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How To Invest In Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads Logo

Investing, investing, investing. Today, it seems like we’re forever putting our money into shares, stocks, bonds, websites, cars and even fine pieces of art looking to make a return on the cash we’ve paid up. It seems like such easy money – especially by buying shares in internet companies, which seem to be gaining worth by the minute. For us webpreneurs, web flipping has become the new fashion – buying them on the cheap, doing them up and selling them for a healthy profit.

However, I’ve always wondered why the same kind of investment strategy can’t be applied to advertising. Obviously, things like private/direct advertising packages are subject to pricing changes based on the demand of the spaces from consumers and spenders, and Cost-Per-Click methods like Adsense have already been thought of and done with methods such as arbitrage.

The thinkers on the internet, people like Shoemoney, have managed to capitalize on certain loopholes by using Adwords to throw money and unique visitors at a landing page in order to get them to signup to a more lucrative service or affiliate program. But in recent months, Google has started to penalize these gurus by charging a ridiculously high amount per click for those who have pages with poor content.

So are there any other loopholes, or mere clever strategies that we can adopt as advertisers? Well, the answer to this question would have been yes, had Google not put their foot down on the whole issue of selling text links. I first heard about the new contact form from Stu, whereby anyone can report another website that publishes and sells linkspace without adding a “no follow” tag or without specifying the outgoing links in a robots.txt file.

There’s bound to be a massive uproar about this as publishers start to be reported by those jealous folk not earning as much as they do. Just because Google owns the net, doesn’t mean that they have to start acting like massive, arrogant toshes – keeping their users happy should be the name of the game. I wonder what TLA’s reaction will be to this.

Anyway, back to the investing. When I first started using Text Link Ads to manage my link portfolio in the right sidebar, I was initially very glad to get my first 2 advertisers signup immediately; MerchantEquip and CreditCardSearchEngine. This was back in December 2006, and those 2 are still with me today. There are other advertisers who have also been with me for quite a bit, but these 2 were my founding members, and made me $32.86 along with a feed ad, in my first month of operation.

Back then in December, I had around 100 RSS Subscribers and was getting 3000 pageviews a month. MerchantEquip bought a Text Link for $17.50 and an RSS ad for $25.

Now, I have around 500 RSS Subscribers and am getting 15,000 pageviews a month. A Text Link on this site is now worth $40 (but I’m sold out for now), and an RSS ad is worth $50.

More importantly though, Merchant Equip continue to pay $37.50 in total per month instead of the updated price of $90! Therefore, the value of their advertising spaces has shot up by 140% – a magical return on their investment in only a 7 month period.

You might say to me that this isn’t actually a proper investment as you’re not getting any money back – but M.E. have managed to save $52.50 a month in expenses compared to if they started their ad campaign on Blogtrepreneur today. Another argument against this method, is that you’re unable to change your campaign and advert after a few months – these ads are permanent, and can only be changed if an advertiser cancels his/her package and rebooks a slot.

But, if you definitely have a direction where you’re going (and for this, I recommend that you sit down and write a plan of what you want to achieve with your site), then the rewards could be plentiful:

  • You could save a lot of money, which could be usefully spent on other aspects of your business – for example upgrading your hosting to a heavier solution once your site has become more popular and trafficked, and/or buying equipment, domain names and software.
  • You could have a lot of targeted readers staring at your ads through RSS Readers, improving your clickthrough rate.
  • As the site you’re advertising on becomes more popular itself, you’ll be able to reap the Search Engine rewards, due to the fact that you’ve specified targeted, keyword anchor texts. Also as Pagerank grows, this should filter through to your own site, helping your SERP’s and increasing organic traffic.

Unfortunately, all this is very hypothetical, but there’s no guarantee over how well your ads will perform, or how long the site you’re advertising on will continue to function. If the site shows no growth, and you’ve spent $17.50 in return for a trickle of visitors, this in itself will be money wasted and will be likely to leave a sour taste in your mouth. Then again, investing wouldn’t be fun and so lucrative if returns were guaranteed.

So, how do you go about choosing and investing wisely in Text Link Ads? Here are a few guidelines:

1) Checkout the “New Text Link Ads” page over at the TLA site. This is a list of all the recently added sites to the main database. Often these sites will be new blogs which have recently passed the PR4 expectations limit that the company set on new publishers.

2) Hover your mouse over the “Reveal” text to read up more about the specific blog. URL’s aren’t given, as otherwise advertisers could jump the middle man (aka. TextLinkAds the company). Check on the Alexa Rank, Number of pages, Link Popularity and Number of Links Sold. The main idea is to find a new site with a low Alexa Rank (if possible under 100,000), a high number of pages, a high link popularity (as this will give your link more weight in Search Engines), and a low Number of Links Sold in order to make your link stand out at the top of the list.

3) Using the Title and Description given on the page, open up Google and search for the Title and/or keywords mentioned. You should be able to find the site easily unless the description is vague and open-ended. By taking a look at the site itself, you can see where your link will be placed. You can also get a feel for the author (if it’s a blog), and to judge potential.

Side note: This judging of potential is very important. If Merchant Equip had not seen the potential behind Blogtrepreneur as a top Entrepreneur Blog, then they wouldn’t have given much return on their advertising investment. Take a look at the number of comments if the site in question is a blog to see how strong and faithful the community is. Try even emailing the owner to see how quickly he responds, and whether he seems determined and helpful in the reply. Often, you can judge a book by its cover, and online its no different. A bog-standard template shows laziness – a custom logo should be a key criteria. I remember I got a mate to design me a logo for my standard WP Template, just so I would stand out a little.

4) Then finally, purchase your link for as long as you want to risk. The longer you can afford to do so, the better. But another vital thing here is to keep reviewing the blog that your advert is on. If you can see things starting to go dry, then stop and move on. It’s better to cut your losses rather than to keep on throwing money at a dead cause.

I don’t claim to be an expert at this, and in fact I’m not. I’ve never advertised with Text Link Ads, publishing is the only thing I’ve done with the company. So as a little disclaimer, I’m not responsible for any money and time you may lose in this process. You gotta admit though, it does seem very cool. Again, there are disadvantages and problems abound. What if the site flops? What if you want to change your keywords? What if you want to change domains? That’s where the forward planning comes in – at least you’ll have a certain path to follow. Sure, no-one ever knows where things will end up, but you can have a good idea of where you’re headed.

So there we have it – sure it’s not a new revelation, but I’m sure it has slipped the minds of numbers of internet marketers and would-be advertisers looking to get the most bang for their buck. I would like to test out the system myself to see the true potential, so who knows, you may just see a Case Study next! If you try this, please tell me how it goes, as we would all love to see the results.

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