Dear Mistress,
Selling the links would not distract from your website. You should do what makes business sense. You have given an opportunity for your clients to comment on the issue, if you don't hear anything, you should take advantage of the opportunity to increase your revenue. You have worked hard to create a great website that people are willing to read and comment on. You should be ok with making some profit on your hard work. Thank you for asking our opinions, you are a great Mistress.

i dont even know what selling text links is.....

'A' mutual friend asked me to chime in on this.

"Would selling links here detract from your experience as a reader?"

Actually advertising works both ways where credibility is concerned. Advertisers will often buy advertising space on sites with credibility to pump up their own credibility. Ironically, the reverse has been found to be true as well. Associating your site to a product or brand, depending on the brand of course, can lend credibility to your site in turn.

In a 2006 study 200 users were surveyed and it was discovered that sites with advertising were rated as more professional. Or, more to the point, those sites without advertising were not rated highly for professionalism. This was regardless of content and all branding had been removed. The users were only allowed to view random sites for 4 seconds.

"Does anyone here have experience with selling links and know how much such things go for?"

Links are bought or sold depending on number of impressions and number of clicks. Impressions are usually 1/1000 the price of clicks. Usually... What you're describing is something else entirely. I think it is possible to extract some value for your case given certain figures.

Impressions (CPM's) are usually really really low, around $0.01/1000. Adsense is not much better.

Take a look at the number of unique visitors your get per day or per month. Do a bit of math.

1000 visitors per day at $0.01 CPM makes you about a penny a day. That's a whopping 30 cents a month.

If your HPD (hits per day) are over 1,000 then you can charge more. Follow? The more "popular" your site, the more you can charge for CPM and CPC.

If you get 1000 HPD that's 1000 impressions. How many of those click through? Statistics show current (end 2009) click through rate to be 16%. (Source: http://techcrunchies.com/effectiveness-of-display-advertising/ )

This varies greatly depending on the type of ad. Text links, video links, banner ads etc... The placement of the ad on your page is also critical to the user response (and therefore the click through rate).

Another recent study http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006648

Shows that text ads are quite effective. Shockingly so in fact. The results of the survey were not what was expected considering the amount of time and effort (and $$) companies spend generating highly engaging graphical and video advertisements.

Comparisons for your consideration.

Google makes an estimated $55/year/user from advertising.

YouTube, which is still struggling to make money, charges $20 CPM for ads placed over videos. (That's $20 for every 1000 times they display an ad over a video. No click required.) You pay $100, they'll show your ad 5000 times. Your ad and $$ will expire in about a day.

CPM rates have been falling over the last couple of years as researchers have failed repeatedly to show if there is any tangible or direct connection between impressions and converting users into paying customers. (More in a minute)

All of the above isn't much unless you know your visitors demographics. How old are they? Where do they come from? Home many per day. How many subscribers do you have? How many visit from browser bookmarks Vs. search results Vs. feeder sites, Vs... ?

Until you know your audience you can't place a price on a link on your page.

For example,

The only hard advice I can give you without knowing your numbers or demographics is to always, always set as short a term as possible for the length the ad will appear. This is, of course, to allow you to renegotiate should the ads produce sales or "convert users" or it allows the advertiser to do the same if it's not working.

In this case you could look at monitoring CPC's and request a special token from the advertiser who could literally calculate CPC's, converted users and generated revenue. From that model they could cut you a percentage of sales from converted users and you can both scrap the entire CPC/CPM issue. There is an issue with this model, however, as it requires trust. And trust in advertising means how much to you given the business approaching you?

Otherwise, you'll have to get to know your HPD and demographics, calculate a reasonable rate for the given term and negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

If you have any more questions (like how to track anonymous demographics and what they mean), send me an email (I don't know if you have access to the one I just gave or not) or contact our mutual friend. He can put us in touch.

-Echo

I'm often approached to have links, sell items, review toys, etc. I've noticed, too, that quite a few fellow sex bloggers have begun to display ads, etc., on their blogs.

Since I read most things via RSS, I don't see most of the ads. But I do have to admit that I often wonder how unbiased the toy reviews are, when I know that the reviewer is getting free items every months.

Since I have a day job, I don't see me actually signing up for paid links or posting such reviews. But I don't really see it as a bad thing when others do it.

Short answer to your question - it wouldn't really make much difference to me. I imagine that what you get paid depends upon the traffic that they see, but I also can't imagine that it would amount to much.

I have no experience with it because I did not want to clutter my space with sometimes offending, and mostly irritating distractions. I want to keep my blog pure, which is why I don't use photograps and videos obtained from the internet.

However, that does not mean that anyone else could not or should not succumb to the temptation. I visit blogs with all those advertisements, and I tune out the irrelevant parts. I can still enjoy the author's postings, and all is well.

I doubt that any reader actually needs or wants these links while reading your blog. But if you are good with your writing(and you are), we would keep reading.

traci,

Thank you for your perspective, and your compliment. I am pleased that you find the blog worthwhile enough to be suitable for paid advertising.

M

bdenied,

Ah, some folks want to pay me to include links into their sites in my sidebar.

M

Echo,

Thank you for your detailed assistance with this. I greatly appreciate the information you were able to provide to me.

M

Tom,

You are right of course in mentioning the day job. The blog does seem to interfere with that a good amount, and anything else added will only increase interference.

M

Susan's pet,

Thank you. I appreciate the compliment!

M

Milliscent-

I'd vote for no links. I have refused the many requests I receive to take paying ads or links.

I think it does cheapen a blog experience.

-saratoga

saratoga,

After much consideration I think that I share your view.

M