Text Link Ads – Don’t Miss the Easy Money

I confess that I haven’t really done any promotion of Text Link Ads even though they really are a killer way to make money. The reason I often neglect the obvious is that I figure my blog is not (by intention) on the cutting edge, so most likely everyone has already heard of these programs.

If you are already one of the many who are already aware of Text Link Ads, you’d probably rather go for a Stumble!

But, as I was doing my financial tallying for July I had two realizations that made me think, “what if there are people who read my site that aren’t using, or haven’t heard of, Text Link Ads?”

My blog is about making money online…It’s my duty to tell you of such revelations!

1. In August, on my blog network, Text Link Ads will surpass AdSense as the number 1 income source
2. On my personal sites I’ve earned more from Text Link Ads in 2007 than any other single source

Those are two very good, and surprising facts.

The reason Text Link Ads is such a great program to support (and I mean to promote on your website, as well as use the service) is that it is an affiliate program that actually pays people to use the product, rather than requiring payment, as most traditional products would.

Three Ways to Make Money with TLAs

There are three ways to make money with Text Link Ads, promoting them as an affiliate, promoting them to advertisers and selling them on your site.

As an Affiliate

If you refer other webmasters or bloggers who sign up for Text Link Ads, you get $25 dollars. A lot of web site owners won’t sign up with TLA because their site doesn’t meet the minimum requirements (a Page Rank of 4), but that is missing a big opportunity.

You can begin to promote Text Link Ads as an affiliate, without having your site added to their marketplace, and at $25 payout for each person that you are telling how to make more money with their blog, it’s a pretty easy sell pre-sell.

With Advertisers

Promotion with advertisers who want to purchase links is another way to easily make money with Text Link Ads. Despite Google’s Mafioso style discouragement of the practice, lots of people are buying links to improve search engine rankings.

Text Links has a killer offer that makes it a no-brainer for new advertisers to sign up and try out their system. Spend $125 and get $100 off.

For giving away $100 in free links, you the affiliate get to pocket $25. Sweet.

Selling Links

The third way to make money from TLA is to sell text links on your site. My earnings from this program have increased every month since they started, and with the post level ads becoming more popular, I believe this is going to continue.

Every time you page rank increases or your Alexa improves, your earnings increase. Yummy. With WordPress plugins the ads are automatically inserted in your site. They also have integration code for almost every other type of site.

Make sure you pick keywords for your description that relate well to your site’s topic. I usually take a list right out of my stats counter referral logs.

If you’re not getting anyone signing up for ads after a month or two in their marketplace, then try a different category, some are much more popular than others.

My Tips For Promoting & Using TLAs

Boost Your Alexa Rank

Alexa rank is used in determining eligibility and price for ads on your site. If you use the Alexa toolbar for your browser (or the Search Status Firefox plugin like I use) you’ll find your site’s Alexa ranking will magically begin to improve.

Approve Ads Manually

Advertisers can be sneaky. On my blog network I have a page for “Jobs” and someone from an popular job site tried to purchase an ad on that page. I don’t think so!

Make sure you have your account set to approve ads manually, so you control what ads are seen on your site and on what pages.

Buy Relevant

When you’re buying text link ads, choose your site/page very carefully. Even more important than page rank is relevancy. Does the site/page you are purchasing on have a headline or title tag matching your keyword? If not move on.

Kick The Tires Before You Buy Post Level Ads

When you’re buying post level links in the Text Link Ads system, they don’t present you a link so that you can view the actual page where your ads will show up. But they do give you the article title. Grab that and toss it into Google and chances are very good that you’ll get to see the page your ad will show up on.

Forum Signatures

Text Link Ads are good to promote with forum signatures, especially if you visit forums that are outside the “make money online” or normal webmaster circles. In these places there are probably lots of people with blogs and websites that still aren’t aware of Text Link Ads.

Weed Out Crap

Always look at the site that’s buying an ad from your site. As much as it hurts to reject income, I’ll decline ads from trashy or “get rich quick” sites that go against my basic philosophies. Respect your readers when selecting ads.

Conclusion

I use them personally for all three categories, as I recently began purchasing links to boost rankings of a couple of my sites. The post level (where you can buy a link on an individual blog post) links are a very good value. They are in context which I believe will be more beneficial than the traditional site-wide links and the rates are a fraction of the cost of the standard Text Link site wide ads.

Monetize Your Site – My personal mantra!

I actually think that the text link buying trend is just beginning. As long as incoming links remain a factor in search rankings, they will be attractive to advertisers. As hard as it may be for us web workers to believe, most of the world hasn’t heard of SEO or promotion of a website through link purchases. So the future of the selling links business is probably very profitable.

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.