The key word here is "relevant". Link farms and fr'ee-for- all link sites will probably reduce your ranking and visitor popularity if anything. After all, if you visit a fishing site, you probably won't be interested in links to baby food recipes, car maintenance, or knitting. That's view search engines take too - it's not quantity, it's quality that counts.

Visitors from those links won't be buying much either. People prefer to buy from specialists or experts, rather than a jack-of-all-trades.

So what's a good link?

Take a good look round site. Is navigation easy? Is content useful, and relevant to your visitors? Are you happy to recommend it to them?

If answer to those questions is "Yes", then delve further. If you're selling a product or service, will they be in direct competition? If so, you won't want to link to them. Check site with IE Google toolbar (a fr'ee download from http:/ oolbar.google.com ) and see how high it ranks with Google. If it's same as, or higher than, your own site, then it's worth considering for a link.

Is link page easy to find? It's no good having a link on a high-ranked site, if their visitors never see it. Ideally, they should link to it from every page of their site, and link should be part of main navigation - not down at bottom of page in "small print".

So how to find those links?

Some you'll come across yourself, while surfing, if your website is related to an interest that you have. I've even found good links when helping my children with their homework! Keep a "jotter" program available while you surf, so that you can make a record of these sites. Or use a real jotter if you prefer!

But tool I use most, and which has made finding and maintaining my link pages much easier, is Arelis - Axandra's Reciprocal Links Solution, http://www.firstwebbuilder.co.uk/info/arelis.html

You can search for links by keyword, by using a website that has a similar topic, or by checking for sites that aready link back to you.

Once you've deleted any sites that you aren't interested in, you can then use built-in browser to visit sites and decide if they should be included in your links directory.

Content - in form of well written articles and other useful information - increases your site's value to visitors. Participating in Google's AdSense program on those same pages can give your own profits a "shot in arm".

For your site to be a good match for AdSense, you should have a significant amount of quality content on site. Publishing articles of interest to your audience is a smart way to do this.

Generally, you have three options for generating quality articles for your site: (a) Write them yourself, (b) hire a writer/reporter, or (c) find content elsewhere.

Many site owners do not have time to write good, relevant articles themselves and do not have money to hire a writer. These folks turn to content articles.

Content Articles

Several Web sites (such as http://OpportunityUpdate.com and Marketing- Seek.com) and groups (such as Article Announce Business on Yahoo! Groups) provide content in form of articles similar to this one. Individual authors will often supply articles as well.

Publishers are allowed to use an article - no payment required - provided they follow a few rules. Generally, rules are similar to these:

- The About Author or resource box must be published as part of article. The resource box is "payment" for letting a publisher use article. It is here author has free rein to advertise or promote products and services. The resource box is generally 4 -10 lines long.

- The article should be published as-is, with change requests made to author.

- No spamming allowed. If article is sent to a list, list must be voluntary - without automatic email additions.

- No use on offensive sites or in inappropriate newsletters. Guidelines generally list usual culprits - porn, violence, etc.

Each site, group, and individual has slightly different publication guidelines so be sure to read them before using an article.

Advertising Revenue

Over past few years, advertisers see less response from banner ads and other online advertisements, making them more reluctant to pay based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

This reluctance is reflected in percentage of total online advertising spent on pay for performance programs. Pay for performance deals have grown from 4% of advertising revenue in 1998 to 21% in 2002 (Note 1).

Pay-per-click programs have largely contributed to surge in performance deals. Keyword Search has jumped from 6% of total online ad revenues in fourth quarter 2001 to 21% during fourth quarter 2002 (Note 2).