Nov 09 2007
Dubious Behaviour from a Link Sales Site
I recently submitted this site to a third-party link sales site (who shall remain nameless for reasons that should become clear - but use your imagination) and I was approved not only for their regular program but also for some special new program they’re trialling. The whole operation seemed pretty top secret and before I was told what the new program was I had to check a box to confirm that I wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag (oops!). I don’t tend to blog about new products and stuff like that so I clicked the box and was taken to the next step.
The new program, it turns out, involves allowing advertisers to purchase words that are already a part of my content to turn them into links. Fine… seems ok. That’s something that already goes on with companies like Kontera. I think their program works by detecting desirable keywords, turning them automatically into links and then having a pay per click type setup. Kontera links are easily identifiable because they have double lines under the words and I think a window pops up as well when they’re scrolled over.
So far, so good but as I carried on reading things started getting a bit dodgy. The program description stated that links they sold would look exactly the same as other links on my site. There would be no distinction between the paid hyperlinks and those that I’d added myself. Plus, with this veil of secrecy, it looks like site owners aren’t even allowed to make their readers aware of the existence of the paid links. It would therefore look like every paid link is a recommendation by the site’s owner and I’ve got a big problem with that.
There’s something sleazy about this whole operation. I’m not totally against people putting paid or pay per click links within their content (although I find them distracting) but having paid links that are indiscernible from regular links is deceptive to me. The fact that the company doesn’t allow the site owners to discuss the program is just plain shifty. They say that this new program will pay a lot more than their regular one but is abusing the trust of your readers worth a few extra bucks? Not for me.
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I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go. 
I had the exact same experience with I think the same company. I looked at the words that people were buying and they had nothing to do with the post that I was writing about.
David
I think these in context links are far from perfect too - I was reading a blog that was using linkedin sp? and every time they said something like tours or adventures it linked to “appropriate” content - all fine except the blog was about Sydney and the links were all US content duh!
To monetize or not to…that is a M$ question. I hate gambling, and that’s exactly how I feel now. Or, maybe I’m just exaggerating since I can’t even make the affiliates work. I thought I knew how to follow directions(sometimes) but when it gets to the end, and the last step says ‘copy’ and ‘paste to your website’…then, it doesn’t do that–holy guacamole!
But, I’ll keep paying attention to what everybody is talking about so when I stumble upon something similar…hopefully I won’t feel I’ve floated into another universe. It’s an eye-opener to all the ‘fun’ things you can learn after fifty.
Well, it all sounds a bit iffy to me. My initial gut reastion is that it seems a pretty underhand way of going about business - I think it betrays the trust of the reader and would also completely ruin the credibility of the blog and in turn the blog’s author. If I thought a site was writing purely for dollars (literally) I would start to question every single post they wrote. ie - is this genuine advice or is it simply posted with the ulterior motives of simply scooping in more cash?
I dare say I wouldn’t stay in my reader for long.
Also, i think that that it would be all to easy for a blog authot to trash their site in this quest for this new type of ad revenue. Principles would start going out the window and a person using this kind of scheme would have sold out before they new it.
I don’t mean to sound riteous, as we all welcome a bit of cash to cover hosting etc, but you have to question the ethics of this kind of advertising. I don’t know, maybe I’m being a bit hard line on this, but if you don’t consider your readers (who, lets face it, are the main factor that determines whether your blog is popular or not) the number one priority then a website will surely sink without a trace. And what’s the point in writing if there is no-one there to read it and gain peasure from it? And also from a payment point of view, if no one visits then there IS no ad revenue.
Like you, I don’t think I’d want to support an organisation sporting such sneaky, underhand tactics.
Thanks for the heads up- I think I might have signed up with them. But then again they were kind of sleezy anyways I might have to cancel that account. Also, I never got it straightened out quite right to go on my site…
You are going to see this more and more with how G changed their link selling policies.
i much prefer to have total control over what links are going into my site - if it’s an adsense block, you can make it fairly obvious to the reader that these are google adverts, but just as you’ve said, with these text links, i’d not be very happy with it looking like i was recommending some site i’ve probably never even heard of.
Maybe this is the start of the internet ’selling out’ so to speak? So far I think it’s been relatively ad free when compared to the onslaught we face every day when we turn on the TV, radio or walk out the front door.
It makes sense for companies to want to advertise within a site’s content but I’m not sure it sits well with me. I wonder how many people have signed up to this. I wonder if there’s any way of even knowing.