Forum Moderators: mack
Some people don't mind, some don't say anything, and some aren't too thrilled about it. Many sites I see do NOT use this technique, but others do, ranging from small guys to large firms. I've seen this done on the home page of a well known national company.
My reasoning is that more links to my site from other sites will help my page ranking plus possibly get visitors to those sites to check me out if they're in the market for a website themselves. I wan thinking of charging a $50 fee to remove the link if someone asks, or should I just remove it as a courtesy upon request? What do you think of any or all of these points?
If I was building a site for a large corporate firm then I wouldn't add the link but from my experience, it's fine for small-medium sized businesses and after all, it increases your page rank.
If a client has been a pain in the arse throughout development then I might well charge a small fee to remove it ;)
Your bet source of new business will be from referrals. If you are a pain in the a** about removing advertising from a site which your client paid for, that client might not recommend you.
It's like car dealers with their stuff on my car. I don't mine advertising Nissan, but if the dealer wants me to sport his logos, he either has to make me a good deal or remove it. Many times they remove it without hassle.
One of my clients insisted I PUT the link there (before that I never did put any link to my site). But one of my current clients didn't like it. I was actually in the middle of making changes using php includes and my "advertising" was quite prominent, on every page, and opened in the same window. I didn't intend for him to see it like that, but he's one of those clients that phones you at least once or twice a day and ALWAYS wants to know and see everything, every step of the way.
Once I restricted it to the home page and kept it in smaller, gray font, he didn't seem to mind. Or so I would think...
If it hasn't been addressed in the contract, and you've already started to work on the site, I'd think it's best to ask if you can put your ad link on a clients site before actually doing so.
The reason being, that once I am done with the page, it is the client's to do as they want. With that said, they can go in there and change everything from what you design to something that you wouldn't want to be associated with creating. Lo and behold... it says it was created by you at the bottom! Not the kind of advertising that I would want...
Personal theory, but the one I stick to.