Text Link Ads

Written by Kevin Muldoon from System0 on March 18, 2007

It’s about time i wrote about one of my fave affiliate sites, Text Link Ads. I’ve been using them for nearly a year now and my income from them is currently around $700 per month but its increasing every month.

Web developers have been screaming out for a site like Text Link Ads for years. How many times have you seen content sites advertising completely unrelated items through amazon. This probably wasn’t because the webmaster thought that they would become a millionaire by promoting amazon on their site, it’s probably because there was a lack of alternatives for them to bring in revenue for their site.

Lets go back to the year 2000. Pop ups were starting to become popular and all in all click thru rates for banners etc were much higher than they are today. This was a time before page rank and before sites like Text Link Ads. A lot of content sites had problems bringing in income as they were not directly selling something or writing about something they could promote or advertise. Hence their income was based mostly on a CPM basis. CPM stands for Cost per 1000 impressions…basically they made their cash by using banner ad services like fastlick etc. Text Link Ads has been a godsend for webmasters who run sites like that but its also been a godsend for the rest of us and has made selling advertising on our sites simple…the way it should be. Anyways…im babbbling on now - i should be explaining how it works!

So How does Text Link Ads Work

Text Link Ads provides a place for webmasters to buy and sell text links. The system is very effective. The publisher may place up to 10 text links on their site. All they need to do is place some code on their website which will automatically display the advertisements for their site. Publishers can manually authorise advertisers request to place a text link on their site or they can automate it so that all advertisers are automatically approved. Personally i manually authorise the sites which i have sold all 10 ads on and automate it for the ones i havent sold all he inventory. ie. i dont start being fussy about what advertisers i accept until i can afford to be!

So much much do you earn? Well it depends on a number of things including alexa rating but the most important thing in the formula is page rank. You split the earnings with them so if an advertiser has to pay $50 to advertise on your site on a monthly basis you will earn $25 and Text Link Ads will get $25. The rate your advertisement is sold for is determinded by them but if your page rank increases you can be sure that your ad rate will greatly increase too…maybe even double. You can be paid via check or by paypal.

From an advertisers point of view Text Link Ads is pretty good. For a start they give you $100 in FREE Links to encourage you to begin advertising with them. If your not sure where to advertise they will arrange an advertising proposal within a few days. Basically you tell them your budget and the site you want to advertise and they look into suitable sites for you to advertise. Its a nice feature but to be honest they tend to recommend the sites you would probably have been interested in anyways. Advertising through them is straight forward and should help you increase your sites page rank if you advertise on a site for a few months.

Are they perfect?

No. They are not perfect and you shouldnt rely on them as your main source of income for a site. Not every site sells its inventory and even if it did, your more likely to be making hundreds from a site than thousands. That being said, you should definately consider adding them to your existing income sources.

All in all im very pleased with the site. It provides a steady income from several sites i own and i dont have to do anything…i dont spend time contacting people about advertising or whatever…i just check my paypal balance at the start of the month.

I dont like that they use alexa in calculating your advertisement rate…alexa is a completely flawed….listen, alexa is just plain balls - ill talk about that another time! haha. Im kinda nitpicking with the alexa issue though as page rank is definately the biggest factor.

I also think that taking a 50% share of the advertisement is way too much. Im looking forward to serious alternatives to text link ads who take less of a share but until then ill continue using them. Word of advice. If your thinking of advertising through them, check out the site your thinking about advertising on. Many of the sites listed there sell advertising directly and at a lower rate