Again I will say that the chances you will become successful affiliates are slim. The chances that you will become a full time affiliate are even more remote. There is though more than one way to skin a cat. Even if your sites fail to generate affiliate income your sites can still become a cash cow.
There is no doubt that quality links in the gambling niche are much harder to obtain than links in virtually every other niche. Many webmasters working in general niches will simply not allow gambling links on their sites as they worry they will lose their Google Adsense affiliate account. General affiliates that do allow gambling links on the whole have crappy spam sites so as you can imagine links on their sites have little or no value.
If you struggle to generate income from affiliate revenue you do have the option of generating income from links sales. You must of course ensure that your sites are quality sites, plus of course you do not want to turn your sites into link farms. In regards to links sales, the web currency is dollars. Before we proceed a word of warning! Google states that webmaster should not sell links. Google also states that webmasters who do sell links will be penalised. From experience I can tell you that if you are reported or even caught by Google selling links your site could be stripped of any Google Page Rank it may have obtained. Some sites have also lost their rankings due to link sales. Despite Google’s stance on link sellers, the link selling market is immense. At the end of the day quality links are the main factor for sites ranking, so as you can imagine webmaster are going to do there upmost to obtain quality links.
Golden Rules For Link Sellers
If you intend to sell site wide links in your sidebar don’t be foolish and give the title of your links section a name such as “Sponsors” or “Links” etc. It is common sense to give this section of your site a title such as “Great Resources” or “My Favourite Sites” etc.
Never advertise the fact on your site that your are prepared to sell links. An “advertised here” link which links to a page with link sales prices is extremely foolish.
Never include the actual site name in a thread advertising your links. Remember Google crawls virtually every web page plus you open yourself up to someone simply reporting your site to Google.
Don’t overdo it! Don’t get greedy! I have seen some webmaster have over 20 external links in their side bar which are obvious links sales. These will vastly dilute the actual PR of the site plus will give potential buyers poor value. In general the fewer external links on the page the juicier the page which makes it more attractive to link buyers.
Different Types Of Link Sales
For the purpose of this article let’s imagine that you have quality sports betting website that has a Google Page Rank of 3 (PR3).
Site Wide Links
Many webmaster prefer to purchase site wide links. Basically these are links that appear on every page of your website. If your site uses a blog CMS such as WordPress then links in your sidebar will be popular. Gambling webmaster expect to pay $30 to $50 per month for site wide PR3 gambling links.
Home Page In Content Links
These perhaps are my favourite type of links. Home Page In Content Links look more natural than site wide links as the link appear in at least a couple of lines of text. A good example of this sort of link would be….
If you can drag yourself away from the World Cup action there are some great Poker Bonuses available at the moment. Poker Stars are offering all new sign ups up to $600 Free!
A link anchored to the text “Poker Bonuses” looks far less like a paid link than a link in the side bar. Again for a PR3 home page link you could expect at the very least $30 to $50 per month.
Internal Page In Content Links
These types of links are similar to Home Page In Content Links but of course appear in internal pages. To aid the page rank development of internal pages make sure important internal pages are linked site wide on your website. A good example is the page links that appear in the side bar of this site (look right). Also ensure that you build links to internal pages. Again expect $30 to $50 per month for these types of links.
Blog / Article Posts Links
These are simply full blog posts or articles that contain links posted on a site. Personally I don’t like to see blog posts with more than 2 links as I think they look spammy. In most cases webmaster will offer to add a blog post or article to their site written by a webmaster of another site. Some link sellers will even offer to write the article. I’m a great fan of these type of “in content” links as they look natural plus you can really push your site including either links or in some cases a couple of great “calls to action”.
Prices vary depending on the quality of the site plus also depending if the seller has to write the article. Many link sellers will ask for a “one off” price so that the article will exist on the site forever, whilst others will ask for a monthly or quarterly price. I know of a couple of webmaster who have a small network of quality sites and make a decent income from selling blog posts each week. Prices can range for as low as $10 to $100+ for permanent blog posts.
Even with 3 or 4 quality gambling sites it is clear that you can generate decent income from links sales alone, although you will always be at the mercy of Google. You could generate further income by creating quality content for gambling webmasters but I think I will cover that topic in a future article.
