Trying Something New
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
If you’ve been reading my ramblings for a while now, you’re most likely aware of my stance on advertising. I’ve tried advertising on my site in the past, but nothing really worked for me.
A couple weeks ago when I updated feedicons.com, I decided to throw some AdSense on there and it’s been pulling in some decent numbers since. At the same time, I worked a little magic and placed 3 ad units on my site that are only displayed to those that end up here from search engines. Since you’ve probably never seen them, you can see how my site looks to search referrals or try it out for yourself.
After reading this article while sipping on a coffee and enjoying a fresh peice of rhubarb cake (there’s nothing better than Mom’s baking!), I decided to give Text Link Ads a try.
I had never checked my PageRank and was surprised to find that my sans www. domain is at 7/10. I figured I would probably be able to make some decent coin if I can sell a few text link ads each month. After my site was evaluated and I set the number of links (to 4), Text Link Ads decided each link is valued at $200 (for a 30 day period), which is way higher than I anticipated. Now, I just need to sell them!
In the sidebar of all of my articles and reviews you’ll see a new section between recent posts and reviews entitled “Paying the Bills”. You’ll notice the heading text and link underline (on hover) is green instead of pink. If you remember what the different colour mean, you’ll know this indicates “external” content. Meaning, it’s not something I’ve written personally or links away from my site. You should also notice that the AdSense links are also green for the same reason. By no means would I want to trick my readers into clicking on ads. Which is why I’ve decided to give them a dedicated colour on the subpages.
So that’s that. We’ll see how it works out. Hopefully the Text Link Ads will outlast the rest of my failed attempts at making a buck around these parts. If you’d like to purchase a link yourself to show support, you can do so here.
Also, if you have any ideas yourself on how I could advertise tastefully in a different fashion, by all means… I’d love to hear your suggestions/ideas.
15 people have had something to contribute so far.
I’ve just recently started using Text Link Ads on my site as well, and while my links don’t cost NEARLY as much as yours, I’m hoping that it help out a bit here and there. Every penny counts. In my personal opinion (for what that’s worth) as long as the ad is text-based, it doesn’t bother me. It’s the huge moving ads that still bother me to this day.
Reply
let us know how u like TextLinkAds. If you think good of them, i might have to try it out for myself.
Reply
@Jon: Yeah, I’m not a fan of image ads at all. I’m using the affiliate button for now to draw some eyeballs there. But only plan on keeping it there until I have a link or two. I would never use something animated, though.
Good luck with your links!
@Cory: I’ll definitely follow up on this. I’m pretty determined to find an advertising solution that works for my site.
Reply
Hmmm, I’ve been thinking about this a lot and doing some digging. At the current price, I doubt I’m gonna sell many, if any links. I’m in the top 5 most expensive sites in the blog category. But I did notice that all others around me have 8 links offered, where I only have 4. The price per link goes down as you increase the number of them. So maybe that’s what I’ll do for now.
Reply
I don’t get how the text ads work? What is it somebody would be buying?
“Need links? Buy Links?”
What *exactly* would I be buying? Argh, I’m confused!
Reply
http://www.problogger.net/ has good articles on stuff like this
advertising in my belief is a necessary evil, unfortunately if your site proves popular then you suffer for the popularity in terms of bandwidth which isn’t free. And if you have to get a dedicated server, then that costs even more. You just have to balance making enough money against not alienating your sites users.
I wouldn’t ask how much you make just from your feed icons site, but I was wondering as to the daily traffic it gets?? I would think that a site like that would prove popular
Reply
One strategy might be to reduce the cost as well as reduce the time each link stays on the site. Assuming most of your audience are returning readers, why not offer them new ad links with new posts (say duration lasts 2 weeks, not 30 days)? You’ll make it more affordable for your main audience to add a link (bloggers I’m guessing who may want more exposure) and you’ll give your advertisers a barage of hits at once at a good cost, rather than a lot of hits and then â€â€ÂÂ? most likely â€â€ÂÂ? nothing toward the end of the month (since your readers have probably already clicked or not when it went up). My $0.02. Goo luck tho.
Reply
First off, cheers for the mention Matt.
Second, Dave: Most people buy links these days to improve their search engine rank position (SERP). The more people that link to you, the higher you will rank in google.
Also, back links (people linking to you) increase your Google pagerank. Pagerank is worth something, and you can see this in Matt’s post .. $200 per link is incredible.
Reply
@Dave: Text Link Ads is exactly as the name states - advertisements that are text links, plain and simple. Someone like me who has realestate to spare can offer a spot to place text links, where someone who wants to improve their page rank or spread their name around can buy a text link on whatever site they want. The text you see and URL is determined by the person who purchases the text link. Make sense?
@roraz: Indeed, problogger.net has some great articles. I was blown away when he went public with how much how he does and in turn, how much money he makes from advertising. Unreal!
FeedIcons.com does pretty well. On slower days it dips down around 500 unique visitors. Better days it’s up around 1,000. Mind you, 93% of those unique hits are first time visitors as well. I’ve considered selling text links on that site as well. Wanted to see how well it would do here first. AdSense is doing pretty well on FeedIcons.com at the moment anyway.
@Edward: Thanks for the suggestion - you’re totally on par with my thinking. Unfortunately, you can’t control the price or duration of Text Link Ads.
@Jamsi: Nice of you to stop by. You’re quite welcome for the linkage. Thank you for giving me that push I needed to try something new.
I was pretty stoked last night when I checked my email before shutting down to find a text link awaiting my approval. My first sale! Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked. Hopefully more buy in and I sell my 4 links per month.
Whoo!
Reply
I also use TLA, kinda cool, not messy, clear-cut straight text ads. Amazon Media Manager(really easy to implement with its Wordpress plugin) also got to do a nice job, instead of displaying ads, I displayed my currently doing things(listening to..) but those stuffs really put some stress on the server, ain’t that? So I removed the AMM(it had to pull the image album each time the page was loading) one but now only leave the TLA(only pulling some text, think that should be light ;).
Reply
Ahh I get it now. Alll makes sense
Reply
Hi Matt,
I thought I’d help a fellow designer out and fill up that last spot on your block. Great work, and I hope it’s going towards something good.
Reply
@Terry: Awesome, thank you! I was actually looking for a way of contacting advertisers via TLA but there doesn’t seem to be any. It would be nice if publishers could send off a quick thank you note to people who have supported them.
In related news, I just filled up my 4th link spot. For those that are keeping track, it took less than 3 weeks to sell all 4. That’s pretty awesome, to say the least. And yes, I’ve extended my limit offering to 6 links now.
Reply
I think Increasing the visibility of your ad space would be a good idea. I’ve been tracking the progress of my link, and it’s gotten a little less than 40 clickthroughs since the 9th. It’s something to think about.
TLA does not offer anything to the advertiser besides a price, alexa rank, and google PR (which apparently is not even factored in the final pricing structure). Offering actual site stats I think would be a better resource for potential advertisers.
Reply
@Terry: I added the text ads to my homepage as well. So that should help with the click-thrus.
I’m not sure that stats would help much. I average 900 unique hits and 1600-2000+ pageviews per day and have for almost a year now.
Reply