Now we basically know what to look for in determining value of a potential link. There are many ways to go about building your link popularity. I am going to focus on a few of paid methods.

1. Paid Directories There are a ton of link directories that will host your link for a fee. Some work on a month by month basis but most are either 6 months, 1 year or permanent. Yahoo is an example of a paid directory. They cost $299 for a 1 year listing. This may seem expensive and it is. Yahoo is a high end directory which is quite valuable in comparison to other directories. However, there many smaller directories that are more cost efficient. Usually directories are only relevant to your search term assuming you are listed in a relevant category. Some niche directories can be considered highly relevant.

2. Link Brokers There are several link brokers out there who gather potential websites willing to display your link. This is an excellent method to obtain highly relevant links. The only downside is brokers will generally charge a listing fee to website so they must sell links for more than they would otherwise be willing to sell them for to cover expenses. If you are checking out a broker see what their listing fee is before you purchase any links. I wouldn’t buy from a broker that charges more than about 20% of value of purchased link.

3. Directly contacting webmasters There are literally millions of sites out there more than willing to display your link for a fee. In my opinion best method of purchasing text links is to get out there and contact webmasters for price quotes. Its certainly not hard…if you are optimizing for search term “SEM” simply type it into google and find top 10-20 sites listed for term. Then either email or better yet directly call them to get price quotes from each site. Then decide which sites offer most value and spend within your budget. It is also a good idea to ask for quotes for a 6 month and a 1 year term in addition to standard 1 month term. Some webmasters will see you are competition and will refuse to list your site. This is perfectly acceptable, thank them for their time and move on.

Note: Building link popularity is only one aspect of SEM. If you are not familiar with SEM or SEO basics then I advise you to read up on keyword research and on-site optimization before you start purchasing links.

“That’s got potential” I thought and clicked through. The web page looked like an 11 year old had built it. It had more fonts than a ransom note! It was one long sales pitch with a click here to buy link at bottom.

Guess what? I bought it and it’s a great piece of software. I didn’t want it until I saw advert. I didn’t even know such a piece of software existed and even though I had my doubts when I saw site, I acted on impulse.

Let’s say guy who placed that add only got 100 click thru’s. All 100 were like me, excited about product, wanting it to be what it said it was and most importantly, wanting to own it.

He may have made 20 sales from those 100 hits and if he’d have smartened his page up he might have made more! That’s a thousand dollars of business for price of a small targeted add.

This was a real eye opener for me. Am I a Webmaster constantly striving for more hits or am I a net entrepreneur constantly striving to make money?

I decided on latter. I stopped worrying about my rankings and I started concentrating on reaching my targeted audience with in your face, one-page sales pitches.

My audience happens to be webmasters looking to improve their traffic so instead of waiting for them to find me in search engines I went to them.

Everyone seems to be using start page programs such as StartBlaze to get extra traffic. These work by setting a special url as your home page so that every time you open your browser you see a different site and someone, somewhere will see yours.

As people using these programs are my targeted audience I joined in. I designed several different pages and experimented until I had one that got results.

I then devised a method that allowed me to sign up and use 4 more of these start page programs. I was soon earning enough page views that I used a rotator to add my sign-up pages to my sales letter. My down lines grew and so did my sales.

You won’t find my sales letter web page on any search engine and if you do it certainly will not have a good ranking. Yet it is now making many more sales than both of my main websites.

I went out and I found my audience; I offered them something they didn’t know they wanted until I told them different and they acted on impulse!