Text Link Ads - Worth It Or Not
I suspect that most of the readers of this Blog will be aware of "Text Link Ads" - it's a service set up to bring advertisers and site owners together. Though I have not used Text Link Ads on this blog, I have been using it for a few months on a couple of sites.
As a Site Owner, it's pretty simple to set up - you simply create an account, submit your sites for evaluation and if your sites are of good enough quality you are able to copy/paste some code into your webpage, upload 1 extra file and voila! You are a text-link-ad Pimp.
As I wanted to test the viability of the whole system, I decided to use it on just two sites, as you can see the two sites are as similar as I could find in my portfolio - I wanted to get some efficacy data so that I could write this Blog Post…
Site 1
- Is a "proper" white hat site
- Has been in existence for 4 years
- Is not "made for adsense"
- Is PR5
- Has Alexa Rank of 475,000
- Is ASP based
Results on this one have not been that encouraging. It was a pain to set up the code, as I am not all that familiar with ASP pages, so I had to ask my webhost to help with the supplementary file that needs to be uploaded (and CHMOD'd)…
Once that was out of the way, everything was all systems go. In the last 3 months, this site has sold 1 text link ad, for a grand total of $8.50 per month. Not a great result.
Site 2
- Is a "proper" white hat site
- Has been in existence for about 3 years
- Is not "made for adsense"
- Has PR4
- Alexa Rank of 364,000
- Is PHP based
This was very simple to set up as my specialty is PHP, a simple code change, and simple CHMOD of the supplementary file and I was good to go. This site has (so far) sold 6 out of the 8 links that are available, giving me income of $45 per month (each link pays $7.50). This is quite good in my opinion.
So, what's the conclusion?
Text Link Ads appears to work very well, if your site can be found within the Text Link Ads directory of available sites.
I'm unsure what the "price per link" is based upon as Site 2 pays less (per link) than Site 1, yet Site 2 has higher Alexa. I was under the impression that Alexa was the only factor, but this cannot be correct…
I am now going to roll out Text Link Ads to most of my portfolio, as it's a good way to earn a little income without having to do any ongoing work. I believe that this sort of monetisation does not suit some parts of my portfolio and these will not be used…
If you are not already a Text Link Ads user, consider joining and placing the code on your pages - it costs nothing except a bit of your time (making the necessary code changes), and it may result in some extra funds to you each month - and please note that you get paid by Paypal, which is an added bonus in my opinion.
All in all, recommended, as this is a pure AIS. Spend 5 minutes per site setting up and then do nothing whilst earning cash.
Aff Link: Text Link Ads. Please note that I get a $25 bounty for sign-ups via this link.
Not Aff Link: Text Link Ads
Comment by Rich Backpacker — September 20, 2006 @ 11:31 am
What about all this with Google doesn't like sites that sell links
(http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/).
Could text links ads affect our ranking?
Comment by burt — September 20, 2006 @ 12:19 pm
I can only go by my findings in the past 3 months, which might not be long enough to ascertain if Google likes sites with these links or not…
Site 1:
~ #3 of 10,600,000 for it's favoured search term.
~ Has been page 1 for about 3 years.
Site 2:
~ #7 of 2,900,000 for it's favoured search term.
~ Has been page 1 for at least 2.5 years.
Comment by Dominic — September 20, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
I think they are worth it. So far, my earnings only go up every couple of months.
Comment by Chris H — September 20, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
I would like to use them but I signed up, submitted a site and was told that it had already been submitted and approved. Not in my account it hasn't. Confused.
Comment by Oli Allen — September 20, 2006 @ 8:43 pm
I signed up a site, recieved two emails saying that it was declined, and one saying it was approved.
To avoid confusion, I decided not to use them.
Comment by The Gent — September 20, 2006 @ 10:40 pm
A text link ad company that I wholeheartedly can recommend is Direct Link Ads based in the UK. Friendly, helpful and responsive. And yes that link is my aff code
Comment by burt — September 20, 2006 @ 11:34 pm
Do you think it is acceptable to use someone elses blog to post an Affiliate Link? I certainly don't.
Comment by The Gent — September 21, 2006 @ 12:55 am
To be honest I hadn't even thought about it in a moralistic way. Please delete the link Gary, my reason was seriously just that I have a very good relationship with the company and so might have been able to monitor the service offered, in good faith. So I offer my sincere apologies for the bad protocol.
Comment by Oli Allen — September 21, 2006 @ 1:45 am
To be fair, he was pretty up front about the fact that he was using an aff link…
Comment by burt — September 21, 2006 @ 8:55 am
It's not somehting that I would personally do, but the link can stay as it's a valuable one, and in the context of the post, cheers
I plugged in my two sites (that are presently running text link ads) on there and;
Site 1:
Page Rank 5
Google Links 12
Msn Links 444
Yahoo Links 106
Google Pages 223
Msn Pages 413
Yahoo Pages 54
Alexa Traffic Rank 468013
Suggested AdPrice (Monthly) £42.36
We suggest that sites sell 10 ads.
That means that your site could earn £4987.36 per year!
Site 2:
Page Rank 4
Google Links 23
Msn Links 945
Yahoo Links 381
Google Pages 327
Msn Pages 96
Yahoo Pages 169
Alexa Traffic Rank 365232
Suggested AdPrice (Monthly) £17.36
We suggest that sites sell 10 ads.
That means that your site could earn £2044.00 per year!
Interestingly, Site 2 has higher everything, other than PR and MSN pages, and yet the suggested Ad Price is much lower. I'm guessing that these are not the only parameters that determine a (suggested) ad price, or that too much faith is put into PR & MSN by Direct Link Ads…
Let's try another PR5;
Page Rank 5
Google Links 285
Msn Links 6570
Yahoo Links 5589
Google Pages 1630
Msn Pages 199
Yahoo Pages 458
Alexa Traffic Rank 51118
Suggested AdPrice (Monthly) £54.68
I can't work out what value is being placed - it seems to get higher the more MSN pages there are?
Comment by SarahG — September 21, 2006 @ 8:57 am
I signed up for TLA a while ago, the first site I submitted was turned down instantly, the second site was approved. But I've never had any actual ads go on it. The affiliate signup has been the only way I've made money so far!
I think if the links are appropriate to the site then I don't see any issues in using them. They're less obtrusive than advertising or adsense.
Comment by Chance — September 21, 2006 @ 2:14 pm
I got denied for TLA on my blog- they sited a lack of backlinks and low traffic count. I have more backlinks and traffic than most of the sites in their directory!
Evidently from what some of you have posted I should apply again though- it seems you get different results from different site reviewers?
Comment by burt — September 21, 2006 @ 2:50 pm
Direct Link Ad Website:
So, if I earn £100 in link revenue, they take 25% as a cut. Then when I withdraw the £75 that's left, they levy a further 33%! Am I reading that correctly?
Comment by Stu — September 21, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
Burt, whilst I had the same reaction as you when I first read your comment, thinking that 25% then 33% seems a little rich, it does work out to a 50% take on their part which seems to be around the industry norm.
It just seems to be a fairly convoluted way of arriving at this figure.
On the subject of actually selling ad space, I've had my blog listed there for about three months, with a PR of 4 and alexa that jumps from around 100,000, down to 50,000 on a good day, and had absolutely nada.
I think this might have something to do with the fact that TLA are asking $25 for one link for one month, which I just think is downright excessive.
I wonder, if they dropped their prices and their take a little, they would be much more successful, purely on a volume level, as I know most bloggers would be happier selling 8 x $10 links than 0 x $25 links.
On the subject of relevance, this is an interesting one. TLA have two types of approval for ads on your blog - automatic (pretty much everything gets approved) and "ad by ad" (blogger needs to approve every ad). Because this isn't a contextual system, pretty much anybody can buy an ad on your blog. A good example of this is Empress' blog, where the blog is about AIS and the like, and there's an ad for a mortgage site there.
Comment by burt — September 22, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
Youre right, it does work out to abut 50%. Bit of misleading advertising going on, on the site though
Comment by The Gent — September 22, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
Both TLA and DLA both give a return of 50% when making a withdrawal of revenue. You can use those earnings to publish your own beneficial ad links.