Even though this kind of advertising gets a notoriously bad click thru rate, the paid option seemed like a no-brainer: 5000 views per month for an entire year for something like $150.

Obviously quite a few others thought so too, because the network went down after a couple of days, presumably because of an overworked server. The initial problems were overcome by changing to a different server, and since then I've been keeping my eye on the performance of the ad network.

Unfortunately I can't say I've seen a lot of traffic from the Wiedgeteers ads, but I'm hoping things change for the better next month as problems continue to get worked out and new advertisers jump on board. If nothing else, the free Widgeteers option is worth checking out...

Both of these factors should make it worth the effort to try to get your content on high PR sites. But the question is "How"?

One very useful approach is to leave comments or feedbak on interactive sites such as blogs or social networking sites. These links will usually be in the form of comments left in response to posts, stories, videos, etc.

Unless you are happy just leaving meaningless spam comments, leaving legitimate (or even semi-legitimate) comments on blogs takes time and effort. You have to actually go to the blog, read the posts, do a little bit of thinking, and then write a comment.

I don't know what the average time would be for doing this, but I'm pretty sure if you were to try to create an efficient "system" for commenting, it would be difficult to get the process down to less than 5 minutes per comment.

Yes, I know there is software that will find blogs, isolate posts according to keywords, and then let you create comments right from within the software shell. I've looked at this sort of thing and have not been convinced it would make the actual commenting time shorter.

The three most important criteria (from the "link value" perspective) for taking the time to create comments (either manually or semi-automatically) are:

1. The "authority" of the blog (measured in Page Rank)
2. The "relevance" of the blog to your own niche, and
3. The "do follow" or "no follow" status of comment links

I have already briefly commented on the "authority" question. I know that PR is not the be all and end all when it comes to ranking in the SERPs (results pages), but it does indicate potential link value, at least in my experience.

From the perspective of link value "relevance" is probably not as important as most people think. See my previous link relevancy post for more on this. But from the "I-actually-know-what-I'm-talking-about" point of view it makes quite a bit of difference. If you're taking the time to read the posts you're commenting on, you might as well read something you're interested in and are likely to learn something from. You will also be able to create comments more quickly because you'll have something intelligent to say.

On the "do follow" question, you have to know a bit of history to understand the significance of this. A couple years ago Google tried to clamp down on comment spam by encouraging bloggers to add the "no follow" tag to links embedded in comments. The "no follow" tag tells the Google bot not to follow these links - making them much less desirable from the link juice point of view.

Many bloggers obediently fell into line because they were intimidated by Google threats. But some resisted either silently or openly and left their comment links intact. These are usually referred to as "Do Follow" blogs.

If you can find a "Do Follow" blog that still has Page Rank, leaving comments on sites like that is generally considered worth the effort.

If you'd like to take a stab at building links this way, check out "How to Get a Free PR10 link". This will take you to a free report from Angela Edwards. Angela also has a subscription service where she sends you 30 new high PR blogs every month where you can get "do follow" links.

A shared online repository for content seems like the answer, so over the last few days I've been looking at Google Docs to see if it fits the bill. So far so good. One person creates a document and then shares it with others. The originator of the doc can work on it and then have a collaborator make additional edits to exactly the same document.

Take a video script for example. The script writer can write a script and store it in a Google Docs folder. Then give access to that script to the person doing the voice track and the other person doing the actual video production. If changes are made further up the production chain - say by the voice track person - these changes can be made right to the master version stored in Google Docs. So everybody is working from the same script.

One potential problem I've seen so far is that you cannot share folders - only individual docs. That means Person A may want to organize the same files in completely different folders from Person B. That sounds like it could be a good thing in some cases, but in others not so good.

I can also see this system being good for client communication and reporting. You create a report, say by using the online Spreadsheet utility, then share it with the client so he/she can see what is going on. Other users could even make notations and add stuff like you can with a wiki.

I must admit though, that I haven't quite figured out the Google "account" thing yet. If you've got accounts for adwords, adsense, docs, video, analytics, etc. and you signed up for them at different times, there's no telling whether or not they are synchronized. I'm sure there's a way, but I haven't figured it out yet.