On sponsored links: useful or not?

Sponsored links are those which are paid for by you, the advertiser. Some people view them as misleading and a way to compromise a website's integrity, and some see them as a viable advertising methods. There are a variety of companies offering sponsored link services which serve as a medium to connect authors with advertisers, and some companies pay to have links posted on websites which are read by their target demographic.

Sponsored links are clearly identified as such, and their content can vary widely. Sponsored links may be enclosed in a product review, or they can list the offerings of a company. Some website owners pay to have sponsored links inserted into posts or on sites related to their posts; the more visible the link is, the more it will cost.

Some people are able to highly monetize their blogs through sponsored links. Others use them as a way to bring in a small income that helps to pay for special site additions and other site maintenance tasks. Sponsored links are frequently combined with other types of advertising, and they commonly show up in site-wide feeds.

Some are opposed to sponsored links, and the largest center of opposition can be found in the blogging community. Many believe that these paid links compromise the reliability of the rest of the site's content, and other people find them just plain annoying. There are also disclosure issues; when a sponsored link or post isn't clearly identified as such, the site's visitors might not realize that the site owners were paid to post it.

Revenue made from sponsored links can vary widely. As a rule of thumb, the bigger the site, the higher the profit will be. Advertisers pay more to be linked on sites with a higher readership, while smaller sites may get free products or other incentives.