Session link, this puppy is moded by Todd Friesen.
Patrick Gavin, President Text Link Ads, Inc. starts off. What is link buying? He explains the difference between static html links and links like AdWords links. Direct Traffic + Link Popularity + Branding + Spidering. Many variables the influence value and cost of paid links. The theme of the site makes a difference, you want on topic links, you want links that will send traffic through clicks. Traffic is an other influencer, you can look at alexa (even though its not a great measurement) a better indication is a media kit. How many pages will your link be on, that is an other traffic metric that is important, more links more chances you'll get traffic. But on a link pop standspoint, at the more the better? Incoming links to the page, you can look at PageRank and the linkdomain yahoo search command. Make sure to look at the outbound links, if the outbounds are spammy, then stay away. The location of the link on the page is a factor, the higher the more visible, also within the body of the content in the middle of the page works well. Spiderablity of the link is very important, check the cache of the page to ensure the search engine sees the link. Anchor text is critical. The overall strategy is to be as natural as possible. In the end its about evaluation, measure traffic and search rankings.
Todd Mailicoat, VP of Sales and Marketing for WeBuildPages with his Link Ninjas slides. The link buying process; becoming a link ninja; train, hunt, examine, refine, audit, pruchase, examine. Train; develop a link training process, know what you are looking for and hot to get them (authorities, resources, directories, recips, ROS, edu and gov, media links, press release, article bios, rss.blogs). One way links from authority site is best, and blog spam is the worst. Hunt; weapons (directory.google.com, back link anaylsis tools, link harvester, hub finder, search combo tool, SEO links, yahoo link domain, search status ff plugin, etc.), know where to start, brokerages, friends, allies, resourceful thinking, and creative queries. Refine; competitor quality backlink list, establish prospective sites, and buy best links first. Audit; cache date, age of site, inbound links to page, etc. Purchase or barter, buy, borrow, beg, bater. re-example, watch your rankings over 90 days, etc.
Philip Kaplan, Co-founder, CEO. AdBrite. He doesn't sell static links. Everything they do is so uncontroversal until Monday. He brings up a site holyshnikes and keeps clicking around the site and it doesnt work. So he then goes to adbrite.com to show it. The intermission ad, is a new product they launched. a full page ad, that brings up the actual landing page of the site within the other site, as an intermission ad. It costs a penny a user. He said its a little crazy and not for everyone. This example is on screensavers.com.
Roger Montti, Founder and Owner martinibuster.com is last up. Paid links enters mainstream, alternative traffic sources, lead gen and no direct link - no problem. Finding sites to buy links from; online magazines. Sometimes you main need to acquire the entire domain name to get the domain. Download link sleuth, attack your favorite directory, look for country code top level domains.
