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Passive Income With Text Link Ads

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.

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Published by Scrivs on January 9, 2007 in Webmastering • Did you like it? Subscribe! Or Submit it to Blogosphere News!

14 people says things!

  1. If you’re interested in what TLA use to price your site, checkout this interview I did with Patrick Gavin, the President of Text Link Ads Inc.

    By Jamsi on January 9, 2007 9:08 pm

  2. Some good insight there. Thanks for the link Jamsi.

    By Scrivs on January 9, 2007 9:37 pm

  3. How is the revenue level for TLA? i.e. compared to Google AdSense? Better/worse?

    By Thomas Baekdal on January 10, 2007 8:24 am

  4. The revenue is higher than Adsense on this site and this month looks like I will be getting over $700 from them. Now this gets capped so in the long term if you continue to grow your site and its geared towards Adsense you could make more with it, but why not use both?

    By Scrivs on January 10, 2007 12:53 pm

  5. It’s definitely worth it. On a blog i have that I rarely post on, I have 2 TLAs that make me $24 a month. not enough to retire on but it pays the hosting. On my bigger blog, it makes a few bucks more :)

    Brian

    By Brian on January 10, 2007 4:51 pm

  6. Interesting. I will give it a try. Thanks!

    By Thomas Baekdal on January 12, 2007 5:49 pm

  7. You ever looked into AdBrite?

    By Scott Kidder on January 13, 2007 4:11 pm

  8. [...] Although many sites clearly have been able to get TLA going with considerable success, for some reason, I have not. The problem, I think, lies in the way that my site is set up and the way that TLA requires you to install its ad code. Or, it might be just that I’m technically incompetent. [...]

    By » Blogged by Christian Watson - Earn Income from Your Site with Text Link Ads - My Webmaster News Blog on February 9, 2007 2:41 pm

  9. [...] Although many sites clearly have been able to get TLA going with considerable success, for some reason, I have not. The problem, I think, lies in the way that my site is set up and the way that TLA requires you to install its ad code. Or, it might be just that I’m technically incompetent. [...]

    By » Blogged by Christian Watson - Earn Income from Your Site with Text Link Ads - My Web Design Blogs on February 9, 2007 4:39 pm

  10. [...] Although many sites clearly have been able to get TLA going with considerable success, for some reason, I have not. The problem, I think, lies in the way that my site is set up and the way that TLA requires you to install its ad code. Or, it might be just that I’m technically incompetent. [...]

    By » Blogged by Christian Watson - Earn Income from Your Site with Text Link Ads - Best Web Design Blogs on February 9, 2007 4:58 pm

  11. It’s interesting that you get links to German websites ;-)) I thought that TLA would at least pick links to sites in the same language as your website.

    BTW: if you haven’t figured out what “Warntex Berufsbekleidung” is: they’re selling all different kinds of working clothes and tools for electricians, painter and the like. It’s stuff from well-known brands over here in Germany.

    By Christian Schenk on February 25, 2007 6:41 am

  12. Unfortunately, today, Google will not tolerate the use of TLA for websites that using this strategy for getting better Google PageRank.

    By suray on June 19, 2007 9:51 pm

  13. Hi there. I signed up for TLA, was approved, and installed the plugin. I’ve gotten notices TLA sold on my behalf and I think I’m up to $25 or so in revenue. But what I don’t understand is this: Where are the ads? The plugin activates my TLA account, but I have not included html anywhere to actually display ads, and so I don’t understand how this works, or what the advertisers are buying, since nothing is showing on my site and I’ve added nothing to my blog theme to present TLA ads. What exactly are they selling and how does it work? I’ve emailed them several times asking this but I’ve gotten no reply. Can someone explain? Thanks, Joe

    By Joe on August 16, 2007 11:49 am

  14. Ah, never mind – I finally figured it out, thanks to a reply by the company. I see now that the ads are various words within my blog entries, and those links take the clicker to the ad site. Got it now. Much like my Amazon context link ads work – but those I can at least make double underline so readers understand it’s an ad link, and not a link I bound in. All the same, I’m going to stick with the service and see how it goes – I’ve already earned $38 this month along, and that same amount took me *a year* to earn on Google Adsense. We’ll see.

    By Joe on August 16, 2007 2:16 pm

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