Can You Share Your Website Link Inside WA?

I wanted to write this post because there seems to be some major confusion going around about when you can or cannot post links to your website. Perhaps the rules have changed, but as far as I know, IT IS NOT SPAM when you post your website link.

The important thing to remember is what context the link is posted in.

I have seen several times in live chat, and many comments over the past few months stating that you cannot post your website link because it's spam. The most frustrating thing for me to see is the advice that you cannot post your link to your website asking for help.

As far as I know this is simply NOT TRUE.

Yes, you can post your link asking for help. The point of WA is to get help on your website and business.

Yes, some members have been uninitentionally, and temporarily banned.

Though you may have been banned for posting your link for help, that was the fault of the person(s) reporting you, not your fault. I'd venture to say it was just a couple trigger-happy people marking posts as spam simply because it contained a link, and they were too lazy to simply PM you.

Thus, this is part of why I wanted to share this post: to prevent the mistake of marking links as spam, when it's just someone asking for help.

How else would it be possible to show people what you need help on?

Also, I would venture to say that it's OK to post a link to a website where you are showing someone how to do something. In context, it could look like "Oh I saw you were asking about how to do a custom header. Here's how I did mine [link to website], and here's the plugin I use"

No Spam Link Example #1: Specifically, in the spam rules, Kyle says "no signatures". In that case, there's no reason for the link other than to advertise your business. Posting your link in that way is for sure spam.

No Spam Link Example #2: Also in the no-spam rules is: No soliciting. No affiliate links. That stuff should be obvious.

No Spam Link Example #3: One more possible point of confusion. No posting niche content. He means that you cannot post blog posts within WA, like "how to lose weight" or "how to build a chicken coop". There's a difference between posting a 500 word article about diet pills, and asking for help on why your image looks weird on the page X, asking how to fix it.

No Spam Link Example #4: One last thing to clarify, you cannot make posts where people must click through to read the rest of the content, like "click here to read more".

Again, there may be some grey area here where you do a training, and want to show an example of what that looks like live. What is the context? Do you have thin content in your training and tons of links to your website? Your link is probably spam. Do you have a lots of good content in your training and one link to a specific page, including a disclaimer about what people are clicking over to? Then you're probably OK.

I'm getting off into the weeds a bit, so let's just focus on the people asking for help stuff.

In my opinion, those rules are very clear, and they do not include the idea that you're not allowed to post a link to your website in any context. I've seen more than once, a newbie in chat, fearful for posting a link to their website while they are asking for help and the situation is pretty ridiculous.

How am I supposed to help them fix their problem if I can't see the website link?

I think when we post these "no spam" reminders, we really need to emphasize that it's OK to post your link when you need help.

If someone would like to point out where in the no-spam rules that my above statements are incorrect, please feel free to comment below.

PS. In addition to the specifics of asking for help, I don't see any issue with mutual friends showing their links to exchnge ideas. I've had many people ask why my websites are, and although I don't share all of them, I do share some.

There's a big difference between someone going into live chat and saying, "Here's my link guys, go give me a comment and help me build traffic" versus "Hey guys, I'm trying to build my email list, does anyone have a landing page they can share for an example?"

The core concept here is what's the intent of the person.

I realize that all of these grey areas can be confusing to newbies, but I believe it's more detrimental to just tell people 'Don't share your website link ever'. What do you guys think?

Additional Reading: When you are asking for help, please give the details to save time (includes comment from Kyle)