Text Links
The sites reviewed in this section of our website are marketplaces for the buying and selling of text link advertisements.
A text link is composed of 3 basic elements:
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A keyword or phrase to associate with your ad
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A URL (with a link to the actual site)
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A brief textual description of the site – “Anchor Text”
One major benefit of text link ads over PPC ads is that you pay a flat rate for them (usually per month), regardless of the number of click throughs. This frees you from concern over a competitor or other fraudster trying to drive up your advertising costs or an affiliate trying to artificially inflate their “revenue-share”.
Each of the marketplaces listed here contain an ever-growing inventory of websites with ad-space for sale. Typically, you browse this inventory for specific, predisclosed plots of advertising real estate. Therefore one web publisher may list different spots on their site with different terms and different prices.
You’ll usually be able to search a marketplace’s inventory by keyword or phrase to find the most relevant sites for your audience. Some marketplaces will allow you to further refine your search with other criteria, like type of ad (see below), category/theme of site, or ad cost.
Once a list of potentially relevant ad space is generated, you can then compare them one against the other by a number of different criteria, such as:
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cost
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category or theme of the site
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estimated pageviews per day
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unique hits per day
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Alexa ranking
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the site’s Google, Yahoo! and MSN stats
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# of backlinks
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# of pages indexed
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PageRank
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availability
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maximum number of text links the site will run on a single page
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countries where the ad will be published
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types of ads allowed (see below)
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and more
The more information a marketplace gives you about a site you’re considering advertising on, the better it is for you.
There are 3 basic types of ads you’ll be looking at, and you’ll do well not to confuse them:
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Homepage ads – appear on the publisher’s homepage and are usually the most expensive of the lot
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Sub-page ads – appear on some page of the publisher’s site other than the homepage
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Entire Site Run ads – appear on every page of the publisher’s site
The last thing you want to do is bid on an ad that isn’t where you thought it was. Be sure you read the detailed description of each link for sale/rent before you make an offer.
Some marketplaces will also offer Run of Network ads, where you give the marketplace permission to find ads for you based on a set budget and keywords you specify. Some marketplaces will even let you define demographic variables (ie. gender, age, etc.) to further fine-tune your targeting. Before agreeing to this kind of service, make sure you know whether or not you retain the right to approve or refuse any ad submitted.
Whether you have a marketplace find placement for your ads or you do it yourself, most of them have a reliable team of trained experts on hand to help you optimize your efforts.
If you run an adult-themed website, a gambling site, or a site that sells pharmaceuticals, you’ll want to make sure that the marketplaces you patronize don’t prohibit ads for your product(s) and/or service(s) from being bought or sold there.
Fortunately, it doesn’t cost anything to sign up with these marketplaces, and you can search through all their inventories as you like. Some marketplaces will require an initial deposit before giving you access to the inventory, though these monies are applied directly towards your first purchase(s). Others don’t require you deposit any funds into your account until you’re ready to make a purchase.
Either way, once you’ve outlined your ad – URL, anchor text, keyword(s) – identified the ad space you want and funded your account as necessary, the marketplace handles
Many of these marketplaces also offer packages or products unique to their service. TextLinkBrokers, for example, helps you create content-based, keyword-rich articles to buy and sell in place of ads. While AdBrite and LinkWorth offer to publish a full-page duplicate of your homepage (obviously linking to your actual site) in place of a standard ad.
You’ll notice in each of these reviews that we’ve also examined the offerings these marketplaces have for web publishers with ad space to rent (or sell). To find the best marketplaces for your ad space look at their existing clients as well as the percentage of revenue you’ll earn for each ad sold.
As publisher of the site, you should be able to retain the right to approve or refuse any ad submitted to you for publication. If a marketplace doesn’t allow you this right, you’ll need to question how much you trust their team’s discretion before allowing them to place any ads they choose on your site.
You can sign up for any of these sites as an Advertiser or a Publisher or both, buying and selling ads as it suits you.
Text link ads are a key way to both monetize your site and increase targeted traffic, all in one place. Unlike so many other web promotion tools, where availing every appealing company of their services is just plain cost-prohibitive, with text link ad marketplaces, there’s no good reason not to check out the inventory and unique offerings of each and every one of them.
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