Web Moves Blog

My previous post dealt with a business model especially aimed at service providers. Today I’m going to write about a type of site that also provides a service, but in a very specific manner and for a very specific audience: link shop sites.

1. What is this monetization model about?

Sites and blogs whose main purpose is to sell links to interested webmasters. A little bit of traffic may also be sent to link buyers. However, this is not a priority in most cases.

2. Examples

• Directories
• Review blogs

3. Traffic sources

• Forum posts and signatures (mainly at webmasters and/or SEO forums)
• SEO
• Blogs (many of them use to publish directory lists)
• Other directories
• Blog comments.

4. Typical content

• Link listings
• Site and blog reviews.

5. Where does the money come from?

• Link sales (temporary or permanent)
• Affiliate links (can either fill unsold inventory or be disguised among the listings)
• Private ad sales (to fill unsold inventory or to promote products and services that may appeal to webmasters)
• AdSense.

6. How it works

Most webmasters want to get more backlinks and link juice for their sites. Therefore, you either buy an older domain with existing backlinks and PageRank, or buy a new one and build backlinks and PR yourself. Then you sell links to linkbuilders. Such links may be displayed in categorised listings or can be inserted within reviews. Alternatively, you can offer contextual ads by adding links to existing articles.

You may either pitch your service to the general webmaster crowd or choose to target SEO firms.

7. Advantages

• Vast amount of potential buyers, many of which are adventurous and willing to run the risk of possible penalties
• Possibility to network with various webmasters and leverage these relationships later
• Sites and blogs can be easily adapted to other business models if they fail as link shops.

8. Disadvantages

• Risky business model, because you can be penalised by search engines at any moment (the links you sell may have their weight discounted and your pages may lose PageRank)
• Constant work to build more links for your pages in order to avoid the loss of link juice
• New directories and review blogs will be needed as the older ones lose their value

Is this site monetization model valid, despite the risks? Or do you think it is too dangerous? Post your opinion in the comment form.

This series was intended to discuss four business models for webmasters and bloggers. As you can see, I’ve already written about all of them. Does it mean I’m finished with this subject? No, it doesn’t. In fact, I’m going to write one more post because I want to share some additional ideas with you. See you soon!