I don’t know about you, but I am always getting “link exchange” requests that go something like this:

Hi, Webmaster,

I just came across your site on (Niche A) and I think it would be very beneficial for you to link to my site, www.Nothing-At-All-To-Do-With-Niche-A.com. I have added a link to you on this page: Buried-Page-Four-Levels-Deep.html. You will get much traffic and nice pagerank. Please note that I will remove your link if you do not link back within 2 days.

So today I was reading Alex King’s post, Building alexking.org 2.0, part 11: Monetization, and I came across this really great idea for dealing with these kinds of “link exchange” requests:

While I use Text Link Ads to sell links on prominent pages on this site, I also offer text links on all other pages using my own system. These are fairly expensive and I haven’t sold many (perhaps I’ll drop the price a little), but it’s nice to be able refer “link exchange” requests to my link purchasing page.

I have to say, I really really like this idea. I probably wouldn’t make any money from responding to these requests with a link to my link purchasing page, but what a great feeling!

Maybe it’s time to try out the WP Text Ads plugin that Ryan Imel reviewed in a guest post over at Problogger the other day.