Having other sites linking to your site is one of the keys to building traffic. Search engines, like Google, views a link as a vote for another site – the rational being that you would not link to another site if you do not think it was good. Therefore, the more sites linking to you, the higher your search engine ranking.
Not all links are worth the same. Links from big sites with high Page Rank are worth far more than smaller sites with low Page Rank. So how much is a link worth? I decided to enter a few sites into a text link ads calculator to find out. The Calculator gives an estimate on the market price of a link. The price of a link depends on the website category, its Google Page Rank, Alexa ranking, where the link is placed, the number of links sold, and a bunch of other factors. To give a more apples to apples comparison I stuck to technology-based sites and set the number of links sold to just one. Prices shown are for the cost of placing a link on the front page for one month.
- Engadget – $11,440
- Gizmodo – $11,440
- Tech Crunch – $11,132
- Ars Technica – $1,540
- Techeblog – $1,344
- Tom’s Hardware – $1,232
- AnandTech – $1,232
- TechMeme – $384
- Digg – We Can’t Print That Many Zeros
- Slashdot – More Than You Can Afford
Yes, that is what it actually said when I entered Digg and Slashdot. Whether the sites can get this kind of pricing for a link is anyone’s guess. Just for the hell of it, I entered this blog and got $132.00 for a link. Not too bad.
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It’s got to be coded to avoid sites like Digg and Slashdot – because even when I entered Netscape.com, it gave the usual “Priceless.” or “More than you can afford.” answers, and we all know Netscape isn’t worth squat.
What a clever idea. Thanks very much for sharing the results!
Wanna Link on my site?, I’ll pay you!!!…
Just kidding, but pretty interesting info you provided.. Thanks…
Fascinating.
So any idea how these guys compare with adsense?
Also, have you found any of these various advertising sites to have undesirable stipulations within their contracts…such as exclusivity or minimum sign up periods or anything else?
Text Link Ads won’t make you as much as AdSense from what I have seen. Most ad-networks can’t really place stipulations into their contracts anymore. There’s just too much competition. Only the really big boys (Google and Yahoo!) can do that kind of stuff.
Using the Calculator on my site returned $8 per link.
Not too shabby, considered I only started the site a few months ago. I never thought I’d even make $5 off the site. Its nice comparing Sharepoint BUZZ http://www.sharepointbuzz.com against other sites and how its performing.
Visit http://www.sharepointbuzz.com
Text-ad link exchange is still good for ranking. But I know that SEs are putting more weighted on links from articles. The site like sitepoint.com gives you $50 per approved articles. Fyi, sitepoint.com has very good ranking from Alexa.com.
Drudge Report = $4,175
Sunday Reader (wknd drudge-like report) = $4
Help a brother out!
http://www.sundayreader.com/
Woowie .. While you highflyers get 10k or more hits per day, these people are trying to break 10k visits in one year, i think. They have no ads whatsoever though
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~xmx/starwreck.php
You have been having some very usefull posts on this blog lately mate, keep up the good work
Funny, I came here via the Digg link. So that seems to have paid off in a sense. How much traffic did that link generate anyway?
Shoemoneys blog has a different answer to the rest
I have Text Link Ads on one site that makes me 20 times what I get from adsense in a month. It’s not huge dollars at this stage, but if I had 100 sites like that there’s a good chance I’d become a dotcom mogul too.
Why do your following pages all list the same amount of diggs? http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/how-much-is-a-link-worth/
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/another-john-chow-interview/
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/how-to-seduce-women/
(“I swear guv, it’s a coincidence”)
$69 on my site not bad for a site with no cost (free hosting and no domain)
Dave – At first I thought “WOW! Someone is digging all my posts!” Then I see the Digg button screwed up. I don’t know what happen.
There has been an issue with the plugin for WordPress allowing people to make it appear their blog posts get more diggs than they did.
Its being investigated and all offending sites that have been seen to use this to gain false diggs will be banned from being dugg in the future.
Hey John,
Love your blog. Everyday I find some useful information. If I ever see at one of the local Vancouver events I owe you a beer. Keep up the good work.
wow… thanks
i guess i can get a higher pagerank now! FREE!
http://tom.bielecki.googlepages.com
Hey John, great to see a fellow British Columbian hitting the big time with a dot com! Love the blog.
Interesting link you posted, I just tested my blog on teaching English South Korea and a link embedded into my content would be worth $62US!!
The Daily Kimchi – http://thedailykimchi.blogspot.com
What’s the best way to sell my site to advertisers? There’s too much out there it’s overwhelming.
My site is $8 a link woohoo. I would love to see my articles on adsense alternatives.
$50/month on some of my sites. Nice! It’s good to have a Google PR of 5!
I think that tool needs to be cleaned up some. I got a result of $80 per link and the same URL and placement was $350 on adsbay – quite a difference. Believe me, that link is worth far more than $80.
This is a nice site to use so you can get a quick dollar value. While some people may not reach that full potential it is a nice app to use and compare from time to time the changes your site has made on the vast interweb.
Weird. Same settings for the same site and my price dropped $10? I’m selling advertising for more than 3 times that for a week!
Somethings broken!
sigh, when can I reach that level?
Advertising on my site is worth $30 a month for 10 links on the footer. I just found out that you are also from Vancouver, which was quite surprising.
I think the tool needs some work. I put in one of my newer sites, http://churchwebsitedesign.timothyfish.net , and it indicated that one link was worth $7. The site is so new that Google hasn’t indexed it yet. I know I wouldn’t be willing to pay $7 a month for a link on a brand new site and I can’t think of anyone else who would either.
Timothy, is a link on a new site worth $0? Should everyone be able to put a link on the site for free?
TLA won’t even let a site in their publisher program if you’re not “popular” enough, so to speak. As such, it’s a moot point.
$444 is what I think the current price is for yours john, assuming the category is tech and you sell 10 on the right side. So, these advertisers are actually getting quite a cost break.
Yes, more than you can afford, until the Slashdot effect kicks in — then your money’s just been misspent.
While a single link on a highly ranked site will have more of an impact on getting another site more highly ranked when considering paying for a link on the site, the Value per Click and the Value per Impression are no higher than for a lesser known site. The reason for this is that clicks and impressions correspond to individual users rather than to groups of users. A link on a well known site results in higher placement in a search engine and therefore more clicks and impressions. This makes the well known site equivalent to having a lot of links on niche sites, but does nothing for the value per individual user.
In determining how much a link is worth it is important to calculate it based on expected return rather than Google PageRank or something similar. See http://churchwebsitedesign.timothyfish.net/Article.asp?ID=45 for a tool that does this calculation.