I’m going to be very careful here not to slag of Text-Link-Ads, I’ve done some things wrong, and they’ve done some things wrong. This isn’t so much a warning as just me documenting my experiences so that other people can learn from them. If you currently sell links from your websites you may want to read this.
I first started selling links several years ago. Because of the markets my websites were in I knew early on that it was going to be hard for me to attract my own audience and that I’d need a brokerage. Text-Link-Ads were the link brokerage of choice at the time so I went with them. My relationship with Text-Link-Ads ran smoothly for a long time, me happy for them to handle the admin, them happy to take a 50% cut.
This was up until very recently. Google took umbrage against one of my websites that had Text-Link-Ads links on it. It then became a case of comparing the pro’s and cons – do I risk loosing traffic for the small amount TLA pay me? The answer was no and I wanted TLA of my website. I logged in to the Text-Link-Ads website to remove my pages but there was no option to do it, this is very strange. Its even stranger when you consider that payment is pro-rated over the month for the days when you show the links. There should be nothing to just simply stop those links from showing? Anyway, I decided to take action and remove the script from one page knowing that this would get a response from TLA. It did.
I got a message about ads not showing and them suspending links being sold on that page. This was fair enough and what I was expecting, so I decided to e-mail them back and let them know I was planning on removing all TLA links from my pages due to a Google penalty. This is where it gets strange. Within a couple of hours I could no longer sign in to Text-Link-Ads account, it looks as though they’d blocked my IP. Having other people check and trying an anonymous proxy service confirmed this. Even worse, they’d blocked my websites from accessing their system so that when my server attempted to load the links it was taking an age to time out. To the casual web browser it just looked like my pages were taking an age to load.
This is where I was stupid, when I wrote to let them know I was planning on removing the TLA links I didn’t actually remove them straight away, I was waiting till I heard back from TLA (I’d posed my e-mail in the form of a question). Because I did this and they suspended/blocked me almost instantly there was almost 24 hours where I lost nearly all my traffic to pages with Text-Link-Ads on them. The combined money I lost in that 24 hours would easily cover 3 months worth of what I earned with Text-Link-Ads. The last thing I was expecting them to do was just block my websites and block my IP from logging in. I could fully understand if they stopped serving the links but to block and cause a timeout seems a strange way to go.
So this is the lesson I’ve learnt from all this, when it comes time to part ways with Text-Link-Ads the best thing you can do is just remove their script from your pages and only when that’s done let them know. Because of the more lucrative ways of making money that I’m currently working I’ve decided that it’s just not worth the trouble of selling links – so this bring to an end my link selling career. (Oh and by the way, since I replaced a $25 a month TLA link with one of my own affiliate links I’ve pulled in $255 
)
7 Responses to “My Link Selling Career Comes To An End”
R Kumar
May 4, 2009
TLA was never a choice for me. I started using them on one of my successful blogs on a friends recommendation and I faced so much problems because of the scripts that I was running that I decided not to sell links.
There can be many other ways of monetization and one does not have to rely on a TLA, correctly as you have mentioned. The money that you earn from them would be much lesser to what you could have earned through other modes.
R Kumar’s last blog post..The Secret of a successful WordPress Installation
|Jeet
May 5, 2009
That’s plain evil on TLA’s part, I am sure they will get a flake from other bloggers about it. I am not a big fan of link selling and I sell nofollow links though I get 1/3 of normal price that others sell links for. At the same time, I have been thinking of creating a system that will let people ‘manage’ links they are buying / selling and won’t be a broker.
|Ricardo @ Nurture Your Wealth
May 5, 2009
Just wondering if I’m following. You removed text-link-ads due to google tos infringment, but added “info links” right after?
Not to bash, but seems like a lesson wasn’t learned from your experience.
|Paul B
May 5, 2009
Ricardo, TLA and Info-Links are not competing services. TLA put static links on your website that are followed (against Google ToS), InfoLinks use Javascript to insert advertisements into your text which don’t count for Page Rank and are also – well, adverts. TLA links are not adverts, just paid links.
|social bookmarking demon
May 10, 2009
I hated selling links because it did lower my website’s page rank whichwas a real negative for me
social bookmarking demon’s last blog post..Review Of “The One And Only” Atomic Blogging 3.0
|