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How do you charge for a link popularity campaign?

         

wrreisen

8:38 am on Oct 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



By the hour? If so this may be hard to justify to a client because of how long you must spend to get links. Whats the minimum time you could charge for on this kind of thing to do anything worthwhile? Maybe 20 hours work initially followed by 4 hours per month afterwards?

Marketing Guy

11:55 am on Oct 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I would suspect that any link development campaign would come part and parcel with an optimisation package.

I doubt there are many sites out there that are well optimised, but require link development.

So, the amount of work required in creating and implementing a link strategy would depend on the site, industry, etc.

A 4 page hobby site will be infinitely more difficult to get quality links for than a large, well established information site would be.

With regards time to do this, again it's dependent on the site - what will your conversion rate on link requests be?

Scott

wrreisen

4:06 pm on Oct 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Its a 30 page site for a place that manufactures electronics with details of what they produce etc. This is the first time that I've done this for someone-else. I've only tried in on my own site. I've no real idea of what I can acheive in the time but I've said I'd spend 20 hours initially then 4 hours a month after that. I've just optimised the content myself.

mfishy

6:44 pm on Oct 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I pay different people/companies on a per link basis.

The amount depends upon the specifications of the campaign.

mil2k

6:27 am on Oct 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Some of the factors to consider :-

1) How much is the home page PR? If it is low charge a bit more because it involves more efforts. Hence your conversion ratio for links may be high.

2) How are the fellows handling outbound links? If they have arranged the links in proper categories then it's better. Also how much is the links page PR?

3) How is the site design? If hte design is good and professional people will like to link. Otherwise again your conversion ratio will take a hit.

4) Will you get an email id with their domain? If yes then its better. Will lend you some authenticity. If no try and ask for an email id from their domain.

5) Who is gonna upload the links? If its you then you need FTP details. Also will help you as you can put up links first before contacting potential link partners.

6) Does the client wants links from related topics only? If yes then they cost a bit more. If the client can link to any Good site then the cost may be a little less.

7) Is there any requirements as regards to PR? Meaning does he want links from PR 4 or above Pages only? If yes those will cost more.

These are some of the parameters you should consider while charging. Not many people will like to pay on per hour basis. So if possible charge on a Per link basis. There are some other factors also but you will learn them with time ;) Best of luck.

georgeek

7:10 am on Oct 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



The market price at the moment for hand crafted links seems to be around $10/PR4, $15/PR5, $25/PR6, $75/PR7, PR6 and PR7 negotiable.

ChesterCopperpot

3:16 am on Oct 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



The market price at the moment for hand crafted links seems to be around $10/PR4, $15/PR5, $25/PR6, $75/PR7, PR6 and PR7 negotiable.

Geez looks like im in the wrong business...

fom2001uk

3:58 pm on Oct 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"Will you get an email id with their domain?"

An impossible task if you're running link campaigns for multiple sites, I would have thought.

mil2k

6:34 pm on Oct 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"Will you get an email id with their domain?"
An impossible task if you're running link campaigns for multiple sites, I would have thought.

Its tough but manageable. The other thing to consider is most of these link campaigns are for 50 or 100 links .. so after that you can remove the email id from your email client settings. HTH :)

Crush

9:21 pm on Oct 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The market price at the moment for hand crafted links seems to be around $10/PR4, $15/PR5, $25/PR6, $75/PR7, PR6 and PR7 negotiable.

Depends where you look I would say more like 5$/4, 10$5

wrreisen

8:32 am on Oct 28, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks this is very helpful

mfishy

12:45 pm on Oct 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



around $5 is right for link exchange. If you are talking about 1 way links it would be higher

wrreisen

3:55 pm on Oct 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



So if doing a campaign for a clients website their should be part of the budget to pay me to arrange the links and part of the budget to pay other website owners for the link?

KevinC

10:26 pm on Oct 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



interesting idea - I've never thought of paying a potential link partner for a reciprocal before. Paying for one ways is very common but paying for a reciprocal is a new idea to me.

I suppose if you greased their palm a little you would hopefully get full control of the anchor text too.

Lydia

1:22 pm on Oct 31, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



wrreisen (and everyone reading this discussion),

For whatever is worth, in my last proposal I included the link campaign section as one of the various elements for successful SEO. All my proposals show a price break for each element of the SEO project, phase by phase (example copywriting, changes in programming, etc). For the link popularity campaign stage, I charge $16 per link, with the following observations:

- I will not sign up or pursue any link partner with a PR less than 5. I find that to be a waste of time. It goes without saying that link farms and any shady sites will not be considered.
- I will generate between 20 to 30 links - which brings the total of 20 links to $320, and 30 links to $480.

As I explained in the beginning, this cost is actually presented as a break down of the total cost for the SEO project, and for that reason, it cannot be excluded from the services.

I agree with one of the previous posts, in that it is not logical to charge by the hour, as it's hard to track how much time will go into communicating with each potential link partner, etc.

Hope this helps,

Lydia

martinibuster

3:09 pm on Oct 31, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Ok, I've run across some sites that suggest a donation for inclusion into their "directory." But I've never had anyone email me back and hit me up for $5 for a reciprocal. Five bucks won't even buy you a martini outside of happy hour. ;)

Are these $5 links,like, on-topic as well? Just curious.

nakulgoyal

6:51 pm on Nov 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hey Guys

Everybody out there buys links. Take care not be take links from Link Farms, Guestbook Links and FFA's. You will get penalized.

Pricing varies for quality and volume. We worked for a client to get'em over 50k links over 1 year. The project is complete now. Client is very happy. Gets over 400k per month in sales. PR7/8.

He promised to pay me some lumpsum amount which indeed he did. He now pays me some money every month for nothing. He is very happy with sales.

:-)

So money is not always everything. Get the client happy and you will stay happy. Links should not be created for the heck of it.

mfishy

9:11 pm on Nov 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



hehe, i was talking about hiring a contract employee to gather links for you, not paying the actual sites for reciprocal links.

Paying based on performance is the way we prefer to do it. You can also, simply hire someone and pay them salary.

In some cases we have made back the entire cost of the link campaign in ONE DAY, after achieving good ranking.

As far as "on topic", I personally, don't give a rats a** about that as we do link campaign for se placement and nothing else.

If topicality is a concern of yours, many, many link developers will work with your needs.

KevinC

9:53 pm on Nov 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



oops I guess I read your post wrong - it did seem weird to pay for a recip. We all know there are these link hunters out there - but it seems to be a bit like hunting for the white rhino to find a really good one. I guess this should be no surprise as this is very time consuming.

As far as "on topic", I personally, don't give a rats a** about that

So you have no concern about buying a link from a totally off topic website? I know of plenty of PR5 and PR6 sites selling links for under 10 bucks. I all I can hear in my head is "on topic! on topic!" - am I just paranoid?

mfishy

3:54 am on Nov 5, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



hmm...never really outright bought a link from a PR5 site. I guess if they had a bunch of different domains it may be worth it...

There are many varying opinions on the value of similarly themed links. I think theming goes as far as anchor text with google, and no further.

heck, get your link on a few thousand blogs and you can rank top 3 on tons of competetive terms.

Reflect

5:45 pm on Nov 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I will not sign up or pursue any link partner with a PR less than 5.

I will review sites under a PR5 and take into account factors.

Main factor is age of site. If it is new I will take a hard look and make a response based on my feelings. If I feel the site has a good structure, good content and will stay fresh...then I go for it.

Brian

SlyOldDog

3:45 pm on Nov 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



50,000 links eh? How much did he pay for that? I hope you got 200,000$ like the people above are charging ;)

ChesterCopperpot

6:16 am on Nov 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I just hired a friend of mine to do my links. I gave him a 1 day crash course in Arelis and he now cranks em out all day at $10/hr =)

We just started last week, I think it will work out..

SlyOldDog

2:44 pm on Nov 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



You should move to a cheaper labour market. We pay about $2.50 per hour in Prague. That's the average salary here.

Istvan

4:42 pm on Nov 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



When searching for links, I guess you mostly end up at links pages? I mean maybe I haven't looked too well but I haven't seen PR6 or PR7 linkpages thus far. Am I missing something? Or do you also trade links at index pages?

Istvan

killroy

1:25 am on Nov 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



hmm darn, my main links page is still only PR5 :(

SN

mil2k

2:43 pm on Nov 11, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I will not sign up or pursue any link partner with a PR less than 5.

You mean to say you do not link to a site if the link page is less than PR 5?

If yes how do you get links for new sites with PR 0?

Generally a link campaign involves various factors.

1) How does the site look. Many sites have such a horrible design that it will take lots of efforts to get them links. In such cases advice the client to take some efforts to improve site design.

2) The site should have better management for outbound links. If it is just a single page and you are planning to put 200 to 300 links on the same page it looks very UGLY. Try to categorize the links in proper categories so that you can proper manage the links. And do it in the beginning itself because it will take time for google to index the pages and give it some PageRank. Unless your page gets some PR people will assume it is penalized.

3) If people need topical links then the cost increases a lot. You will not get those links for $5 per reciprocal. It requires much more efforts and the quotation for such links depends directly on the Market niche. Topical links may get you traffic. But I agree with mfishy that higher rankings can be easily achieved without topical links

4) The reciprocal links are mostly got from Links or directory pages. Hence might not have very high PR. The thing to look out for is that the site does not Promote Adult, hate or violent content. Such sites are always on the edge with engines and giving them a link is risky. In general look that the site is clean and does not follow and Tricks or gimmicks to fool engines.

5) For people outsourcing the link development make sure you do not pay the whole money in advance. Keep a time frame on the whole project. And pay by Credit card wherever possible. There are too many people out there who are running link development Scam.(through Western Union money transfer ).

6) Try and get your favourite anchor texts incorporated in the link campaigns. And if you need links to internal pages then try and incorporate that too in the link campaign.

7) Since Pagerank is not a stable entity if you are basing your link development campaign on Pagerank of the page the reciprocal is based on ...keep some leeway for PR changes.
For Example :- the project for link develpoment starts and the link hunter mails to many sites. If the site has link page of PR 4 when asked for link and becomes PR 3 when the link actually comes up then decide in advance how much you will pay to the hunter in such a scenario. Just helps in making things clear in the beginning.

8) Clear out about the FTP details. Most of the times you need to put up the reciprocal link in advance before asking for link. Hence you will need to give access to the link hunter to the directory. This might be through FTP or free CMS like siteman .

HTH :)

dirkz

10:50 am on Nov 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Client is very happy. Gets over 400k per month in sales. PR7/8.

Which industry is THAT? :)

Pierre2003

12:26 pm on Nov 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Guys,
I need to purchase some GOOD PR 6,7,8 links. any ideas about sellers? if so please tell me...

nakulgoyal

10:18 pm on Nov 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sorry but I am unable to disclose any details. Have signed an NDA with the client.

It was more then 60hrs of my work every week for almost 4-5 months that he now pays me monthly.

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