Do Friends Let Friends Sell Links?

[94501]

I have a friend with a site that has a lot of content. Some of that content has affiliate links with no follows to affiliate urls. Those pages also have a disclosure on them about the affiliate relationship.

Now, he's talking about taking some of the existing under-performing affiliate links and renting them out to another site that wants them for the link juice. He says he'd have an on-page  disclosure, a display ad for the advertiser on the page and something in the text like "you might check out our advertiser..." and then some keyword targeted link.

He was asking me how risky I thought this is for him and really I don't know.Do you think Google would find this and s**t a chicken over it?  I really don't know, given that I see really blatant undisclosed rented links all the time.Of course, my easy answer to him is "don't do it," but it does make me wonder how risky that is.

Also, is that a realistic site-wide penalty kind of thing or it just doesn't pass any link juice to the advertiser kind of thing?

So, I'm posting here for others to weigh in on. Thanks!

[AlanBleiweiss]

Roll the dice. See where they land.  That's about as accurate a perspective as you'll get.  Yes, it sounds like all the right disclaimers will be used.  No, even with them, there's no guarantee Google won't have a problem with them.

Will they be nofollowed links? That's a factor.

Personally I advise clients that if they are willing to roll the dice blindly, they can feel free to try it out.  Understanding that if their site gets slapped, that's the price for gambling.

[94501]

My assumption is they'd be followed links to pass the targeted juice. Do you think it's a likely site-wide penalty or targeted penalty, like it doesn't pass juice?

He says (and I kinda agree) who can believe all the footer and sidebar links for completely paid linking that seem to get by fine and aren't even disclosed as from an advertiser. This is like, "hey, this is an advertiser."

[AlanBleiweiss]

Like I said.  He's doing some right things, although by having them be dofollow, that's in direct opposition to Google's saying they should be nofollowed.

And just because "other sites get away with it" does not make for an intelligent, wise or smart reason to do something.  Roll the dice.

[KeriMorgret]

Read http://www.seroundtable.com/sponsored-links-12978.html for an interesting perspective from Barry Schwartz about the paid, followed linked on Search Engine Roundtable. They've been there for years. He refuses to turn them nofollow, and says "There is no doubt that if I removed the links, my traffic would likely increase by 25% to 100%." There are over 100 comments on the post as well.