Am I spamming?

[peter1]

[Lynn Terry]

Yes, that would be considered "unsolicited commercial email"...

You can always sell that ad space on eBay, post it as a Special Offer in that category here at the SSWT Forum, and other places like that. Obviously you want to create a page on your site (if you havent already) to appeal to potential advertisers.

Another option is to use an Ad Broker. I use Text Link Ads, but there are others that allow banner/button ads too I am sure. They are one of the more popular brokers though, so its easier to sell your space through them. http://www.text-link-ads.com

Unfortunately, Google frowns on ad sales. See:
http://www.clicknewz.com/1173/google-pagerank-debate/

You can also place affiliate links/banners in those spots to fill them, and include a link that says "advertise here" as well.

[peter1]

Thanks Lynn, I'll check out those suggestions. I did send out some emails to proposed advertisers before I thought about this so I'll keep my fingers crossed that I don't get any problems from it.

Thinking about this, I see another problem. I had wanted to draw up a directory of good sites in my niche, then email them all to ask if they would like to be in my directory in exchange for a link. It was a way I thought of to increase links.

Then when traffic increased to offer them the chance to improve their position on the page by bidding for top position.

I was intending to send emails to each one about initial inclusion in my directory. This would be free (apart from the link)

Would an offer of free inclusion in a directory for a link constitute commercial emails?

I read that post about google frowning on paid ads. Hopefully they don't frown on paid banners in sidebars, which is what I'm trying to sell. I don't know how they would tell if a banner was paid or not. And what is the difference between a paid banner and an affiliate banner? Just the way it is paid really.

The article seemed to be suggesting that they are frowning on paid text links more than paid banner ads, as I read it.

I see now that google seems to be taking pr away from those doing pay per post, which I haven't done, though had thought about.

[Lynn Terry]

That might be okay, but you'll probably get a very low response rate. People get so many link exchange emails that they tend to ignore them these days. I wrote a blog post on that recently as well: http://www.clicknewz.com/827/link-exchange-emails/

[peter1]

Yes I wasn't going to phrase it as a link exchange.

More like "Free inclusion in my gifts directory" or something like that.

I just had a look at text link ads. Have you had any problems using TLAs given that, as you point out, google doesn't seem to like them?

[Lynn Terry]

[forummaster]

so you are going to stop running text links altogether because of that situation?

[Lynn Terry]