You may have used a service such as Text link ads or any number of other text ad brokers to sell text links on your site. Whilst using such services provides convenience and a ready market of buyers you are going to be paying a percentage of any sales a broker makes.
How to sell your own links
The first thing you need to decide when selling links your self are the price and term of the links. You can choose to sell permanent links or links for a set period. If you are going to sell links for a set period you need to decide what periods of time you want to offer.
Usually links are offered on a monthly basis so you would sell a link on your site that would remain there for a month. If you are going to be selling links on multiple sites then it is easier to manage links that are sold for longer periods. Terms of 3, 6 or 12 months are popular options.
Link location
The placement of the links you are offering are important as this will affect the price you can get for any particular link. If you were selling links in the footer of your site they would fetch much less than links located in within the sites navigation.
Links in the footer or within the sites navigation are the most popular option. You will find link buyers will generally want the cheaper footer links if they are after SEO benefits rather than the direct traffic or branding.
The number of outgoing links
An important factor to consider is the number of outgoing links. This is how many links that leave your site if the visitor clicks on them. The more outgoing links the lower the value to a potential buyer, you should always state the number of links you are selling.
Types of text links
You must also decide on the type of link you are offering. Javascript links of links with the No follow attribute offer no benefits other than traffic. Most link buyers are buying links to boost their Page Rank so they will want a search engine friendly link with a specific keyword anchor text of their choosing.
As well as being sure of the format of your links you will need to specify the type of sites you are accepting as advertisers. You need to consider the effect certain links appearing on your site will have on your visitors. An obvious example is if you have a site for mums and toddlers you will not want ads appearing on that site of an adult nature.
How much should you charge?
There are no hard and fast rules for deciding a price. There are a few factors you can take into consideration when deciding.
Of these Page Rank is by far the biggest selling point and will be the biggest determining factor on the price you can charge. The main reason for this is that it’s what link buyers are demanding.
To answer the question I am not going to list some figures as they will soon become outdated and meaningless. Even giving general figures would not really help as every site is individual. A good rule of thumb is to charge what the market can bare. If your price is too high no-one will buy.
Where to sell your text links
I have had some experience in selling text links directly and have found the most effective way is to offer your links on popular webmaster related forums. The best by far is the link sales forum on Digital Point.
When selling links directly on forums you will find you will not get as high a price as if you were selling through a service such as Text Link ads due to the shrewdness of the members. for the same reason it is also a great place to pick up links at bargain prices.
Additionally creating a specific text link sales page on your site will provide a ready source of information you can direct potential buyers to. It will also act as a sales funnel for any of your site visitors looking to buy.
