I’ve never been a big fan of allowing articles on my sites that have in-content links back to some company. I’ve never allowed in-content links on Nerdy Nomad and I don’t think I ever will. I feel like they’re misleading… they tend to come across as an endorsement and they very rarely ever would be.
But I’ve been allowing article submissions on all of my other sites for awhile. The reason I keep Nerdy Nomad clean of them is because this blog is pretty personal – just me – and I don’t want people to read it and feel like I’m recommending something I’m not. But with my other sites, there’s no obvious person behind it. No personal recommendation. So I don’t think adding links is as misleading. Well, ya, of course it still is… just less so, I think. So I’m ok with that.
As it turns out, I only accept articles that are actually interesting and useful to readers… they just have a few links peppered in them and a small pitch about whatever company is being promoted. I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of the articles… many are a lot better than something I’d come up with myself, actually! I feel like they have the potential to add value to my sites since I don’t allow complete sales pitches and make sure the articles offer value to the reader. But I’m still not a huge fan of them and on the sites that my face and name is attached to in an obvious way (Nerdy Nomad and Living in Kigali), I intend on keeping all of the content free of ads.
It seems like companies are going down this road in a big way. I get as many requests for link advertisements these days as I do for articles. If I were to shut out the articles completely, I’d be losing a large part of my income and a large part of my new content. Actually, all of my new content these days for my static sites seems to come from paid articles. Kind of lazy on my part… but it seems to be working ok!
For my static sites I tend not to allow permanent ads of any kind so I treat the articles the same way I’d treat a text ad. Advertisers generally pay a monthly or yearly rate and then renew when they expire. I know a few other blogger types who charge one-off fees up to $500 and I wonder whether this might be a better way to go. You get the one-off fee, you don’t need to worry about renewals, the content is there for good, and you’re just stuck with a few links on your site for life.
I just bought the site Blighty Traveller and Ross, the old owner, has been allowing articles on his site for GBP50 for a permanent placement. That price is pretty crazy to me and I’ve bumped it up to GBP100 and GBP150 in two recent deals. I think I look at these articles more as advertising and less as free content. Sure, I’m getting the content so that the site keeps growing (since I don’t live in the UK I won’t be writing new content myself and I have other priorities at the moment than buying new content) but the business is getting a few links on my site forever. To me that’s worth a lot more than GBP50.
Normally I wouldn’t even consider permanent links but I’m going to use this new site as a bit of an experiment in the area. I’ll play the field a wee bit and see what works out to be a fair price for both sides. I’m going to attempt to creep up towards $500 a post but my feeling is that most of the people Ross and I have been in touch with want to have a longer term relationship which means more posts on a continuous basis which means a lower per-post price from me. Either way, I’m excited to have the new site to experiment a bit with.
What are you opinions on this type of advertising? Do you feel like paid articles are misleading? Do you look at them as free content or as advertisements, even when the content is good? Do you feel like you’re selling your soul when you add a new one to your site?
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