* Minimum page views or visitors per month - Some networks require little or none while others want anywhere from 3,000 to 250,000 page views a month or thousands of visitors per month * Content - Your site content should be relevant and regularly updated * Targeting * Residing on own top-level domain - Your site should not be hosted on free providers * No excessive amount of advertising - A site cannot be all advertisements because that won't appeal to anyone

As a publisher, you just don't want to "give away shop" and sell your soul for a bit of advertising revenue. Here are some particulars to be aware of:

* Percentage of revenue - Legitimate networks should give publisher lion's share of advertising revenue; somewhere in neighborhood of 55 to 70 percent of revenues generated by site is common * Exclusivity - Avoid ad networks that do not allow you to serve ads from any other network * Payment terms - Many times you will not be sent your check until 30 to 90 days AFTER month in which your balance has reached a pre-determined amount. * Dependability - As with anyone else you might be hiring, contact some other sites * Publisher veto power - Like Google AdSense, does your ad network give you power to reject specific campaigns or ads shown on your site?

Feel you are ready to accept network advertising but don't know where to start? Here's a list of some small to mid-sized ad networks to contact:

* Search Feed * Adtegrity * BlogAds --specifically for blogs * Burst Media * Fastclick * ValueClick * x10 Networks * Clicksor

For sites attracting visitors on a larger scale, some networks for you to also consider include:

* Blue Lithium * AzoogleAds * Advertising.com * MaxOnline * 24/7 Real Media * Ad-Up

After you have met requirements needed for a particular ad network and have decided to sign up, you may also want to keep a few things in mind. Without a doubt you should read contract word for word and make sure you comprehend all of information. Then take into consideration ad rates, types and formats. Would you like to offer targeted or non-targeted advertisements or both? Just don't throw caution to wind for a quick buck. Be sure to retain upperhand when dealing with any kind of advertiser or advertising network. It is, after all, YOUR site.

At first your themed link directories will fill with one way links to other sites, but you can mend this later and you should not worry too much about it. Just make sure that sites that have a reciprocal link to you really stand out.

Easy one way links

One way links are most valuable ones and fortunately there are ways to get some quite easily. When you did your SEO you probably submitted your site to mayor search engines and directories. - There are quite some directories that let you be listed for free and that way give you a free one way link! - Try to get listed in some local (business) directories, and do not limit yourself to your own country. - Find some free advertising sites and get your site listed! - Put your own advertising pages on another domain (or sub domain that is not below or indexable below your own) and be sure to put a link to your main site or domain. It worked for me, so it will work for you as well.

As content is king (and linking queen), your site's content (and some additional links to your site) should be rewarded with some Page Rank. Once you have a Google PR of 2 or 3, you will find that your linking efforts will be rewarded a lot easier and you can ease up a bit, but if you are still with me here, you might want some extra tips.

Review your database and check out your old links. You should or could leave really useful and nice ones, even if they did not link back, and get rid of other ones. You could consider sending those an email announcing your intention to delete them if they do not link back within a certain period. If they do not answer, delete them from your directories, but not from your database. Put them in red or something else to distinguish them from reciprocal link, which you could give a green color. You should take some time for this cleaning and do it periodically. Use a link checking program to find dead links on your site and delete those immediately. Time to get lots of links

NOW would be time to start thinking about automating your linking and start using a link manager. A scripts that allows visitors to send their link request to you would be nice and a system to check your reciprocal links as well.

When you are really ready to get a lot of links, you can use link directory memberships. Of course you could have started with these right from start, but there are some drawbacks. Without having any PR other sites will not easily link to your site. If you have a PR of 0, people COULD think that your site has been punished. Some sites strongly advise against linking to sites with a PR of 0, so you will find it difficult finding partners trough those sites. Having a PR of 0 means you will want and have to convince other web masters of benefits of linking to you. But once you have some PR, all that changes. You can start using linking directories and sites, but always a bit prudently. If they do not ask for a back link, go ahead, no problem. If they ask for a link to them on your home page, I would not consider them at all. If they do ask for a back link, use them to their capacity and delete link to them afterwards. Some of them are actually really good and you could consider staying with them. You can find those sites easily using your favorite search engine, but to name some I have used (and am still using): - linkmarket.net is really cool and easy to use and could be used from start - infowizards is equally useful and does not put a limit on number of sites you can ask for a link - ETT link invitations can give you a rapid boost

I have tried quite a few others, but most of them did not give me any relevant links and I deleted them quickly. Having links to (too much of) those sites negatively affects your site ranking and could get you punished or even banned!

An extremely effective way to get a great quantity of links is writing and publishing articles. If you like to write and can come up with an interesting, well written and highly publishable article, you could draw jack-pot and have your article (with your link) published by a lot of sites that are looking for content. If your article is a bit specific you can still try to offer it to specific sites and you can always try to swap articles.

One way links from other sites are valued more than reciprocal links, so you could try to triangle links with sites, or set up your own "rings" of links. Quality links

I would like to stress again that you should only consider relevant links. Even if page you link to has no PR, but if it is relevant to your site and useful for your visitors, you should consider linking to it. Equally you should link to some sites that are highly relevant, even if they do not link back to you. One quality link can send you more traffic than all search engines together! Quality links are highly relevant links with quite some traffic and appreciation from search engines. They normally have a low Alexa traffic ranking and a high Google PR. Reciprocal links from those sites are very valuable (they should send your quite some traffic) but one way link would be priceless. What could you do to try to get links from those sites? - You can offer an article to one of those sites and hope they will publish it. - You can offer to write a recommendation, review or testimonial (with you link). - If you have several sites (with some PR) you could offer links from those other sites in exchange for 1 links of them to your main site.

Now back to "don'ts". Just a word of caution, search engines more and more frown upon: - Identical anchor texts of incoming links - Sudden increases of incoming links - Links to link farms or web rings - A high percentage of reciprocal links

So use my tips with care and happy linking!