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I’ve been thinking about this all last week and I’ve decided to make some changes to this blog. In response to the Google PageRank penalty slapping, which in my case dropped this blog from a PR 6 to a PR 3, I have decided to adhere to Google’s demands.

I am no longer selling text links via the Text-Link-Ads.com service and all direct text link sales I make will have the nofollow code applied as per Google’s instructions. I’ve already had the Text-Link-Ad sponsors money refunded for last month and I’ll be contacting the direct text buyers to figure out what they want to do moving forward.

This will impact my bottom line in the vicinity of about a $400-$700 a month, which was mostly from the Text-Link-Ads.com income on this blog.

I’ve submitted a request via Google Webmaster Tools telling them that my site no longer breaks their text link selling rules and asking if I could have my PageRank back. Hopefully in a week or two they will get back to me with a positive response.

The reason I decided to do this is because I feel the credibility of the PageRank green bar is more important to me than the $500 or so per month I was making from selling text links and I want to be on Google’s good side.

I haven’t seen any changes to the level of search traffic coming from Google - in anything it’s increased - however I don’t want to risk further penalties impacting search results because I do get a significant amount of traffic from Google. Even if the PageRank penalty is largely cosmetic and doesn’t reflect any changes to the actual SERPs for my blog, given what I do for a living and what information products I’d like to put out in the future, it helps to have a solid PageRank.

I’m making some slight changes to how I monetize this blog, which isn’t because of Google, it’s because of the new blog design I’ve got coming out. Thankfully those changes will more than make up for any lost income from text links, but it does demonstrate yet again, as bloggers, we need to always be careful how we monetize our blogs and stay dynamic. You need to be able to adjust based on the conditions you face, and there is only one constant in the universe - change - so be prepared for it at all times.

Should You Sell Text Links?

I’m doing an audio for my Blog Mastermind students to instruct them on how my monetization strategy has adjusted in light of the text link selling changes and to offer my recommendations for whether bloggers should sell text links and if so, how they should go about it.

If you want the audio, you have to be a member of Blog Mastermind.

Am I Giving In?

I had a real chuckle at a post from Robert Clough at Search Engine Guide, which outlines the conversation history he had with Jennifer Laycock, the main writer at Search Engine Guide and what they went through deciding how to deal with the Google PageRank changes.

It’s a hilarious read and I have to concur with everything they express in their conversation - I feel exactly the same way.

You can read it here - Composing the Perfect Letter of Surrender

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Many of you reading this blog do so through an RSS reader so you may not have seen the wonderful sponsors who help by providing funds for mortgage payments, food and clothing. I also have some new sponsors to introduce to you today.

Here are the banner sponsors of Entrepreneurs-Journey, in no particular order.

Nick Stamoulis SEO Services

If you need your website rankings improved and you want more traffic from search engines, then Nick Stamoulis and his team can help you. Nick has various SEO packages available from his website and best of all, until September 1st he’s offering Entrepreneurs-Journey readers $125 off any SEO package, so you better act now if you want to take advantage of this special (tell nick you want the “Yaro special” to get the discount ).

uVme Training

uVme Training is a new sponsor, one of two business opportunity advertisers here at Entrepreneurs-Journey. Check out the site, create a free account and watch the videos to learn more about this opportunity and see if it is right for you.

Search Engine Guide

Search Engine Guide are doing some serious work on becoming one of the authority sites on search engines. Jennifer Laycock is the most prolific writer at the site and you will find plenty of information on building traffic from search engines and web marketing for small business.

You have probably seen their banners all over the web at many of the most popular blogs, they seem to be working a saturation approach to advertising and it’s paying off - they have over 5000 daily RSS readers, a PageRank of 7 and an AlexaRank below 10,000.

Pitney Bowes mailstation

Pitney Bowes mailstation is digital postage meter designed for small businesses and one of the latest sponsors of this blog. As the landing page describes, “mailstation digital postage meter with its built-in scale lets you weigh and calculate postage at the touch of a button. You get exact postage every time - no guesswork. You can even print promotional messages on your envelopes!” - Nice! Best of all you can try it for free for 60 days.

Thousand Dollar Profits

Ty Coughlin of the ~Inner Circle~ offers to train you in his Reverse Funnel System and is the latest Entrepreneurs-Journey sponsor and another business opportunity you might consider looking into. Check out the landing page and you will see Ty sitting in Hawaii with his laptop and you can listen to him talk about his system.

I haven’t seen inside Ty’s system, but he has asked me to do a review so that might change soon. If you are curious now, you can take a look at the Reverse Funnel System for yourself.

Sponsor Entrepreneurs-Journey

As you can see I’m full up with banner sponsors for the time being, but I still have positions available for text link sponsors and I’ll be doing a post to thank them soon too, so if you want a blog post here on Entrepreneurs-Journey linking to your site like these sponsors, better get in quick! (Wow, I so feel like John Chow after writing that sentence ).

If you are interested in sponsoring this blog please see the advertise page.

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A quick welcome and thank you to the latest sponsor of Entrepreneurs -Journey.com, Search Engine Guide.

You should already see there banners floating around here and if search engine news and education is your cup of tea, or you want to learn how to optimize your small business for search engines, spend some time at SearchEngineGuide.com.

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