It really seems that buying links is penaltised.

Even just one "one way" well thought out, paid link (IE: same niche, relevant readership)
from a high PR site is MUCH better than 5 reciprocal links from the same.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a webmaster monetizing their website by selling
or buying links. If I sold banner ad space on the top of my site to The BBC, it would be
seen as a great marketing plan. If I sold links to relevant sites, closely niched to mine
however, now it is seen as "spamming" the SEs.

I don't know about you all, but I will not bow down to the pressure that Google is giving
out, all the while Google is being hypocritical about it.

Originally Posted by espmartin

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a webmaster monetizing their website by selling
or buying links. If I sold banner ad space on the top of my site to The BBC, it would be
seen as a great marketing plan. If I sold links to relevant sites, closely niched to mine
however, now it is seen as "spamming" the SEs.

They are not telling you that you are not allowed to sell links. The way I understand it: if you link to low quality or irrelevant site - add no-follow to it...

I happen to agree 100% with the point Matt Catts trying to make in his post

I just read this one on Matt Cutts blog:

Feydakin Said,
December 10, 2007 @ 8:24 pm

I keep seeing this, “it’s not fair” argument being used when it comes to paid links.. Obviously nothing is fair.. People with money will ALWAYS have an advantage over those that do not.. Just like Alta Vista and Yahoo! had a huge advantage over that little search engine project, Google.. didn’t last though, did it??

The same goes for anything.. People say that eliminating paid links will help the little guy.. How?? How does this help the little guy?? You don’t really think that a major corporation will go, “Oh, gee, we can’t do paid links anymore, guess we better give up and let Joe’s Motel grab that #1 spot for the lucrative Tucumcari Resort season”.. No, they are going to take their money and build a network of websites, chain them together and still out rank Joe..

My issue is that there is no way to tell which links are paid for and which links are not.. They all look the same.. Let’s say I sell links.. But I also give a few out for free to sites I really like.. Those links will all look the same.. But because a few of them are paid for the rest may “look” paid.. How does Google want to handle this?? If I put nofollows on a few of them and leave the rest alone is that good enough for Google?? Or will it be assumed that I am trying to game the system and get penalized for my sins??

And what about reviews?? Google has said all along that a paid directory link that is reviewed and human edited can be a good thing (Yahoo! Directory anyone?).. Yet, if I get paid to review a website or product on my blog I have to slap a nofollow on it or risk getting spanked.. How are those links different?? I’d wager that a solidly researched and reviewed blog post would be FAR more valuable than a silly Yahoo Directory link..

Instead of pointing at junk websites that sell links and crying over it why not just stop indexing the junk websites?? Stop paying people to run MFA sites.. Stop paying people to “Domain Taste” and register and squat, I mean park, on thousands of names.. How is it fair that Google pays these people to squat on names that people want and would USE??

And while we are at it, give me a rel=notoolbarpr option so I can turn thing off and get people to stop emailing me asking for link exchanges..

No sir,
i don't think so i know a lot of who only alive in the online marketing by paid links.
They always buy links from good PR sites and get benefit from them.
I know a website who have only purchased links (more than 40 links) those they buy from the other sites and now they are leaders on the google search engine. Google like them.

I agree with Feydakin 'Nuff said...