wyweb - 12:27 am on Jun 21, 2010 (gmt 0)

Shoreline, my main concern has always been whether I'm selling links or accepting direct advertising? Which is it? Prevailing doctrine has it that you'll get penalized for the former, yet the latter is encouraged on all fronts.

There seems to be a lot of gray area here and that gray area, as much as anything, has kept me from going any further with it over the years. I have 30 some odd websites and about 10 of them get significant traffic. 4 of them get real significant traffic. I've been smart priced in a big way though. I know I've been smart priced because I called Google and asked them. They confirmed what I already suspected and even told me how I could get out of it. I declined to take their suggestions. It would have killed at least half my traffic and I would have been basically in the same boat anyway so the choice wasn't that difficult to make. This was 3 years ago, or 4, I forget.

Even being smart priced back to the stone age I could still make a go of it, and I did. The last 5 or 6 months have been an absolute roller coaster though. End of month overall earnings totals varying as much as 40%. Mayday hit me as well. I've weathered every google update for the past 8 years in flying colors, fingers crossed each time. Mayday killed a good 20% of my traffic though. This, combined with the volatility of Adsense lately... Well, as I've said before I'm not trying to get rich but I've got to at least be able to pay the bills.

If I can't monetize what traffic I have with Adsense, and even post-Mayday it's still quite a bit, then I'm going to have to do it somewhere else. I'm extremely paranoid about being branded as a link seller though. How do you determine the difference? Am I selling links or am I accepting direct advertising and how is this determination made?

If someone could point me to any thread where this has previously been discussed, the contrast between link selling/direct advertising, I would be most appreciative.