Buying text links

[Heather]

Has anyone ever bought links to improve their site's standing and organic traffic? I've had a difficult time finding appropriate links for my niche. I've bought a few, and the numbers do seem to be slowly climbing. What's your experience with buying text links? Do you use a particular service or just find them available for sale?

[Robert]

I have bought a heap of high Page Ranking text links. It wont help your ranking much (unless you buy a very large amount) but it will help you get spidered.

You can buy almost anything here : Link Sales Forum

[cheater]

You can also use Google Adwords. By subscribing there, you ads can appear in google adsense (which is on nearly every site including this one). I believe they offer different plans. But I personally don't use it, so I don't know much about it.

[Robert]

Google charge depending on what niche your site is in. Some are very cheap, like a few cents a click and other like wight loss and anything with massive competition can range from $1 a click to $30 dollars a click.

[cheater]

I believe they also offer an option where you only pay if the user completes an action after clicking the ad. This can be used to ensure they register at your site download a specific file. Unless they complete the action, you don't pay.

[Robert]

That's only new and as far as i know still in beta. It should shake up the adwords industry when it launches.

[cheater]

It doesn't seem that different than the referer ads google offers. Most people are unaware that they need to complete a certain action. This usually results in the person who hosts the ad not making much money. But it does work out nicely for whoever pays for the ad. Even if the user doesn't complete the action, by clicking the ad, they are viewing the site. And best of all, the site doesn't need to pay for the ad.

[Robert]

Just had a look around and it looks like CPA is only going to be for the adsense content network and not the adwords search network.

Still worth a shot but not nearly as useful.

[Spaceman3750]

Watch out for paid links, directory links, or link exchanges. Google has begun to heavily discount such links. I submitted one of my sites to a heap of directories and got PR-blacklisted because of it.

If you're willing to risk it, or don't care about PR, go ahead, but I would be wary.

[Heather]

Yikes. Bah. Well, poop.

I really am not ready to pay for Google adwords yet. My niche and my best keyword are both also associated with fetish porn, even though my site is not...so that could be an expensive venture. I'll continue to try to get content-appropriate link swaps going, though the non-pornographic sites in the niche that get any traffic are few.