Monetize Your Website

**espmartin** · 12-08-2007, 04:50 PM

Yes, we should discuss specific ways to generate revenue from your website.
And the trends that work or don't work need to be addresses as well. But even
before the specifics are shared, I wanted to provoke you all to discussions about
the whole concept of monetizing your websites.

Especially after the Google hammer-dropping of PR, and its discloser of devaluing
a site/page's PageRank because of their interpretations of what is a paid link. And
even further that they (Google) have a working algorithm that semantically determines
if your website links are paid or not.

So, let me ask you all this. In the Post-Google PR era of SEO, should a webmaster "worry"
about linking to another site from his if that link is paid for? Yes, Google has every right
to do what they will to their search results. Yes, Google has every right to give or take
away the little green pixels on their toolbar for a site. But, since they have created the
PageRank structure as a "gauge" for a web site's authority, do they have the right to
determine what is an acceptable link, and to tell you that if you decide to link out, you
must use their proprietary (at least it started that way) nofollow attribute to show them
that you are complying with them?

Are you worried when you link out from your site to another, even if its paid for or not?
Why would there be a worry? Well, if you figure that Google is now determining what's
the relevance of your outgoing links - and if they find that outgoing link not 100% totally
relevant, you may be found to be "not in compliance".

Should you monetize your website?

**webvivre** · 01-17-2008, 04:22 PM

If the link is relevant and landing page useful - I think Google would be OK with it.

Not sure I would want to promote Paid Links on my sites that are not relevant (not sure a non relevant advertiser would want to advertise!

**BungeeBones** · 01-23-2008, 02:06 AM

I was about to launch a real estate advertising site, Googled "real estate" and it spit out 360 million results. I checked them all you know (not).

I realized if I beat 99.9% of the competition (I never beat 99.9% of anything) that I would be placed at 3.6 million. Talk about beating your head against a wall!

Maybe I'll never get anywhere, but I was taught not to be afraid of "the Big Bad Wolf". Google has done so little for me, and I think I have done a nice job on it.But it really comes down to my product. If my product is good people will buy it. If not, all the traffic in the world won't do a bit of good. So I would rather concentrate on making my product excellent than trying to contort it to fit a perception of what Google will think about it.