I recently submitted this site to a third-party link sales site (who shall remain nameless for reasons that should become clear – but use your imagination) and I was approved not only for their regular program but also for some special new program they’re trialling. The whole operation seemed pretty top secret and before I was told what the new program was I had to check a box to confirm that I wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag (oops!). I don’t tend to blog about new products and stuff like that so I clicked the box and was taken to the next step.
The new program, it turns out, involves allowing advertisers to purchase words that are already a part of my content to turn them into links. Fine… seems ok. That’s something that already goes on with companies like Kontera. I think their program works by detecting desirable keywords, turning them automatically into links and then having a pay per click type setup. Kontera links are easily identifiable because they have double lines under the words and I think a window pops up as well when they’re scrolled over.
So far, so good but as I carried on reading things started getting a bit dodgy. The program description stated that links they sold would look exactly the same as other links on my site. There would be no distinction between the paid hyperlinks and those that I’d added myself. Plus, with this veil of secrecy, it looks like site owners aren’t even allowed to make their readers aware of the existence of the paid links. It would therefore look like every paid link is a recommendation by the site’s owner and I’ve got a big problem with that.
There’s something sleazy about this whole operation. I’m not totally against people putting paid or pay per click links within their content (although I find them distracting) but having paid links that are indiscernible from regular links is deceptive to me. The fact that the company doesn’t allow the site owners to discuss the program is just plain shifty. They say that this new program will pay a lot more than their regular one but is abusing the trust of your readers worth a few extra bucks? Not for me.
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