This is one of those fancy paid reviews brought to you through Review Me. If you know me you know you are going to get the real deal.
I have been using Text Link Ads on this site for a couple of months now and I am actually surprised at the amount of people that don’t use this service to make money with their sites. There are a lot of different ways you can go about making money with your sites, but there aren’t many where you can paste some code and walk away and not worry whether money will come in or not. This is exactly how TLA works.
What I Don’t Like
When I said that you paste some code on your site and walk away I really meant that. While this is good from an ease of use standpoint it is not so good if you want to be in control of the pricing for your site. TLA uses their own algorithms to determine the price they will charge for links on your site and you aren’t given an opportunity to offer any input. Considering that pricing relies on the popularity of your site, Google PR and a couple of other factors this might not work out so well for sites that have yet to establish themselves.
For sites that are well-established you could probably make more per text link by selling them yourself, but I called TLA passive income for a reason. If you don’t have the resources you might not reach a large enough base to find companies willing to advertise on your site, but if you do then you might be better off going the independent route and collecting all of the fees.
If you look at the sites that have paid for a spot in the sponsors list, you will notice many of them you have never even heard of. I’m still trying to figure out what “Warntex Berufsbekleidung” means, but these are the sites that you will get through TLA. The majority will be within your site’s niche, but you might find some stray cats here and there. Fortunately you have the option to decline any that come your way.
What I Do Like
I’m a busy person who prefers to work on great content and not run around looking for companies to advertise on this site. Sure I will do a post here and there explaining the deals I have, but to really be successful and make money you have to hit the streets and go out to find people who are willing to give you money. Text Link Ads acts as my text link broker and they do all the boring work for me.
Instead of having to worry about if I am going to make X amount next month, TLA has provided a stable revenue stream for this site that Adsense can’t supply. What’s even more important is that it acts as a supplemental source of revenue alongside paid graphic sponsors and Adsense. This means I don’t have to worry about all my eggs being in one basket.
While I’m not a fan of the UI for the backend it is easy enough to get through and you should have no problems setting them up on your own site.
Because of TLA this site brings in extra money every month that it wouldn’t have done otherwise and that has helped a lot. Again if you are very strict with pricing and like to have control over everything TLA might not be for you, but if you like to focus on other things while having another revenue stream on your site I highly suggest you take a look at them. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.
Originally posted on January 9, 2007 @ 7:21 pm