While the internet offers more and more ways to create income streams, many are looking at selling sponsorship links on their unique designs. Will this work and how much can you charge?

As with any market on the internet, the first whiff of a little more income and the vultures swoop, cutting margins and increasing the size of markets. While the sponsorship of Word Press designs in particular has increased substantially over the last few months, we have also seen a marked down turn in the prices which are being charged in the market place. So what next?

While initially designers were selling only one link on their unique designs, this has now widened to three (or more) in many cases. Prices of up to $35 per link are well below what the best designers were able to charge when the market initially opened up. While there are other design areas which are also active, including standard templates and directory designs, there is talk that Google are watching the situation carefully.

Quite how Google would be able to tell if a link was paid or free is not clear, but they are looking to really hammer down on paid links, and footer links are high up the list. It seems that a new market which had opened up for designers may be about to close fairly sharpish, but no doubt something else will come along fairly soon. It is just a shame that new and inspirational markets are flooded by ever cheaper pricing, which ruins it for the quality players.