What motivates people to link to other people? Listed are some of the reasons people might have for linking to you, and I am sure, some of the reasons you might link to other people.

1. Did they just give you an Android phone Google TV, 3 month Dish + installation (Danny has a full history of Google Payola)
2. Have they already linked to you for this topic so you are rewarding them back?
3. Have they linked to you in the past and you are reciprocating?
4. Do they Digg or Stumble your posts? Surely that wouldn’t motivate you to link to a blogger known to be a top Digg, Reddit or Netscape user?
5. Do they leave comments and are an active member of your community?
6. Do you want them to link to you in the future?
7. Do you want them to see your point of view which may be different?
8. Are they on Techmeme and you want to be there too?
9. Do they have trackback enabled and featured prominently?
10. Do they have trackback with followable links that give link juice?
    (if you link to my posts using trackback you get nice backlinks currently they are nofollow but that will eventually be fixed again)
11. Are they a friend you shared beers with last week?
12. Did they speak for free at your last conference?
13. Are you speaking for free at their next conference?
14. Do they invite you to take part in expert surveys within your niche?
15. Did they provide good information and you want to provide good links to demonstrate your own authority?
16. Do you feel obliged to link because you are talking about them, their product or their service?
17. Do you feel it will help your search ranking results to link to authority pages?
18. Do they display referrer information such as
    • Last visitor came from
    • Top Referrers This Week
19. Did they say something nice about your company, product or service?
20. Do you share their views, but don’t want to alienate a segment of your own audience so you voice your opinion by only linking to one point of view
21. Did they provide you with a cool badge that stroked your ego?
22. Did they provide you with a widget with a hidden or visible text link?
23. They are the developer of the blogging platform you use, and you don’t know how to remove the link, or feel they earned it?
24. They are the developer of a plugin or theme you use, and you don’t know how to remove the link, or feel they earned it?
25. Do you want to be included in their linkblog, or their twitter feed?
26. Did they make a large charitable donation to your cause or to fund further development?
27. Are they a member of your:-
    • Blog Network
    • Secret Consortium
    • Joint Venture Network
    • Social Network
    • Trade Association
    • Prayer Group
    • Sect
28. Are they your corporate client?
29. Do you own stock in the company?
30. Do they buy advertising from you?
31. Are you employed by the company?
32. Did they pay you to link to them?
33. Do you earn affiliate commissions?

Many might look on this list as being a little cynical… I feel I am just being truthful.

I openly admit that in the past I have been motivated to link to someone for many of these reasons, and could easily have linked to notable bloggers who link to others for most if not all of these situations.

A lot of the time the linking happens with full disclosure, but even with disclosure, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the motivations would be disclosed.

However your audience isn’t stupid, and if you haven’t attempted to disclose as much as possible, that can have a huge influence on how much they trust your opinions and linking habits in the future.

This post in itself was motivated by a number of other recent posts on notable blogs that I am sure most of my readers read on a daily basis, and I would even happily link to them, if it was not for the fact that many of the motivations above apply to them even if they don’t admit it.

As this post isn’t intended to point the finger at anyone, no out-bound links.

Can you think of any more to add to the list?

First published Jun 2, 2007 – update to honour the Google Zeitgeist 2010

Payola makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Payola makes the world go around
It makes the world go ’round.

All I have replaced is the word “money” with the word “payola” because not all forms of payola are monetary or immediately obvious, but it certainly can have huge value.

Feed readers and Ajax desktops get a huge amount of coverage on many popular tech blogs, probably a lot more so than any other online service. Every minor update to a major RSS platform gets coverage, and hell, I am not immune to this either.

There is a huge benefit in people creating accounts on multiple feedreaders, only to discard them at a later date. The feeds are still being pulled for your account, even if you haven’t logged into it for the last 6 months, and those subscriber numbers are still being reported to Feedburner.

But major blogs there is some additional payola that almost guarantees additional coverage

Default Subscriber Packages

Yes, I am jealous…

Not every feed reader service provides “suggested reading” and default packages, but many do, and it certainly has an effect on subscriber numbers for the major blogs.

Does something like this have an effect on coverage?

I wonder what percentage of subscriptions come from such default subscription packages…

Google Reader currently has a huge market share, and doesn’t provide default subscription options. A lot of those subscribers are created by extensive coverage on Tech blogs, converting people over to Google Reader, or at least encouraging people to test out other services.

There seems to be a huge disparity between subscriber growth rate for those included in such default packages, and those who are not.

Duplicity

This is a fun concept…

Tech sites frequently discuss market share for feed readers. They frequently compare numbers of their own subscribers by providing screenshots of their subscriber numbers.

Obviously it is important to figure as prominently as possible on such a list, so it makes huge financial sense to include the most prominent tech blogs within the default subscriber packages, even if more of your users would most likely be interested in a knitting blog or parenting.

Surely this should be something disclosed when talking about RSS applications?

Techcrunch via Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim (who has a disclosure policy)

p.s. Don’t forget to add me to your Bloglines account, even if you use Google Reader, Pageflakes or Netvibes

Update: I need to make a small correction

There is payola with Google Reader too!

I would like to thank Mike for pointing this out in the comments.

Update2: I used Google Reader’s search function for blogs related to marketing. It is a terrible search feature and there are countless marketing blogs of high quality that are totally missing from the results.

Regular readers however are going to be shocked about this but in my opinion…

Shoemoney’s Disclosure Is Better Than Rand’s

I am calling it a debacle rather than a debate, because in a debate there is at least a serious attempt to do some fact gathering. Maybe there were time constraints both in the planning and the delivery, and it is good to see disclosure being discussed, but I honestly expected after the previous round of blog and counter-blog for there to be a more in-depth look.

There Are Regulations For Bloggers

Major companies such as Clickbank require disclosure. As I pointed out in that article, they link through to the FTC regulations for Word of Mouth marketing.

How anyone can debate whether affiliates need to disclose without using the phrase “Word of Mouth Marketing” is just ridiculous.
There is a big difference between a recommendation and an advert in the sidebar.

It Is Not Who You Talk About, But Also What You Don’t Talk About

Why don’t you rip apart Google on their referral units, where they effectively prevent disclosure, whilst encouraging WOMM.
I mentioned this again recently in my post regarding the Feedburner acquisition.
People don’t criticise Google because it would affect their relationship with Google.

On the other hand, bloggers seem more than happy to jump on the bandwagon for linkbait talking about services that don’t pay the bills.

No Mention of Word of Mouth Marketing Association

I have had issues with the WOMMA and disclosure in the past, but at least I acknowledge they exist.

Disclosure Policy

It isn’t hard to do – Shoemoney now effectively has a disclosure policy, Rand doesn’t. All he really needs to do now is stick a link to it in his sidebar, or even better add it in some way to his feeds using something akin to my disclosure policy feedflare, and everything is 100% above board and he can drop as many affiliate links as he likes without feeling compelled by anyone to stick a little (aff) after links which not all visitors would understand anyway.

As I noted recently, John Reese is also using disclosure for AuctionAds affiliate links, follow his lead, as John rarely puts a foot wrong.

Shilling for Google and Yahoo? Grow Some Brass Ones

Maybe not, but I think the majority of people writing about SEO and the search engines in general need to grow some brass ones, such as Jack Humphrey has just demonstrated.

In fact lots of the blogs I have been reading up until recently on a regular basis seem to take no stance on major issues, and to just ask their reader’s opinions, or link out to people supporting their opinion, without actually stating it.

Payola

I deliberately didn’t link through to any particular article when I listed 32 kinds of linking Payola. It is interesting that the podcast highlighted at least one more form, and possibly more.

I actually like Dave Naylor’s take on this

I bet if I dig deep enough into any blog a can find a link out with a motive

How critical can you be of a company with whom you have an NDA, or with whom you might like to have a special relationship with in the future?