Revealing all about Text-Link-Ads
September 8, 2006 by Mary Jo Manzanares
Filed under Business
I’ve got a special treat for my readers today, an interview with Patrick Gavin, the President of Text Link Ads Inc. I’ve written previously about my (and others) success with Text-Link-Ads as a way of earning money from your blog, however there were still questions yet to be answered. Others had also contacted me asking questions such as “why was I rejected?” or “what determines the price of a text-link-ad?”
Your questions have been answered.
WorkBoxers: Good evening Patrick, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.
Patrick: James, thanks for this opportunity and great work with your blog.
WorkBoxers: Getting straight down to business, I’ve had a few people come to me with tales of rejection from the TLA publisher program and I’m guessing this comes down to a number of factors such as traffic, back links and Page Rank. Can you confirm this theory? Is there a minimum PR that sites need before being accepted into the TLA publisher program?
Patrick: Yes it is a combination of: traffic (derived from Alexa data), back links (from Yahoo’s site explorer), and the theme of your website. PR is not a factor in our algorithm but link popularity is a factor and can cause new sites that don’t have much to not be accepted right away. We do re check sites that were denied in the past every couple of months and invite sites that meet our requirements back in.
WorkBoxers: Honestly, I think TLA are brilliant and a great way to monetize if a site is doing poorly with contextual advertising, however I fear that growth could kill it. There’s obviously more publishers than advertisers, is it possible that in the future, there will be so much choice when buying links that publishers could suffer?
Patrick: TLA’s biggest growth obstacle in 2005 was the lack of publishers. 
We launched our independent publisher program in February of this year and it has been very successfully in signing up new publishers. The blogosphere has helped tremendously in helping the publisher program to grow virally. Now we are focused on bringing in new advertisers. We are doing this by shifting much of our ad spend away from attracting new publishers and instead advertising to potential advertisers. We think we can continue to balance the equation for the foreseeable future.
WorkBoxers: In a discussion with Yaro from Entrepreneurs Journey, I once mentioned that the 50% cut was a hell of a lot. Yaro replied with, “Yeah but TLA sell ads better than I do”. How exactly does TLA market their services? I see a strong adwords campaign, anything else?
Patrick: We have over 10,000 affiliates and run an aggressive banner campaign on many top websites. We drive a lot of eye balls to our sites and work hard with our site to educate the visitors on our product to give our publishers the best chance of selling ad spots through our marketplace. We do believe most sites can sell more spots by using TLA than flying solo. We do automate the ad delivery and payment process which takes a lot of work away from the publisher which is the key to our service.
WorkBoxers: In terms of pricing text-links, my hunches are that page rank has a HUGE impact. Am I close?
Patrick: No. The days of pricing by PR are long gone in my opinion. Buyers pay premiums for quality placement on niche sites. Theme plays the biggest factor with many of the finance, travel, real estate, and law sites drawing the highest prices. Link popularity is a factor but it is not taken from PR.
WorkBoxers: In my opinion, text-link-ads aren’t the type of advertisements that people click. Compare a single text link to Adsense or graphical banners, there’s no comparison. With that said, I see people buying links purely for search engine optimization purposes, is this the bulk of your buyers are doing?
Patrick: This is where we have seen the biggest shift. There is no doubt that even 6 months ago the average client was coming to TLA with a search marking mindset but since we launched our independent publisher program and brought in thousands of niche sites that is changing. You are right that many of the text links are not going to bring in the same volume of traffic as a large banner but the key is they are a fraction of the price of a large banner so you can afford to purchase text link ads across a number of relevant sites and the cumulative affect is some nice targeted traffic.
WorkBoxers: 10 links vs 6 links. Does the price change? If so, can you delve how much? :)
Patrick: This is not exact but it would change about 15% up if you dropped to 6 so in many cases it is best for the publisher to use the maximum 10 link spots for sale.
WorkBoxers: You do realize that Google could change their ranking system any second, and all of a sudden backlinks may not be as important. Is there a possibility of this happening or do you think backlinks will ALWAYS be in demand?
Patrick: I think link popularity will be at the core of the major search engines for the foreseeable future but that being said our focus is building a niche publishing network that can send our advertisers targeted traffic at a price that works for everyone. Our goal is for our ads to send enough targeted traffic to justify the ad cost and any search rankings benefit is just gravy.
WorkBoxers: Anything ultra secret that you can reveal for the future of TLA?
Patrick: We have a big new product launch that should happen in the next two weeks. You will be able to use it to additionally monetize Workboxers.com, more details real soon ;)
WorkBoxers: Thanks for your time Patrick and best wishes for the future.
Patrick: Thanks James, it was my pleasure.
Nice interview Jamsi.
I always thought they set their prices according to PR.
Great interview Jasmi,
I also thought that prices at TLA are determined by PR. It was great to learn that backlinks play an important factor. I was not accpted to TLA as publisher I believe becuause my site has little backlinks but I am happy with affiliate program for now. Thanks for this great inreview.
I had always thought PR played a large role in deciding price. Now I look at my sites I can see how this makes sense.
Several of my sites have the same PR but the price varies dramatically. I have a sneaking suspiscion that age/authority also plays a rols here too.
[...]Text Link Ads has quickly become one of the most popular advertising networks among bloggers. Jamsi from Workboxers has a hot interview with one of the founders of the Text Link Ads – Patrick Gavin[...]
Oooo, “new product launch that should happen in the next two weeks.” Does anyone else feel giddy?
I wonder why my topsite with an Alexa ranking of ~30000, 8000 visitors daily and a hugh amount of backlinks does not get more than 15$ a month per link..
This was a very informative interview, thanks for posting.
Martin: The only criteria left is topic. Your site must be on a topic that is not desirable for advertisers. What is your site about?
I came here from Problogger’s link. Interesting interview. I’m just getting started with Text Link Ads right now, but I’m hoping to do a lot more with them in the future. Good job scoring the interview.
Interesting interview.
Keep up the good work, Jamsi.
Thanks everyone, I felt privledged to interview Patrick as he’s just such a down to earth guy. Besides, TLA is paying a good portion of my living expenses – how could I ignore them? :)
Great interview, James. I always find that sites with PR4 or greater automatically get accepted even though Patrick says PR is not a decision factor.
How do new websites like mine that has a lot to offer to consumers , great products at affordable prices, get put on any lists to be found?
I am a 50 year old woman that is disabled for the rest of my life , I have had 15 operations and looking at 2 more thids year for my back.I am just looking for a supplement to what I get now , which is not much at all.
I cannot afford $200 here and there to publish my site.
I was told a different story all together now that my site is published.
I wass even turned down for anyone advertizing on my site. Whoa is me what do I do now.
If anyone has any answers out there please let me know. My webiste is http://www.ronniesgiftsanddecor.com
If anyone has any hindsite of what I need to do to make this work please e mail me justronnie@ronniesgiftsanddecor.com
Good interview, and down to earth.
I have a few sites with TLA, http://digilondon.com and a few others which were accepted straight away, (they’ve been active projects for a while), but when I launched a new project http://diginewyork.com it was rejected. I assumed it would as it was only a few weeks old and after asking TLA I was told so.
Straight forward company, straight forward answers.
Very nice article, I’m considering using them for advertising.
Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the interview with owner of TLA, I am new, and would like to ask how do we increase our revenue from this TLA, what parameter is used, based on Alexa and Google Page Rank??please advice anyone from this forum