Text Link Ads InLinks Option
I decided a few days ago that I would start selling text link ads here a month or so before the blog gets a page rank. Whilst submitting the blog to Text Link Ads I was asked if i wanted to try the inLinks advertising method. This happens at Step 4 of adding a new site to TLA.
Here are the screens you will see if choose to use this advertising method with Text Link Ads.
I read about this advertising option in May but if im honest, I didn’t know too much about it. Therefore, I decided to give Text Link Ads a call as the website doesn’t really give you that much information about inLinking.
So what is inLinks?
In brief, inLinking allows you to convert keywords in your blog to links and sell them on to advertisers. It’s a very good concept and one which is attracting interest from advertisers as the links are embedded in the content. However, from a publishers point of view choosing inLinks restricts you from making money through other means as you are not allowed to use Text Link Ads, ReviewMe, PayPerPost and other such sites. You are allowed to use javascript based advertising methods like Adsense and AdBrite though.
I asked the guy at Text Link Ads if he could give me some sort of indication of the commissions/money I could earn from using the inLink program but his answer was very vague indeed. He said that there are some sites making a lot of money from it and that its proving very popular with both advertisers and publishers however he wouldn’t tell me much more than that.
Not one to throw in the towel early, I decided to call again to see if I could get more information from someone else and thankfully I did. I found out the following :
- There is a maximum of 3 links sold per page
- The price of the link ranges from $5.00 to $50.00. Obviously the price you get depends on the traffic and reputation of the site and page.
- Some websites have found it difficult to sell links whilst others have been able to sell hundreds.
- You can decide which links you accept for placement on your site.
- He spoke a little about how the system works. When you choose to take part, Text Link Ads crawls through your blog/website looking for keywords and phrases to index. They will then be able to present those keywords to advertisers.
- It takes around 4 days for your site to appear in the marketplace.
Should I use inLinks at Text Link Ads instead of selling text links and reviews
This is the very same question I was asking myself today. After speaking to the first guy for a while I asked if he could remove the inLinks option from BloggingTips so that I could sell text links. I then realised that this is the best time to try inLinks out as Blogging Tips is not currently selling any text ads or paid reviews. So when I called up the 2nd time I asked if they could add the inLinks method back to my BloggingTips account.
If you are currently using Text Link Ads, ReviewMe or PayPerPost, the decision to use inLinks is not as easy as you might already have a steady income with these sources.
The sneaky readers out there are probably already thinking about using inLinks and selling text ads and paid reviews directly themselves. I do not believe that TLA monitor this but there is a good chance that inLinks advertisers would be a little pissed off so you would either get yourself in trouble with TLA or indirectly lose potential inLink advertisers.
For the next month or two I will be using inLinks exclusively so I will do my best to let you guys know if it’s a realistic alternative to text link ads and ReviewMe. If there is anyone out there who is currently using inLinks and can add to what I have written in this post please leave a comment.:)
thanks,
Kevin
Susan | July 6th, 2007 at 1:28 pm #
Hi Kevin, it’s Susan from Sueyboo.com…for my new website, Hautegeek.com I’m using inLinks and I’m kind of confused because I got approved for this as well. I installed the plugin but I haven’t seen any inlinks and from what I understood it’s like that kontera thing… Any idea of when the inLinks kick in? I don’t even see a help area for it so it’s kind of strange.
Ron | July 6th, 2007 at 3:43 pm #
Hi Kevin,
I have a solution for those who wish to sell in-text keywords, or as we call it, LinkInTxt, and still participate in other programs. Use the service that created this concept originally, LinkWorth.com. We will not say you cannot use other services. After all, it is your site, right?
This service we announced some time ago and have had available to our customers:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/4/prweb521536.htm
http://www.linkworth.com/products/advertiser-linkintxt.php
and these are announcements we’ve made on our blog:
http://blog.linkworth.com/?s=linkintxt
I’m sure TLA will do a great job of offering the product, I just hate to see they are trying to limit their people from using other services that compete with them.
I should have known in NYC when we had drinks with Patrick why he was so interested in our LinkInTxt product. You know the saying, “keep your enemies closer”? Not that we’re enemies with them…its just funny to see them launching it now. Touche. I guess it’s time for post level ads from LinkWorth.
Now if TLA can just move it off of Wordpress only. Come on Patrick… keep up!
Honestly, we have nothing but great things to say about that crew:
http://blog.linkworth.com/ses-nyc-happy-hour-with-the-text-link-ads-crew/
J.D. | July 6th, 2007 at 4:13 pm #
I’ve seen absolutely no activity from TLA on my site, which was approved for the inLinks program a week or so ago. This has been an informative article for me because TLA sure doesn’t want to release any info one what they’re doing.
I’m on the verge of taking it off my site.
Of course I do understand that my site’s content might not exactly be the best for this kind of thing, but still…it’s not giving me any kind of benefit so why should I have it?
I’m very interested in seeing what kind of results you get.
BigM | July 6th, 2007 at 7:16 pm #
I don’t use TLA, but am a die hard Linkworth customer because of a solid offering of partner products.
They launched a product similar to ‘inlinks’ about 2 months ago called LinkinTxt.
No plugins or anything like that.
The version 1.0 was a little light because it was hard for large sites to get all of their pages in front of advertisers. But they have recently upgraded to LinkinTxt 2.0 (about 3 weeks ago) and it is solid.
Setup took about 30 seconds. You put in your website domain and you’re ready to go.
They basically have a spider that goes out and crawls our site looking for new pages etc. Then, advertisers on the Linkworth network type in their specific anchor texts/search terms, etc. I get an email alert from Linkworth telling me when someone requests an on page link and I add it right to the site. We’ve got about 12 links going throughout our site right now at $12.00 a pop. Not huge yet, but we’ve got about 1000 pages of content with 10 - 20 new pages coming up every few weeks, so i am hoping to turn this into a solid cash cow. I am figuring that in another 90 days or so advertisers and search optimizers will catch on to this technology and really start cranking in in-content text ads.
We do alot of text advertising ourselves, and I can see that links built directly inside of content are the next big thing — for advertisers as well as publishers. What better way to raise page popularity and relevancy at the same time?
I would love to finally get rid of text links at the bottom/sides of our pages and just put them right into the content.
Thanks.
BigM
Success Online | July 6th, 2007 at 9:38 pm #
It will be interesting to see how it pans out. I wonder home many advertisers there are in the network? I know some people are a part of the other programs so that they can showcase their blog and site within the directory even if they are not receiving any revenue from the Review me and Payperpost types
Ramkarthik | July 6th, 2007 at 10:48 pm #
Kevin, Do you think it will give you a better result than ReviewMe and other paid to blog things. Maybe you can try things and tell us. As you have not started with the Paid to blog things, you can try this. Do tell us about your experience with it.
Ron | July 7th, 2007 at 1:06 am #
Kevin, I guess my detailed post wasn’t to your liking? I apologize if I went too far, but I had no intentions of doing anything bad, other than poking fun at P.Gavin and his crew and giving my input regarding their new product vs our LinkInTxt. I can assure you I’m not here to spam your blog at all. We have a network as big as TLA, so we have plenty of links at our disposal. (Want a package?)
Anyhow, Kevin, if you don’t want to let my post up, that’s cool. I just wanted to throw out an alternative for your readers. We do not limit publishers from using other services similar to ours. Our motto is we want all of our publishers to make as much money as possible, along with the advertisers spending as much, but getting results that make the money spent worthwhile
We know that if we focus on pushing bloggingtips.com straight up to $500 /per month, then we’re getting you on the road. Add a few here and a few there.
Anyhow, I’m a fan of this blog. It’s the most I’ve participated in a long time when it’s other than my own blog.
Regards,RON
derlinker.com | July 7th, 2007 at 2:48 am #
Nice you are completely disclosing EVERYTHING about the program after confirming that you would not.
Is that your kind of doing business? I would kick you out of the TLA program right away.
FYI I’m reporting this to TLA right now as I’m pissed that some publishers think they can talk and talk and talk and ruin a good program for us advertisers.
CatherineL | July 7th, 2007 at 5:47 am #
I was going to mention - when it said further up that it was a private and confidential program, I thought you were going to say your decision was to not use it, since you had printed the whole thing on the site!
It will be nice to hear how you go, if the other commentor doesn’t get you banned.
Kevin | July 7th, 2007 at 6:35 am #
Susan / J.D. - Perhaps you need to be more patient. I assume that advertisers are looking for pages which have a pagerank already and are listed in search engines etc too. I know if I was looking to advertise in this way I would be trying to get the best value possible from a blog.
BigM - I wasn’t aware of that product but I’d be interested in hearing how it pans out for you.
Stephen - Due to the ’secretive’ nature of TLA it’s difficult to determine roughly how many advertisers they have board on this. There is a chance that they have very few advertisers but they are still recruiting publishers so that they can promote it to potential advertisers. Starting a new advertising product is a bit catch 22 at first for companies in that respect.
Ramkarthik - I’ll definately keep everyone updated on this
Ron - I had absolutely no clue what you were talking about until I checked the comment moderation queue. I was out last night so this is the first time I’ve been able to check comments since writing the post.:mrgreen:
Your comment went into moderation automatically due to the number of links in the comment. I honestly have no problem with companies like yourself talking about their company if its relevant to the discussion and in this case I would say it is.
Additionally, If there are any readers out there who would live to review LinkWorth.com on behalf of BloggingTips.com please let me know. The more info we have on these kind of sites the better in my opinion
derlinker - Well if you want to tell tales be my guest
I really cannot understand how advertisers or Text Link Ads could be pissed off about me giving more information about the service to potential publishers. The more people know about this service the better in my opinion. If TLA ban me for trying to give more information to people about inlinks then so be it, it’s their loss.
How about this? If TLA ban me for discussing it i’ll repay the favour and report your website to Google for using the service ;);) Seriously, I cannot understand why you think this is bad for advertisers. You should have a bit more respect for the intelligence of readers here. Do you honestly think that readers here wouldn’t realise that I was using an inlink publishing solution or do you think they’d just assume i like linking to random internet websites in keywords for no reason.
Susan | July 7th, 2007 at 7:15 am #
You’re right, I just need to be more patient, but I’m really glad you shed some light on inLinks. I was totally lost until I read this.
cooliojones | July 7th, 2007 at 6:12 pm #
I also signed up for inLinks, so I’m waiting for my site to appear in the marketplace and see what happens from there.
Lewis Empire | July 7th, 2007 at 11:43 pm #
I noticed that you are a reader of John Chow. He writes a lot about Kontera Ads. How does InLinks compare?
derlinker.com | July 8th, 2007 at 3:16 am #
@Kevin,
Why do you side-stepp my accusation of YOUR fault and brable about your reader’s intelligence?
it’s YOU who is breaking the NDA with TLA.
As an advertiser I’m pissed because your demonstration of “business ethics” and “intelligence” lowers the overall endurance of the whole program and thereby you waste MY DOLLARS! you owe me
Threating me to report MY sites to google is just a weak joke as you got no clue about them.
and BTW sir, it’s YOU who is openly talking about selling links here.
Kevin | July 8th, 2007 at 3:51 am #
Lewis - I haven’t used Kontera. I’m not a fan as I find them a little obtrusive.
Derlinker - First off, I owe you nothing and I don’t know how you can think otherwise. Secondly, please feel free to contact TLA and ask them to comment here. Lastly, do you expect me to take someone seriously who is blatantly only here to cause trouble. Derlinker.com isn’t even a registered domain name so the email you are using and the blog you are promoting in your comments is fake. Next time please use a working email address or your comment will be marked as spam.
Ram | July 8th, 2007 at 8:44 am #
Yeah Kevin. Kontera and other In-Text advertisings can be avoided. It might get us a decrease in the number of readers. Few people find it irritating.
Random Webby | July 12th, 2007 at 10:09 am #
The reason Derlinker is pissed off and why TLA requires secrecy for this program is that it goes directly against what Google says. Hiding unmarked links in posts makes them much harder to detect — making it easier for link buyers to manipulate the search rankings.
If you’ll notice, those links you created to InLink go to a login page. You just spilled the beans big time. Actually for all the Google searches I’ve done for “InLink” and TLA this is the only real result.
Ron | July 12th, 2007 at 11:45 am #
Wow Kevin, you stirred up a good discussion. (I’m Clapping!)
I wouldn’t worry too much about anything. I’m definitely not speaking for TLA, but eventually it would be an “out in the open” product I’m sure. You’ve just beat everyone to the punch talking about it. Plus, it’s great pub for those guys either way you look at it.
derlinker, running a same style business, I understand your concerns but one thing I’m sure TLA realizes as much as we do, Google will find out most everything that happens. Have you ever seen how they recruit new talent?
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2004-10-13/google/Billboard_1.jpg
You get an army of people who figure things like that out with ease, they’ll definitely figure out how sites are ranking whether it’s out in the open or not.
thelinker.com | July 14th, 2007 at 1:31 pm #
Dear Kevin,
you are a master of side-stepping
who are you to think i’m trying to “promote” on your “great” blog here?
last time again for YOU - my only complaint was that you ignore the NDA contract you confirmed with TLA to keep advertisers like me in private.
you don’t seem to understand these concerns from your “blogger’s point of view” at all, but I’m happy that at least a good bunch of your readers, commenters and TLA understoond the problem and took action
Kevin | July 15th, 2007 at 3:52 pm #
I have spoke to TLA about this post, they are aware of it so if you have a major problem with it you need to take it up with them as I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong
Rahul | January 2nd, 2008 at 5:08 am #
Guys, my experience with TLA’s inLinks is highly disappointing so I was googling from last few hours to see others opinion on inLinks product.
I made my mind. I am not going to use this anymore. Also as there is no option to exit automatically I think I need to write to TLA guys to do this favor to me!
Moneywise I am making $2.5 with one link sold per month! My main loss is via TLA Affiliate program which can not be used with inLinks. With every affiliate u can make $25.
So in my calculation inLinks is big disappointment.
Kevin & all plz correct me if I am calculating it wrong. Thanks for the nice discussion here and a very happy new year to all!