There are consistent articles that debate the pros and cons of buying and selling links and pasting them on our various sites or blogs. The most recent one, and a good summary of the issues is available over at ChrisG on New Media. In this article, ChrisG provides us with 4 different viewpoints that seem most prevalent out there. My response within the comment section provides you with some indication of my views.

As you can tell from this blog, I support people/companies buying spots on my blogs to place their links. It provides me with 2 benefits:

1. Money to pay for domain, hosting, and bandwidth costs. I enjoy blogging, but I don’t want to lose money doing it. I know I can do it for free using free tools like Blogger, but I like the control and challenge of designing my own sites.

2. Potential for some welcomed additional internet cash flow to help support my family. I am a capitalist at heart and any chance to make some money (legally of course!) is a welcomed thing.

The self-centered view on this is that I am able to continue to provide people with writings that they can learn from or receive some other form of enjoyment while reading. With the above two benefits in mind, and the hope that because of this I am able to provide value to people, I am comfortable putting links on my sites and open to visiting other sites that have them.

As an example, I have gained more knowledge of investing since starting my blog on high dividend stocks by reading other blogs about investing than I ever did reading newspapers or books. Many of the blogs I visit use paid links to support their continued writing and I am happy to see that. This is all about free enterprise and having the ability to speak freely and openly - if making some money to support this is wrong then I would not want any part of it.

I would love to hear your feedback on paid links. Please use the comments to provide your views.

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