Apparently my site does fairly well in its PageRank...ness. As a result, I have often had people email me offering me some form of compensation for advertising their site - so many dollars for so many months of exposure, for example.
One such email went round a few of Snark's members and a thread was posted on whether or not to do anything about it. Some said they'd display the link, why not? Others, myself included, refused.
Why, I hear you ask, would I refuse to link another site for money? That's money for nothing!
Well, let me tell you. I think paying others to link to sites for nothing more than increasing PageRank is cheating the system. I'm all for advertising a site I think visitors might be interested in, but that is solely for them to visit the site - not for Google or similar to scrape my site and see that I've linked someone and therefore push them up in ranks. I despise "fake links" and PPP-style fabricated glee over some brand new site about something I'm now suddenly interested in when I have never mentioned such an interest before ("ZOMG I LUV PAYDAY LOANZ LULZ!!!111one1!!")
I've always said there will never be ads on this site, and by ads I do mean links to sites that I have been paid for placing (because those ARE ads). I don't want your "free" money, I don't want to link to your site, so stop trying. If I like your site and I think it's worth sending some traffic to, I'll link it... But I'll most likely be using the nofollow attribute to make sure I'm sending visitors and not search engines, because to me that's what linking is for, sending people to sites; not just for increasing one's chances of showing up first on some search engine which may or may not increase your clickthrough ratio. Meh.
Edit on 16th Nov: Huh. My PageRank appears to have gone down into the minus numbers (apparently that can happen)... I checked it today and it's -1 at some datacentres and 0 at all the rest. Oh well, not much PR did for me anyway other than inflate my ego :P
Jem
11/11/2007 at 21:47
Since I swapped my auto mail form out for a page of common questions, with my e-mail address quite under emphasised (for lack of a better word) at the bottom of the page, I've stopped receiving these crappy offers.. of which I'd had plenty. You could always try that too; just a thought :3
Rachael
11/11/2007 at 22:35
I read somewhere (don't ask me where, because I don't know) that Google's actually penalising people for selling links... So selling links on your site doesn't actually share your page rank, it just *gives* it away. Where's the logic in that?
Louise
11/11/2007 at 23:51
And so you should choose who you do or do not want to link! :) I'll link the people who I think deserve a link, not who pays the most money for it.
Kaylee
11/11/2007 at 23:51
But if you want to send people to a site, wouldn't you want their site to appear higher up on a search engine (and send more visitors through that)?
With that said, ads and PPP generally make me feel that a site is a lot less sincere, and that earning money will become more important than the visitors themselves.
Regina
13/11/2007 at 21:59
Ads bother me because they take up space on your site, but sometimes if you're hosted your host will ask you put up an ad for them. And also, some people do it because they need money. I wouldn't link people if they paid me though, that's low and cheap.
Jenny
14/11/2007 at 22:21
I agree. I'm getting rid of all my ads with my new theme that's coming up. And I stopped paid posting and also deleted all sponsored posts. I wasn't making jack shit anyway so I don't see the point anymore.