Introduction
If you don't know how to sell links, then joining various forums that give you an opportunity to sell links is a bad decision. In the past few days I've been testing how it works and here are the results:
- If you used to sell a single link for say $1000/year, at forums.digitalpoint.com expect maximally $100/year
- Even though your website's pagerank is 5 or higher, it means nothing for buyers at forums.digitalpoint.com
- Don't expect anything fair. Bear in mind that some serious buyers may be out there and a few exceptions may exist!
Why these results? OK, here is how I found out that these fourms are for those who cannot sell links other way.
My first steps
I decided to test how selling links on forums works. Instead of waiting until buyers contact me directly, after visiting some of my websites, I tried how it works when I offer something. Firstly, this stage answers why it is not possible to sell quality links for really good money. It's a psychology. If you're offering something, you show that you need money. If you need money, most likely you'll accept underrated offers. The more offers you accept, the more money you earn (this is how webmasters think – it's BAD).
Honestly, 99% of webmasters are retards who want to make easy money online. So they build a few-pages types of websites, buy some cheap (see below) links in order to get pagerank of 5 or 6, and they start selling links.
But no serious buyers are willing to buy links of low-quality. Easy come, easy go.
I did never care about pagerank and was looking for organic traffic instead. Why have a pagerank of 5 if there are less than 100 unique visitors who visit your website daily? It's good to have a pagerank of 2 with 200 or 300 unique visitors each day! But links sellers don't think this way. Their problem!
Starting forum threads about selling links
I was expecting some serious offers, of course. I offered links on more websites that I have under control (I don't own all of them) and couldn't get a reasonable offer. Where I used to sell a link for $90/month, I got an offer of $90/year. DIFFERENCE! Naturally, I had to reject all offers as I am not beggar.
In order to understand these bad results, I had to undertake further steps...
My Next Test – Buying links
If you know who's paying for links, you have to understand who is offering links. No-one was willing to spend good money on links that I offered, so I had to find out who's offering and selling links. Only then I could understand how the whole thing works.
I contacted a couple of guys who were offering links. Various niches, various pagerank values.
Here is a list of few results:
- PR1 adult link for $12/year.
- PR6 automotive link for $160/year.
Let's analyse the first case, PR1 adult link for only $12/year. When I checked the site, it was nothing but a stupid crap site consisting of homepage, one or two internal pages and links to different domains. I would call it SHIT. Adult niche is very similar to gambling, quality links are very valuable and it's not unusual to sell a single link for $1000+ in these niches.
The second case is very interesting, because if someone's offering a pagerank 6 link, it is usually very valuable. This was not the case though. What I saw was a stupid wordpress based website with a couple of posts and very poor content. The guy knew why the link was worth $160/year for him; Because it was worth $0/year for anyone else. The owner of sport-cars.org sold a single link for $1800/year on his website, and it's not PR6! Unlike that shit offer, sport-cars.org was ranked quite well for particular phrases when the buyer purchased that link. His website was receiving organic traffic that time too! Please note that I don't know how sport-cars.org performs at the moment, but I suppose it's still ranked well.
Cheap links, an opportunity for buyers?
So a PR6 link for $160/year, or an adult PR1 link for $12/year. This sounds quite well for potential buyers. But if you analyse these domains before paying for a link, you'll realise that they're of shit quality and it's not worth spending a penny on them.
Still, good links are not cheap and one may cost several hundreds dollars per year.
Idiots will sell cheap links, and other idiots will buy them.
January 12, 2010
