Trying LinkWorth

I was bummed out some this weekend, worrying that most or all of my TextLinkAds earnings would be coming to an end with Google’s latest pronouncement on paid links. I read Terry’s post, and something in it kept trying to ring a bell, but it took a few days to sink in:

So selling paid links on your blog is totally cool, ok? Keep on keeping on. Just make sure to fix the link up like Matt suggests and you’re fine.

Except people who buy paid links aren’t going to pay for ones with no-follow (or similar) on them. At least not at TextLinkAds, where they emphasize pagerank to the point where I’m forced to admit they’re not so much selling inbounds as pagerank. And because they use PHP to manage to links on your site, it’ll be easily detectable by Google.

I remembered a tip from Empress about LinkWorth and went to check them out. As far as I can tell, you handcode the links – it’s all just straight HTML. Like my blogrolls. In fact, you could put the links in your blogrolls, if they’re a good enough fit.

Google obviously has the right to devalue my outbound links if they want. I mean, they have no way of knowing if my blogrolls or any other links on my site are paid or not. Either they’re going to have to devalue all outbound links that don’t have no-follow or scripting; or they’re going to rely on tips, which will be hilarious as we all out each other willynilly; or they’re going to look for code like TLA leaves and for paid posting disclosures, and devalue just those sites.

Speaking of which, I think I’m going to lay low on PayPerPost for a while. I just can’t be bothered with them lately, and I don’t think it would hurt to remove the disclosure pages since it’s been more than a month since I’ve done PPP posts on any of my sites.

1. Not going with TextLinkBrokers
2. Testing LinkWorth
3. Google and Paid Links
4. Don’t let Google push you around, link buyers and sellers
5. My final take on paid links

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