Dec 04 2007
The First London Link Sale
Since I’m totally dragging my feet on the whole direct link sales case study thing for my living in London site, I thought I’d give an little update with some good news. I’ve managed to sell my first link on the site without much effort at all.
Some guy from MoneySupermarket.com contacted me out of the blue about buying a link on my backpacking site’s links page. We made the sale and, knowing they’re a pretty huge company with what must be a seriously massive marketing budget, suggested that he might want a link on my London site.
The pitch went a little something like this:
As you’re buying links I thought I’d mention another site of mine, http://www.stuckinlondon.com. I’m just about to contact a bunch of companies about advertising and thought I’d see if you were interested. Links would be on the front page under the ‘Partner Sites’ bit and I’ll be starting out with a price of £10/month or £100 for the year. It’s a site targeted at a market who do a lot of travelling and the site gets a good amount of traffic and is on an old, trusted domain. Thought I’d see if you wanted to jump on board… it’s a bargain!
Actually, the pitch went exactly like that. I like to keep my correspondence pretty laid back and chatty rather than stuffy and formal and so far it works for me.
His reply? He agreed it was a bargain and I’ve got my first sale! I should have asked for more considering size of the company but my plan has always been to ask for £100 per year so thought I’d stick with it. If I find that I make more sales at this price without much hassle then I might consider raising it a bit.
I think the sale was easy because, once again, I was already in touch with the marketing guy. The price really is a good one and I think marketing people who deal with lots of other sites will recognise this. I’ve been contacted about links on Travoholic.com loads of times and I’m thinking that I should dig through those old emails and see if any of them are keen on my London site as well.
So one link down, lots to go!
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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. 
Well done you! Stg10 sounds good to me - but I dont live in the UK - Stg always sounds good to the rest of us! Does the advertiser provide the link, image etc as well?
Well done! Perhaps I should be doing this also on my website.
I like your new stuckinlondon.com…very much, actually. I’m curious whether you completely replace the old one, or you keep it saved somewhere just in case you don’t like the new one.
You share wonderful nuggets of ideas and I hope I could put them to use when I’m no longer stuckinthedailyrut.web of life!
[…] I posted a couple days ago about the first link sale on my London site and mentioned the name of the company buying the link. I actually thought twice about posting their name and decided to do it anyways because I really want this blog to be up front and give as much information and help to people as possible. I’m thinking that hasn’t been a smart move. […]