Private Advertiser wants links on Pages with AdSense

But the text has 5 links in it, not all to the same site!

[ToneLeMoan]

Hi, a potential advertiser wants links on one of my sites and I'm not too sure if it will jeopardise my AdSense standing.

He's offering me $X to run a text ad on 20 pages of my site for 12 months. PR is poor on most, PR4 max on 4 of the pages. 2 of the pages are responsible for 70% of my AdSense revenue - around 2.5 times $X annually for the pages he wants to advertise on.

The example text box has 5 links in it though, to 3 different sites. It looks a little spammy to me.

The website of the domain of his email address seems to be a fairly amateur company "Specializing in Website Advertising" (in their words).

My instinct is Google will come down on me if I run his ads on the same page - anyone care to offer an opinion?

Thanks in advance

[tim222]

The TOS issue has been discussed in other threads and some say it's OK, some think it's a violation. I wrote to AdSense and they told me it's OK to display the ads on the same page as long as they are different than AdSense ads. Your best option is to contact AdSense yourself and verify that it's OK in your situation.

But now if I read this correctly, he wants to pay you 1:2.5 of what you're making with AdSense. I think you can get 1:1

[europeforvisitors]

It might be wise to use the rel="nofollow" attribute in your links from the text ads, as advised by Matt Cutts of the Google Search anti-spam team.

[ToneLeMoan]

"It might be wise to use the rel="nofollow" attribute in your links from the text ads"

Thanks, yes. I read Matt's page on that and think that's the only option.

Yeah he's offering 40% of the annual AS revenue but I do have space to fit both in.

Thanks for the advice.

[Edge]

Developing direct advertiser relationship and revenue is a wise long-term strategy. Don't ever forget that GG could cut you off right now or in several years. The more advertising relationships and revenue streams you have the better for your survival.

[webwannabee]

I agree with Edge 1000%. But to be on the safe side use a no follow tag or have the links shoot over to a 2nd site and redirect them to final destination with a redirect script.

Never play in bad neighborhoods. If this guy is a spammy sort of guy it could come back to haunt you.

[ToneLeMoan]

Thanks. Google just gave me the cut and paste reply *sigh* I did ask for someone to briefly scan the tiny bit of code I sent them. I suppose that won't stand up if I run the ads and say, well I did ask you first!

I suggested the nofollow route to him, hasn't got back to me yet.

Thanks for your advice.

Been out of the game for a couple of years - gonna have to read up a bit more :)

[jomaxx]

I doubt he'll be excited about paying a substantial amount of money for "nofollow" links.

Anyway, I don't see any conflict with AdSense as long as the links don't mimic the AdSense format, which shouldn't be hard to accomplish.

There MAY be a conflict with Google's search engine algo. Not that you're exactly "breaking the rules" by showing paid links, but Google's job is to rank your website for relevance and authority, and showing paid links probably eats into both of those.

[europeforvisitors]

I doubt he'll be excited about paying a substantial amount of money for "nofollow" links.

He won't be if his objective is to buy PageRank, not an ad.

[ToneLeMoan]

Just to close on this - we agreed 3 links per page for the same fee. There are no repeats across the 20 pages. So it's all good.