TextAdSearch

TNX text advertising

Fri, 23 May 2008 09:45:15 GMT

A unique system for advertisers comes from TNX, I say unique as they allow you to advertise on individual web pages rather than having the usual site wide links. This may sound an arduous task to individually select pages to advertise on but thankfully there is a system in place that automates this.

The system works on points, you purchase points then spend them on text ads allocated by selecting the ad text and link and the types of pages you want your ad to appear. You can buy and sell points as well as use the points to buy advertising. The ads are based on a month by month system so each month you can renew the ads, there is currently an automatic renewal system to save time manually renewing your text ads.

Large scale text advertising

The biggest selling point is that you can easily place text ads on hundreds or even thousands of individual pages, they currently have over 30 million pages available to advertise on. This is the first company I know of where you can place text ads on individual pages without manually having to visit each page. Most other text advertisers base there advertising on site wide ads.

I tested out their system using their free 5,000 points offer and ordered up 425 text ads, with 5 different ad texts and linking to 5 different pages on one of my sites. Depending on a pages site rank the cost per month in points will vary, site rank is based on a number of factors including back links, site age and Alexa ranking.

The ads do not appear instantly and took a few days for all 400+ ads to appear. There is a campaign stats page where you can monitor your ads on each individual page. You are also able to remove any ads on pages you decide you don't like or even block your ads from appearing on a particular site.

TNX affiliate program

The popularity of TNX has grown recently and it is partly due to their affiliate program. The program pays you just over 13 percent of any webmasters TNX points they generate and you get 5 percent of any advertiser's revenue. You can either use the points to pay for your own text ads, transfer points to other users or sell them back to TNX for cash.

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LinkXL contextual text ad links

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:22:00 GMT

A new text ad broker Link XL allows you to buy and sell text links on your site. It works along the lines of Text Link Ads except that you are able to buy and sell Google friendly NoFollow links in addition to DoFollow links. This means you can buy and sell text links and still comply with Googles terms.

Rather than going for site wide text links in the navigation section of a site of in the footer LinkXL text ads are placed contextually within the page content. Buyers benefit from more natural and premium placement links that do not suffer from click fraud.

As with all brokers you are charged a brokerage fee for publishers which is currently set at 40%, lower than Text Link Ads, for each link they sell for you. There is also an affiliate program that pays out $25 for each new customer you refer who who then either buys or sells a link.

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Important news from the Google on paid links

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:14:19 GMT

It seems Matt Cutts the man from Google has spoken and offered some less vague advice for webmasters selling links. I will sum up what he appears to be saying and leave you the links to the sources so you can decide for yourself.

They confirm that Google is punishing sites that sell text links that pass on page rank. Google is not too concerned about graphical banners which also link to the advertisers sites. They claim they can detect these.

Google Webmaster central on paid links.
A discussion on Google groups about paid links.
Matt himself talks about paid links.

If you want to sell links you need to make it obvious to the search engines that it is a paid link by using the nofollow tag. You can also use javascript which is not that great for single links. You can also use nofollow and 302 redirects via an intermediary page to stop search engine bots from following the links.

The good news is that there are a few link management/selling scripts and services that are appearing who conform to Googles nofollow rules. I’ll be covering these in the not too distant future. I am also working on my own custom solution.

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The missing textlink

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:13:51 GMT

The recent Page Rank updates and penalties for selling text links have left the market in a daze. What to Do? Well it looks like webmasters are having to make a choice, abide by Googles guidelines and use links that are not followed by Googlebot or go underground to sell links.

I like my Google traffic

Those that have decided to capitulate have done so not because they necessarily agree with Googles stance but because the value of the traffic big G sends them. In short if you are caught selling text links without a nofollow then you will lose pagerank and possibly traffic.

One of the larger web properties was recently hit by the Google penalty and have decided to comply. Scroll to the end of the post to read their final letter of surrender.

I’m going underground to sell links

No, not me personally but there are those that have decided that they want to have their cake and eat it. There is an interesting post at blogging tips regarding underground links.

The Pagerank still and traffic carrot

Google whilst not publicising what they are doing have fired a warning shot to publishers about selling links. If you sell text links and do not make it obvious by using a nofollow or javascript then you will lose pagerank. By reducing your pagerank your links become less appealing for webmasters buying pagerank links.

I have had my best blog which I have worked hard on for over two years go from a PR6 to PR3 for selling text links. Guess what most of the advertisers were only interested in the links for there PR. Eventually selling PR links will be done by a minority on the black market where they will fetch a premium because of there scarcity.

The text link market evolves

As well as the private text link sales the text link brokers are also evolving. TNX which I have talked about previously are one such company, Earners blog talks about this and how they are making their links harder for google to spot. I reported this and said it was like a red rag to the Google bull. So what are publishers to think. It’s hardly fair that some can get away with selling premium links whilst the rest of us that comply have to sell links at a discount.

My stance at TextAdSearch

As yet this blog does not sell advertsing. I will however be introducing some ad space. I will also be using nofollow tags on those ads. There are several reasons for this. Firstly I don’t want to have to constantly worry about if Google will find out. Secondly it will give me a chance to gauge the new text link market and experiment a bit more with OpenAds.

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Selling links without the GoogleJuice

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:13:16 GMT

The dust is settling around the recent pagerank slapping Google gave out. I recently came upon a blog by Courtney Tuttle who has recently recovered the pagerank for their site. Courtney does state the the pagerank is not really the issue but is worried the effect any penalty would have on traffic that is being sent from Google.

I found Courtney’s post on the subject quite refreshing and honest although I can only find the advertise page in Googles cache which looks like it reflects Courtney’s pre nofollow stance. The current advertise page points to the services page where there is no mention of selling paid links.

My own forays into selling advertising on this site is progressing, you may have noticed the 125 pixel ad (popular among webmaster blogs) in the navgation. I am testing it for potential clickthroughs so I can gauge pricing, I am using OpenAds by the way. I have a custom PHP solution I am also testing elsewhere which I may use. Don’t get me wrong OpenAds is great but it is big (where’s OpenAds Lite).

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Ad link tracking

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:12:49 GMT

As you know I have been testing out OpenAds to track links, this includes graphic banners and text links. So far I have had mixed results. Whilst OpenAds is a great program, is free and has lots and lots of options I find that it does not suit me as a small publisher.

It takes time to learn and set up, the actual amount of files needed is huge which means it not only takes up lots of space on your server but takes ages to upload initially. I have been testing graphical ads as I found text ads and WordPress do not get on too well. I have also been experiencing some 404 problems, as yet I am not sure if it’s to do with the OpenAds installation.

The new solution

It just so happens I know a smattering of PHP and have put together a basic link tracking script. The script works well for what I want it to do and I have learned a lot about PHP and how bots follow links. I will be using PHP and MySQL (a database) to manage link tracking.

Why link tracking is good

There are many reasons you would want to know who is clicking on your links. If you sell ads, promote affiliates via affiliate links or want to track links you place elsewhere on the internet then tracking is the way to go.

By tracking links I am able to let advertisers know how many clicks they are getting on any ad space they buy on my sites. If I promote an affiliate program I can see how often the affiliate link is clicked. If I make a post on a forum or place a link on another site I can track clicks on it.

How is link tracking done

What I have done is created a domain just for tracking, every time I want to track a new link I create a new URL and include the target URL as part of the new URL. This means I would use the tracking URL for example mytrackingurl.com (not the real URL) then add the target URL such as ?target=gotothissite.com.

When the link is clicked on the user is taken to mytrackingurl.com and redirected to the new URL. During this process the PHP records the click and stores it in the MySQL database. That database can then be queried at a later date to see how many times the link is clicked on.

Whilst this is not the best solution available it is simple enough to build upon and does what I need with the minimum of fuss. If you want a full on solution I would recommend OpenAds, however I needed something different so went with my own solution.

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WidgetBucks is like Chitika

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:11:46 GMT

Having used Chitika for quite a while and been pleased with the amount they pay per click (with it being more consistent than Adsense) I was pleased to see a new contender. WidgetBucks is very similar to Chitika in that you get paid per click rather than per sale.

It’s very easy to sign up, you just need to provide a valid email address and password, then click a link in the confirmation email. To get paid you need to provide some tax information in the form of a Tax ID. You can specify to get paid via PayPal which is convenient or by cheque.

Creating the widgets

The widgets are very easy to configure, but they do not seem to have as many options as Chitika. I would have liked to be able to have chosen specific colours rather than choosing from a specific colour palette.

The widget itself is Flash and it does seem to load slower than the rest of the page, then again this is the same with Chitika’s widget.

$25 Sign up bonus

As an incentive they are offering $25 to those that sign up, the minimum payout is $50. There seems to be quite a good selection of merchants involved so you should be able to get some good matching ads for your site.

I would have to say that Chitika is still the better system. It has a proven track record and it’s widgets are more customizable. I’d like to say WidgetBucks is better because they have a better referral program but they have yet to prove themselves.

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Text Link Ads 15 discount for October

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:11:19 GMT

Text link ads have an new coupon. For the whole of October they are offering 15% off all new orders, just use the coupon code holidays. If you are planning on buying text ads with TLA this is the time to do it, they don’t offer discounts every month, the last one was in August

The biggest bonus about using TLA is that they manage your ad sales and purchases for you which as I have come to realise over time can reduce the amount of headaches form managing private link sales.

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PageRank update and link sales

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:10:49 GMT

The Google Page Rank update is well underway and Google appears to be placing penalties on sites with paid links. I say appears to be as Google do not let you know you are doing something they don’t like. If you Page Rank drops and/or you start seeing less traffic from Google search then you may be doing something that Google doesn’t like.

Google can penalise a site for many reasons so it is not always obvious what you have done wrong. If you link to a site in a bad neighbourhood or sell links without using the nofollow attribute then this may be the cause of the penalty.

What’s wrong with what Google is doing?

The problem is not that google is punishing sites for selling links that are deemed to be being sold to manipulate the search results. The problem is that Google is only punishing some sites which sends out a mixed message. They are also not making it obvious to webmasters what they are doing so webmasters are going to continue to buy/sell text links based on Page Rank.

Should I be selling links?

Yes is the short answer. If your site is dependant on Google traffic then you will have to follow Googles guidelines to stay in there good books, Google says.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the tag

Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

If you decide not to follow the guidelines there is still no saying if your site is going to get penalised. Following the guidelines at least ensures you will stay in their good book.

What to do

The current situation is that there is probably only a minority of webmasters that are following the guidelines. This means that if you sell links that do not pass on PR then you will be at an instant disadvantage against a similar site that passes PR in it’s links.

Eventually everyone is going to have to sing to the same hymn sheet but in the meantime there is going to be confusion and turmoil in the Text link sales market.

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Linkworth a mention

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:10:16 GMT

Ron Wicker of Linkworth has contacted me to ask me why I haven’t mentioned them when I seem to go on and on about TextLinkAds all the time. Well I apologise for not getting round to you sooner and I will let everyone know about Linkworth. Also the reason I go on and on about TextLinkAds is that it is the best performing text ad broker for me.

This is what Ron told me about his company:

LinkWorth.com has been around for almost 4 years, 20k publishers, almost 10k advertisers, we�ve paid out a few million to our publishers and the best part is we have several products under one roof you can monetize with. Let me preface our product names with the theory� we didn�t want to call them what everyone else does, so we added �Link� to the beginning, then the end described the product. Like �LinkSura� is a link that is in a �S�ingle �U�rl �R�otating �A�d.

Linkworth is an established broker and I have read both positive and negative experiences from people who use their service. They have recently given their site a bit of a web2.0 makeover and there does seem to be a lot to their service. I would have to say that there is a bit too many options and it can be confusing. At the end of the day you just want a service that will sell your ad space for you.

Linkworth control center

I have signed up for Linkworth and will be testing out the service. There does seem to be a lot to learn and an enormous amount of options. I have the Linkworth control center open in another screen and I fell a little daunted. I’ll let you know when I work out what’s going on.

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