A few weeks ago I met up with Matt from Nomadic Matt and Shawn (Sean? Shaun?) from Wandering Why for lunch. Of course chatter turned to my favourite topic, nerdy internet stuff, and eventually we started talking about another favourite of mine, link sales.

I mentioned that I often get contactedout of the blue by people looking to buy links. Often they’re good offers, but every now and then they stink. I mentioned that I had been contacted in the past by people looking to buy permanent links in older blog posts. The links would be in posts well buried by now so, by the buyer’s logic, it shouldn’t really effect my site at all.

Matt said that he’d been contacted recently by a chick offering $90 to buy links on six old posts of his. I had actually been contacted by her at a similar time, it turns out. We both knocked her back. I replied that I don’t sell permanent links (but I love to buy them!) and that I probably wouldn’t sell them for $90 each, let alone $90 for six.

So I’m guessing this chick got in touch with quite a few travel blogger types. Often they’re working for an SEO company on behalf of someone else’s site. I wonder how many people took her up on the offer? My logic is that $90 isn’t that much but a permanent link is forever. I would need a lot more money thrown my way befor eI’d consider sticking a permanent link to any part of any of my websites.

What do you think, is $90 for six links on old, buried posts a good deal?

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If you’re planning on attempting to sell direct links on your sites and are successful at it at some point you’ll have to come up with a system to keep track of them all. Doing this sooner rather than later will save headaches and lost sales down the road. I thought it might be handy if I share with you what I do to get you thinking about how you might want to keep track of your own sales.

Set Up a Paypal Subscription

The easiest way to keep tracks of links is to not have to keep track at all. Paypal has a subscription option that completely removes the need to keep track of link expiry dates and chase people for payment. If you can get an advertiser to agree then this is the way to go but it’s not always possible either because companies want to pay by cheque or bank transfer, or because links are sold on a longer term basis and they’ll want to reassess before renewing.

Setting up a subscription is simple. Log in to Paypal and click on the ‘Merchant Services’ tab and then on the ‘Subscriptions and Recurring Payments’ link which is on the right hand side under the ‘Useful Links’ title. Click on ‘Get Started’ and then follow the instructions from there to create a subscription button. Upload the code to one of your sites, send the URL to your buyer and that’s that. I think there’s a way to email them the link too but I’ve never attempted it.

Links Tracking Spreadsheet

If  you can’t convice your advertiser that Paypal subscriptions are the way forward then you’ll have to come up with a system to track the expiry dates yourself. When I only had a few links to keep track of I just kept the emails in a separate folder and checked it every month to see which ones would be expiring. It only took a second but often I would forget to put emails into that folder and managed to completely lose touch with some people, and therefore the sale.

Once I had more than a couple of links to keep track of, I needed to come up with a new system and whipped up this handy spreadsheet:

It’s a simple thing, but it’s a lifesaver to be able to glance at the spreadsheet and know exactly how many links I have due for renewal, what dates they expire, where on my sites they’re located, what sites they link to and the contact details of the person who bought it the first time around.

In the ‘Expiry and Duration’ column I’ve got things like ‘11th - 6′. That means that the link was sold on the 6th of the month and is valid for six months. I put the price that was paid in the appropriate month’s column and then highlight the box for six months away so I know which months I need to collect renewal payments. Having the contact and link details on the spreadsheet means I don’t need to look for old emails. All the information I need to send a chaser email is right in front of my which is a huge time saver.

Most importantly, no more advertisers are lost in the abyss that is my Yahoo email account.

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In the past I’ve always quoted prices in US dollars. I have no idea why I got into this terrible little habit but I’m guessing it’s because the net as a whole tends to operate based on the US dollar. Link sales over on Digitalpoint are always quoted in US$, online products and membership fees are in US$ and programmers, content writers and designers always seem to be after the not so mighty green back. I’m not a fan of the US$ right now. It sucks and continues to suck and will potentially suck for many years to come and if I can avoid it by dealing with other currencies, I will.

Fortunately, I get contacted several times a month by companies looking to get their greasy little text links onto my websites. Most of my sites are aimed at UK residents and I’ve noticed that more and more companies that approach me are UK based as well. I recently realised that there’s no reason to quote prices to these people in US$ so I’ve started giving my link prices to them in the £. The trick is that I haven’t been converting.

If I would normally sell a link for $10 per month and I get contacted by a British company then I’ll tell them it’s £10 a month. Considering the US$ is worth about half of the pound, I’ve just doubled my monthly earnings to $20. A couple months ago I sold a yearly link to a UK company for £200 where normally I’d have asked for $200. Presto! I’ve just doubled my earnings by doing nothing more than being cheeky.

Does that mean that I’m undervaluing my links and could ask for double in US dollars? I don’t think so. I’ve had no luck selling links for $20 per month but £10 is no problem. Maybe $20 just seems like a lot more to advertisers than £10 even though it’s the same amount? Who knows.

So if you get the chance to deal with companies in the UK, try putting your prices in pounds. So far it’s working for me and it’s always great to be able to double your money without doing a thing!

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I’m thinking that if I want to treat this whole thing like a business I might need to kick up the professionalism a bit. It’s not really by choice because I don’t like stuffy crap like that, but I’ve just been given a kick in the arse by the people at Moneysupermarket.com that has made me rethink a few things.

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.

I got an email yesterday from Moneysupermarket.com guy saying that the deal was off. I emailed back to ask why (it’s annoying I had to ask, especially since they’ve already had a link up for several days without any payment) and he went into a spiel about it not being acceptable that the private details of the deal had been made public… blah blah blah… a professional level of privacy is expected… yadda yadda yadda… trust has been lost… etc etc etc.

I really can’t fault them at all for feeling that way but I don’t think my post was particularly evil, really. I’m guessing that someone read my post and innocently contacted them about selling a link of their own, mentioning my post. I wouldn’t expect someone would have read it and thought to rat me out but if that’s the case then you suck.

This has cost me the deal for the London link, and a couple of other links worth £150 for a total of £250. An expensive lesson, but I’m actually happy to have learned it. Unfortunately for this site it means that I won’t be giving details of the companies I deal with anymore, but I think that actually makes sense. If I keep mentioning who is buying links from me then people with similar sites are likely to try their luck too. Common sense is not one of my strong points so I guess I’ve had to learn it the hard way.

I guess the chatty, casual approach isn’t gonna cut it! Time to treat this thing like the business that it is. This email probably isn’t too professional either but I’ve already been bitchslapped by MoneySupermarket and really have nothing to lose. Plus I think it’s a valuable lesson and I don’t want to see anyone else making the same mistake!

Professionalism starts now. No…….. now. Ok, NOW!

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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’m a bit busy with a whole bunch of annoying things in the offline world so I haven’t had a chance to compile my super duper huge list of potential advertisers. In the meantime, I thought I’d address a comment made on my last post about making that first contact with possible advertisers.

Lea pointed out that sending off bulk emails to addresses I find in magazines might not be the best approach as they’re meant to be for customers, not for random incoming sales pitches. I totally agree with this but the problem I have is that I’m both lazy and completely crap at sales. Because of this, phoning is out of the question. I love the anonymity and simplicity of just shooting off a bunch of emails and hoping for the best but I acknowledge that it’s probably not going to have the results that a phonecall might have. I’ve had luck finding advertisers in the past but I put that down to being able to speak directly to the marketing person. This has either been because they’ve contacted me previously about something else or just because the company is a small one and the people who work there have to be a Jack of all trades.

So I have a semi evil plan and have decided to comprimise a bit. I’m going to stick to emailing, but instead of being totally lazy and jumping straight into my pitch,  I’m going to send out pre-ad pitch emails to try to find out who holds the marketing purse strings. Sort of a little reconnosance mission where I get to be all sneaky and stuff. I’m not sure yet what I’ll write but I’ll draft something up (I’ll let you know what I come up with) and then send it from one of my many email addresses. I’m going to avoid using my main email address so that I can still attempt to get in touch with anyone who ignores me without coming across as too stalkerish.

This whole thing is an experiment and I’m not really expecting much, to be honest. If it works that’s great, if not then I’ll know not to waste my time approaching people out of the blue in the future. Just another step in what has become a massive trial and error process for me!

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The reason I had to wait until Monday to start this little link sales journey of mine is because that’s when TNT Magazine comes out. What is TNT you ask? Well, it’s a weekly free magazine targeted squarely at the same folks that my site is targeted at - Aussies, Kiwis, and South Africans in London plus any other young people here on a working visa. About a two thirds of it is content including feature articles about festivals, life in London, road trips, European travel etc. The rest is packed with advertising and that’s the part that I’m interested in.

The ads in this magazine will act like a checklist for me. It’s reasonable to think that any company advertising in TNT might also be interested in an ad on my website. Ads in TNT are not cheap so I know any company I see in there has a pretty substantial advertising budget and they might be willing to spare a small amount for me.

Each ad in TNT usually has a website and email address listed somewhere so most of my work is already done, laid out in the pages of the magazine. This afternoon at work I flicked through the pages, taking note of possible advertisers. I set up a little spreadsheet listing the type of company (tour companies, shipping, recruitment, hostel etc.), the company name, URL, email address and then I have columns for date emailed and response. The idea is to make a pretty big list using TNT and a few other resources and then work through it, noting when I sent emails, if I got a response and what their reply was.

There are a couple other magazines I can look at for ideas and I know some companies I want to approach just from seeing them around the web or the city. For example, there’s a company called Man and Van that’s an Aussie owned removals company. Then there’s the Oz Bus which is an overland trip between London and Sydney that I’ve seen advertised in the pubs. Plus there are sports leagues I know about. I’ll spend the next few days brainstorming my list and then send out a flurry of emails later in the week.

Having TNT magazine and knowing the market so well is a huge advantage because I’m almost overrun with possible advertisers. I don’t think getting a list of companies would be as easy in most industries. Now the trick is converting as many as I can to sales!

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It looks like I’ve finally tweaked and tinkered with my living in London site enough for me to considering the thing finished. Actually my sites are never really finished as I usually try to keep adding content here and there, but it’s finished enough to be attractive to a potential advertiser. The major thing that was holding me back was just the crappy header that I used to have and that’s been replaced by something a bit less crappy and now I’m ready to attempt to sell ads on the site.

I thought it might be interesting to keep track of my efforts of selling ad space from start to finish. So far I’ve never really been rejected when I’ve approached companies to advertise, but I’ve only ever done it a few times. I’m not expecting my little run of luck to continue with everyone I approach and I think it might be interesting for people to see which companies I’ve approached, how I’ve done it, their reaction, the price I’ve asked, the price that was agreed, or which ones have come back with a big, fat NO.

Starting on Monday, here are the areas I’ll touch upon:

• Where to find potential advertisers
• Making the first approach
• Deciding what types of ads to offer
• Setting an initial price and then negotiating
• Sealing the deal and receiving payment
• Keeping track of link sales
• Building rapport with advertisers and keeping them sweet

I’ve written about some of these things already but think that with an actual site and actual companies the whole thing becomes a bit more interesting. Rather than making a post about each heading, I’ll just be giving a sort of running progress report with those topics as key features.

When I built my London site, direct link sales were something that were on my mind from the start. I know that there are a lot of companies who want to advertise to the market my site is aimed at and the trick for me will be convincing them that my site is the way to reach them. I’ve always been really bad at sales so this will be a challenge, but one that I’m looking forward to.

Keeping track of things from start to finish will hopefully shed some light on this whole link sales process and open my eyes as well to how it all works. Here’s hoping things go smoothly! Nah… that’d be boring.

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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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Last week I got an email from a guy called Justin who, I suspect, works for an SEO type company. Initially he was after a link on my Ireland page and later came back with a list of more pages on Travoholic.com he wanted to advertise on.

I know I talk about direct link sales a lot but I thought it might be interesting to use this example to give an idea of what sorts of things I look at when considering whether or not to sell off a chunk of my site for a quick buck.

• Does the ad make my site look spammy? - Usually people only want to buy text links but in this case the guy was after a short paragraph with several links so making sure I could pull it off without it looking to spammy becomes important.
• Does the link point to a quality site? - For some reason some of the links point to NASA and I have a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t own that site so I’m not too sure what’s going on there. The other links are all pretty decent sites so I can’t complain too much.
• Am I getting a fair price? - He originally asked for a permanent link for $35 on one page and I instead offered only a year for that price which he agreed. But then he found a few more pages of interest and offered $175 for six ads. I refused to put links on two of the pages but agreed the others (here, here and here). He then sent me the anchor text and it turned out that he was after paragraphs with 5 links in each. I’m not too keen on these types of links but offered to do them all for $250. He countered with $200 which I accepted. If he would have been after links on my main page I would have bargained harder but for those pages the price is fine.
• Will it take a lot of effort to add? - Because of the archaic way my sites are set up, some things are a huge pain in the arse to add, like site wide links and certain other things. The reason I turned down ads on the other two pages is because they wouldn’t have fit well with the page setup. All up, adding these four ads took about 20 minutes. That’s an hourly wage I can appreciate!
• Is the ad deceptive? - I think he would have preferred just having the paragraph in amongst the content of my site but I requested a ‘Sponsored Link’ type image be put above the ad.
• Will the link have a negative effect on SEO? - I don’t know what I’ve done right with Travoholic.com but nothing seems to have an effect on it in the SERPs (I am knocking on wood as I type this… or on something that looks like wood). I think the site is trust by Google because it’s so old and adding links, so far, hasn’t had any effect. Believe me, I’ve added lots.

My thinking behind my recent bout of link whoring is that the site is pretty neglected and going nowhere at the moment anyways, so if someone wants to buy links then I might as well let them. Once I start to put a little bit of tender loving care back into it then I’m sure I’ll be a bit pickier with who I sell links to and in what format. I have some major plans for this site that will involve phasing out paid links. I won’t be doing this anytime soon though so for now I might as well take advantage of the real estate!

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