textlinkads

A Preview of TNX: A New Text Link Service

October 14, 2007 By Devlounge

I was recently asked to review TNX, a new text link buying and selling service, similar to Textlinkads or other text link marketplaces. There have recently been a lot of reviews about this service, so rather than try to cover everything, I’m going to focus on the one side of TNX that would beneficial to people like me who own sites and are trying to monetize – the website publisher section.

Selling Ads on Your Site

Upon first visit to the TNX site (which I like to pronounce “Tee-N-Ex” although the actual pronunciation is “Thanks”), you are presented with two options: one for website publishers, and one for advertisers. Each link will take you to a FAQ about the service from the specific angle you might be interested in using the service for. Let’s take a look at a few of the Website Publisher FAQ’s:

Note: These are straight from the FAQ.

Q:How do I benefit from adding a TNX system code on my website?
A: When system code is placed on your website all the links that are purchased by advertisers will be automatically displayed on all pages that have TNX system code included. Whenever link on your website is sold to one of our advertisers, you get paid. The more pages you have on your site, the more links you can sell. Price of each link sold to our advertisers is calculated upon you page’s search engine rating. Links on all pages of your website are sold automatically, all you need is to place the TNX system code on all pages you want to sell links from.
Q: What is TNX commission?
A: TNX charges its members just 12.5% both, advertiser and webmaster to cover all expenses including web hosting, moderators salary and the most important – advertising all over the Internet so more people join.
Q: Can I control link ads on my website?
A: Yes! Once ad space on your website is sold, you can see list of all links and URLs in your control panel. You will have an option to block ads, delete them or ban the entire website which advertising you don’t like. We guarantee you will never see advertising of pills, drugs or any kind of ads that do not follow advertising policy. Every day we deny over 10,000 ads that do not comply with our policy.

On the left side of the FAQ page, I happened to stumble upon a Profit Calculator. I figured, what the hell, let’s see what’s possible. Upon entering in your url, the tool will calculate the amount of pages on your site and the link popularity. Once that is done, you have to adjust the PR for those pages. I set all of ours at PR6 (although we recently slipped to PR5). The calculator estimated I could make $8971.88 a month if I sold 2 ads per page.

TNX Calculator

Enough messing around – it’s time to register.

After registering, either as a website publisher or advertiser, you are presented with the TNX Dashboard. From here, you can generate the code to add to your site, add a new site, sell your TNX Points (used to buy links), create a new campaign, and view and manage your current campaigns (among other things).

TNX - Dashboard

TNX - Quick At A Glance

You may have noticed how I said you can sell your points. Well, what exactly do points have to do with all this? Points are how advertisers purchase links on your site. Points currently cost $1.20 for 1,000 points.

To get your site setup, you first need to ad the appropriate ad code to all your pages which you want to have ads on. The ads will be placed their dynamically, so once you ad the code to the pages you want, you won’t have to go back and manually edit them every time you have a new advertiser. Once you have added the code to your pages, you have to add your site to the system. It will take about 1-3 days to get approved.

TNX - Adding A Site

Other ways to make money

Maybe you are not interested in having text links on your site. That’s alright, because TNX also has an affiliate system which will allow you to place banner ads or your own links to the TNX service, and earn “TNX Points”. Now, you might be thinking, what do I want points for, I want cash! You can either turn around and use those points to purchase some link ads for yourself, or you can sell the points, either back to TNX themselves, or to another user.

Concerns with the advertising policy?

Many people get nervous with text links, especially a dynamic service where the code controls what is and isn’t shown on your page. No one wants to see their pages littered with links to purchase Viagra pills or anything like that. TNX does have a good advertising policy, which states that they will not approve links that “have nothing to do with the chosen subject or contradict it. Also, we will not approve campaigns that advertise pharmaceutical products and gambling.” Plus, because you can manage what ads get approved or not for your website, you have even more control over what kind of ads will be shown on your valuable pages.

Overall, if you are looking for another link marketplace alternative, give TNX a try. Have you ever used them? Let me know in the comments below.

So Long TLA

January 29, 2007 By Devlounge

So today made it official, we have finally left Text-link-ads. I got into somewhat of a dispute with the inventory manager after receiving another email (second one in the last 3 months) about ad’s not displaying right. I let them know straight up that ad’s have been displaying fine in the sidebar of each post/page since day one, and there’s never been any problems. The response I received was that clients expect the links to be found on the homepage. I would hope that most of our link advertisers had the knowledge to think about visiting the site themselves before purchasing ads, and we have never hid the fact that text ads appear on every page except the homepage. I’ve been looking for a way to get away from TLA lately anyways, and this was finally the “straw that broke the camels back” and will allow us to offer our own link ads at most more reasonable rates. I’ll be updating the advertising page shortly.

In other news, Ronalfy’s Feed-Styler plugin looks like it’s working great. I’ll be installing it shortly here on DL and he plans on releasing it towards the end of the week! Stay tuned.

Textlinkads Review

January 8, 2007 By Devlounge

There are many, many ways of advertising. Banner ads, links, rss, email – advertising has long since been used as a way to get your image and brand out their quicker and easier. One of the oldest and easiest forms of online advertising is link ads, and one of the largest link ad networks is Text-link-ads.com.

What Is Textlinkads (TLA)

Textlinkads is an advertising network that allows advertisers to place text links on sites and site owners to add their site to a directory of site for potential advertisers to put their link on.

I’m sure you’ve seen people selling link ads on their site. Links are the most traditional method of online advertising because they are straightforward and to the point. Many people also believe text based links offer better SEO than graphical advertisements because they are more direct.

Why Use It

A common question that many would ask themselves is “do I really need this service?”. From time to time, I have found myself asking myself that exact question. I have been with TLA for about 8 months now, but have continued to contemplate whether I should drop off or not. Still, I continue to stick with them.

From an publishers point of view, TLA helps more potential advertisers find your site, which is a good thing. In return, they take 50% of the link price for each link space they fill on your site.

TLA Homepage

Arguably, it’s easy to say “I can sell links on my own for more without a service like this!”. While it is true, TLA helps connect you to a much broader audience of potential advertisers. Other methods like forums tend not to be as successful because if your link prices are fairly high, average forum members will not be able to or have the willingness to pay excessive prices for ads. Usually the average advertising crowd is looking for a much cheaper solution, so TLA can reach a more “targeted” crowd of advertisers willing to pay more for what they get.

How Your links are Valued

TLA values link prices based on numerous factors including site traffic, theme, ad position, and link popularity. For example, here at Devlounge our link ads found in the sidebar of every page are currently $45/month at the time of writing. Prices can and will fluctuate, so as a site grows so will the cost of advertising.

TLA also has two tools for calculating the estimated amount of money you could be making a month. The TLA Link Calculator asks for your site url, category, and how many links you’d like to have on your site (up to 10 or more). You are then asked to pick the general location you would find the ads and whether or not they would be site-wide or on a single page. If we were to have 10 or more ads here on Devlounge, we could be making an estimated $230 a month. The closer you place ads to primary content, the more the estimated value rises.

TLA Link Calculator

TLA also has a blog juice calculator which will compare your site to similar sites in the same general category. This can come in hand if you plan on valuing your own ads in comparison to other sites and figuring out where you’re focus areas are in order to move your sites ranking along.

Set it and forget it

TLA is the perfect solution for anyone who wants to advertise on their site but does not want to worry about dealing directly with advertisers. By letting TLA do the work, you will lose a cut of your potential income if you sold the ads yourself, but you will allow advertisers to find you and you won’t have to do any negotiating; instead just sit back and wait for your monthly payment.

Feed hungry links

A few months ago Textlinkads also introduced RSS Advertising. As a publisher member you can download a plugin for different blogging platforms and offer rss advertising to potential advertisers. With the increasing popularity of feeds, RSS is becoming another popular form of advertising, and TLA can also help handle that.

If you’re interested in finding out more on Textlinkads, be sure to check them out. You’ll need to sign up to browse the marketplace listings of add your site to the marketplace.

Note: The above was a paid review from Reviewme. As always, are reviews are fair and accurate, regardless of whether they were paid or not.