are Text Link Ads and Direct Link Ads.

What services have you successfully used ?

Bloggers/Writers: get $$ for guest blogging

I am looking for guest bloggers for this money making blog as well as my web design blog

Why do I need guest bloggers ?
I don't have time to post very often since I only post unique articles (not copy and paste)

How will this work ?

• Be a webmaster, designer, SEOer (other related field worker), or have ideas on how to make money on the internet
• send me unique article(s) that can fit well in geoland.org or here (There is no real guidelines other than being original and yourself and your articles are inline with the rest of the blog's)
• if you get 2 or more articles posted in a month I will pay you $10/per article minimum. I can probably give more if they are exceptional articles. The monthly period is not a strict requirement either.
  

As added bonues you also get

• my friendship (priceless ;-) )
• 2 permanent links to your blog on every article that you write,
• get exposed to my regular audience 50-100 uniques a day on each blog
  

The articles have to be unique and thoughtful, please don't waste my time and yours sending me articles that took you 1 minute to write or are just copied and pasted from elsewhere.

Hope I covered everything that needs to be said, but if you have more questions please post them here.

GiorgosK.
_________

Real People make Real money on the internet

Jim Westergren is a well respected SEO professional in the DP forums. He is also known for running his company seo-fusion.com which apparently was sold recently for $157,700. We had a chance to chat with him about SEO, seo-fusion, the sale, the future, and Jim as a person. Here is what he had to say:

-Jim when and where were you born ?

1982, Malmö Sweden


- any studies ?

Until age of 17, then I left school to do more important things in my opinion


- any other work experience (other than seo-fusion) ?

From age 17 to 22 I worked in an international organisation in Denmark. It was very tough but I learned a lot. I learned for example that you are yourself responsible for everything that happens in your life and that you are totally capable of doing anything, it is all in the mind.


- when did you discover the internet ? what did you use it for ?

1997 or something I guess. At that time it was mostly used for school to find information. I made my first web site in 1999. Then from end of 1999 to end of 2004 I had no access to internet. At end of 2004 I discovered Google and was totally hooked.


- when and how did you discover you can make money off the internet ?

I learned how to do web sites and so I started a small company offering web design. This was in 2005.


- when and why was seo-fusion conceived ? who was part of it ?

On the Jan 13th, 2006 I opened up that site and blogged about it
. I had bought the site from a person on DP. At that time it was only me and partners. Later on I got a few employes in Sweden. seo-fusion.com represented the english part of my company.



- what did seo-fusion help its clients with ?

Link building


- what was your workday schedule like ? (days/week ? hours/week ?)

Impossible to say. Some weeks I didn't so much other than work and some weeks it was more relaxed.


- how many clients did you get over its existence ?

This is a bit hard to answer depending on how you count. We had over 200 clients using our Directory Submission and perhaps 20-30 clients that bought link building packages.


- how much was seo-fusion making per month, at the beggining and before the sale, what where the expenses ?

When I started out with the company part time I charged $15 per hour. In it's high peak after about 1 and a half year me and my employee grossed around $30.000 a month.


- why was it sold ? how much ?

There is a lot I could write about it but I can say that it is a combination of many things that culminated me to do what I did. Some of these things are in order of magnitude: Wanted to follow my writing dream, not having a life outside the internet, having almost no friends in real life, a complicated big religious conflict, Googles campaign against link selling, the inability to service more as all resources was used up, the services became less effective and gave less results, the pain of always being behind and having backlog, the urge to find a girlfriend, my fathers dominant personality and much more (read about the whole story here)

$157,700 USD


- where did Epiphany find out about your willingness to sell seo-fusion ?

They read this article and contacted me. They were one of my biggest clients who was resellers. They needed the services to continue and so they bought everything. So I didn't even write anywhere that it was for sale.


- was seo-fusion a good experience overall ?

Yes, was a great experience and I learned a lot.


- what where your hobbies before/with/past seo-fusion ?

People, travelling, discussing, reading, writing, thinking, philosophy, metaphysics, personal development, learning, astronomy, sci-fi, future speculations, games, internet, internet marketing, movies, music, history, science


- what things do you do for work lately ?

I am planning my own web site projects that I will invest in, invest some in the stock market and continue work as a internet marketing consultant for bigger companies.


- will you continue in the SEO field ? any details ?

I will continue as a consultant for SEO and internet marketing and I am actually right now negotiating with a big company in Stockholm Sweden. If they accept my offer then I will work for them for some weeks and then part time externally. Otherwise I am not doing so much SEO except for my own web site projects.


- what would you advise people that want to make money on or from the internet ?

You earn a lot of money if you help companies make more money. Don't think about money in the beginning, make something that people really want. Study personal development.


- Is there anything that you would like to share with us ?

At the end of 2004 I returned to Sweden with no education, any kind of money, experience or friends. I sat down in front of my computer to learn web design and SEO and today 3 years later I have a company with assets worth over $300K and I personally own 90% of the company. So IT IS possible!

To read some more, you can see:
http://www.jimwestergren.com/second-annual-report-my-success-online/
http://www.jimwestergren.com/first-annual-report-my-success-online/

Here are 2 great forums:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/

Make money with Auctions: site review

I have always wanted to learn the ins and outs of people making money with auctions. I have been hearing stories every so often about ebay and how people are always selling and buying stuff there but I never had the time to learn about it.

According to successwithauctions.com that promises to teach you how to make money online for free the idea is simple

buy low, sell high and take the difference to supplement your income
...
Think of it like having a neighborhood yards sale, you can sell old items that are just laying around the house or forgotten about in your attic. You can find unused items from your neighbors and friends, or buy a product online for cheap

Ebay alone has grossed $44.3 billion in sold merchandise last year. Other sites that can handle public auctions for their users are Half.com, uBid.com, ShopGoodWill.com but there are others.

What do you need to start making money with Auctions ?

• A credit card, debit card, or other pre-paid card
• Computer with internet access
• Product - Buy low and sell high

Definitely the most important aspect of this kind of business is how to buy low and sell high. This is the part that needs some creativity and that what determines the real winner. For example if you have a hobby that you not active in anymore and the equipment is just rusting in a storage area think about auctioning it.

The sites main focus is auctions but it also has lots of material for anyone who is interested in earning a living from home with subjects such as affiliate programs, eBooks, paid surveys, blogging, newsletters etc.

Furthermore it has articles on How one can start a Home based business and it includes necessary information on business licensing, startup financing, business software, how one can start their business website, and even articles on positive business thinking and how one can set short and long-term business goals.

Make money writing and distributing articles

Webmasters need backlinks
One of the ways webmasters can get one way backlinks to their websites is through article distribution. There are on the internet lots of websites that would hold articles written by different kind of authors and are usually called article directories. These authors give their articles for free distribution in exchange for the recognition and 1-2 backlinks to their website which is usually put in their Bio box at the end of each article.

Most webmasters are not good at copywriting
The article directories in order to include the articles, require that the articles have some proper syntax and should be nicely written. Most webmasters are not famous for their writing skills hence the need for copywriters for article writing. The better an article that you can write the easier is to be accepted in the article directories. Thus if you are a freelance writer and you can't seem to land any gigs in any of the "find a freelancer" places you can try posting at the webmaster forums content writing sections.

Add value to your service; Distribute the articles
You can additionally distribute the articles to article directories for an extra fee. The more directories you submit to the more you can ask for because the more links the webmaster could get. The way this variation of article writing works is pretty simple. You write an article for a topic related to your customer's website and you use links to that site in your author's Bio box when you distribute it.

A few article directories you can start with

EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleDashboard.com
SearchWarp.com
ArticlesBase.com
iSnare.com
SelfGrowth.com
Buzzle.com
ArticleCity.com
IdeaMarketers.com
ArticleAlley.com
Web-Source.net
SelfSEO.com
Amazines.com
SearchGuild.com
ArticleSphere.com
BusinessKnowHow.com
PromotionWorld.com
ArticlesFactory.com
ExcellentGuide.com/article
ContentDesk.com
ArticleCube.com
AfroArticles.com
ArticleBiz.com
www.articlesrevenue.com
articles-heaven.com

Or you can search the internet for more article directories.

I am warning you though, distributing articles can be a pretty time consuming task. You could certainly get article submitter software that could help you get it done faster.

Automated article distribution
It recently came to my attention the online service of Article Marketer. A writer can use this service to distribute any number of articles to more than 10000 possible publishers affiliated with Article Marketer. The advantage is that you don't have to do the distribution yourself. You only write the article choose appropriate categories insert your Bio details and the distribution is automatically handled by the system. On top of that article marketer's human editors are checking your syntax, grammar and clarity of your articles before they get distributed and allow you to correct your mistakes.

The service has a free option that promises to distribute the articles to about 20% of those publishers. I am currently using the free service to find out how effective their distribution is and I will probably be reporting the results soon.

If you are a copywriter, article writer, press release writer I encourage you to post your service website in the comments since I am sure your services might be needed in the future from visitors to my site (and me probably)