The Text Link Revolution?

They dub themselves as the “Text Link Revolution” & from a tactical standpoint one could argue that they have entered the marketplace at just the right time. Rather like the recent Netflix & Blockbuster Online Movie saga, can tnx.net really revolutionise the way we buy & sell text links?

We all know that the Text Link market is now a volatile place & in order to survive you need to evolve. So what have TNX done differently to the other networks out there?

Stealth

• Is the on site code detectable? In that particular example, a simple Google phrase gives away thousands of publishers. Whilst this is only an example of the code giving errors, TNX have made their code much more versatile, in that is doesn’t give incriminating errors but rather a 404 instead.
• You can’t choose which advertisers to buy directly from, instead you pick a certain criteria of what you want (more on this later) & tnx fulfill the order for you. This increases the security for publishers.
• The links placed on publisher’s websites aren’t sitewide, therefore there’s less chance of tripping spam filters.
• The links can be contained within a paragraph of text, which again draws less attention to them.

Value

• The system offers value for publishers, in that you’re not selling sitewide links. Instead you’re selling links on individual pages of your site. This increases the overall “combined link value” of your site. (i.e. would you rather sell 1 sitewide link for $100 or 100 links on individual pages for $250?).
• TNX will only take 12.5% of the total commission, leaving you earning 87.5%.
• In turn this value is also passed onto advertisers, you can now purchase more links from varied sources (i.e. would you rather spending $100 on 1 sitewide link or $100 on 50 links on individual pages across 50 sites?).

Speed

• The speed with which the system works allows you to buy large amounts of links very quickly. You specify your link criteria & the system fulfils your order (within a few days).

Since there’s been a bit of buzz about the service I decided to give you guys a rundown of what I think from two perspectives. The advertiser & the publisher.

In theory, advertisers are signing up to services like this to make money just as much as the publishers are. Except, the advertisers are wanting to increase rankings to sell a service, whereas perhaps the publishers don’t have a service to sell & instead sell the ad space on their websites / blogs.

TNX for Advertisers

I joined TNX about 3 weeks ago & created a few campaigns for some affiliate sites that I just started recently. I deposited $100 via paypal & received around 134,000 tnx points.

I’m currently running about 16 PR2+ links which costs roughly about 14,800 points per month (about $10). I could have chosen a cheap option & went for PR0 pages, but I decided to go with domains that had a high overall backlink count (hence the increase in cost). This is one of the features I like about tnx, things revolve less around Pagerank (which many other link brokers base their system on) & more towards link equity / volume.

Pricing revolves around the amount of points that you have to spend. TNX give a rough indication on the monthly price for an individual link (& when I say rough there’s a disclaimer that points out The Maximum price can be 20 times higher):

• PR0: $0.00126
• PR1: $0.063
• PR2: $0.126
• PR3: $0.252
• PR4: $0.63
• PR5: $1.26
• PR6: $3.15
• PR7: $6.30

The price seems to increase depending on the overall number of incoming links to the domain. So a PR7 link from a domain that only has 500 total incoming links will be cheaper than a PR7 link to a domain with over 250,000 total incoming links.

Now the fun part starts, you need to decide on the anchor text to use for your links. I recommend the Wordtracker Keyword Researcher for this (no point going for words that won’t get you any traffic), also make sure you read my article on avoiding Google’s Aging Filter (remember just because you can buy hundreds of PR0 links cheap, doesn’t mean you should. Take things slow & steady). Think of getting links as a exponential curve, the older your site gets the more you can acquire without looking suspicious.

Overall TNX is a pretty good deal for Advertisers, it caters easily for those on a small budget as well as those with a much larger budget. Enabling both to cover a wider range of keywords than previously possible (with other brokers). The downside to the system is that you really have no control over which sites your links are put on; other than selecting your criteria. I did have a few links appear on a crack website & a warez forum but you are able to “block” those sites before the links go live. I also noticed that you get charged for the links before they’re even confirmed as active by the TNX spiders. Personally I don’t think an advertiser should be charged until the link is confirmed as active, otherwise you run into potential problems of charging people for something they’re not getting.

If you’re interested in giving their system a whirl you can grab 5000 (PR0) free text link ads courtesy of TNX. Remember though, don’t go overboard.

TNX for Publishers

Publishers are what makes the system work, after all if there are none then there’s no link real estate to occupy. Therefore TNX really needed to come up with a system that’d work well for publishers across a number of verticals.

As I mentioned before, perhaps the biggest selling factor is that you can sell up to 4 links on individual pages on your website. I did a quick calculation using the TNX Income Calculator. For Earners Blog it worked out to be around $250 a month. Mainly due to the fact that Google slapped down on my Pagerank.

For that particular reason, the publisher program wouldn’t be anywhere near as profitable for me as direct ad sales or even affiliate sales for a month.

Sites that I could see it working well for though are ones with a huge number of pages:

• Forums
• Comparison Shopping Websites
• Sites with user generated content

I’d also like to see them move away from “Pagerank” & give pages a value based on the number of inbound links they have. For example, my page about Digg Power Users has around 179 inbound links & is a Page Rank 2. A link on this page is going to be much more valuable than say my post about Gaming Digg, which only has 31 inbound links but is also a Page Rank 2.

TNX also offers a referral / affiliate program to all members. You can earn 13.3% of all TNX points that are generated by any publishers you refer & 5% of any points generated by advertisers you refer. You can use the points to buy links, or you can cash them out. Not as initially appealing; as the $25 per member TLA offers, but could work out better in the long run (i.e. free advertising for you).

Tips to avoid your site getting filtered

Since TNX allows you to buy a large amount of links at once, I recommend being careful. Otherwise you risk your site getting penalised for a short/medium term for specific keywords, follow these tips & you should be fine:

• Try to make it look natural, these links work best if you have a natural looking link profile, so don’t overboard on paid links.
• If you have a new site try to limit yourself to 5 new links per week for the first month.
• Mix up the anchor text as much as possible, don’t buy 100 links with an “affiliate marketing” anchor text.
• Link to deep pages within your site, don’t point all the links to your homepage.
• Don’t label any links on your site as Sponsored Links, Sponsors or Partners.

Recommendations

There’s a few things I’d like to see TNX implement to make the system a little better:

1. The ability to filter out WAREZ related sites.
2. Not charging Advertisers until the links go live.
3. Time Delay on link fulfillment (i.e. the ability to set a time delay for links to go live).
4. Email alerts.

Final Thoughts

TNX is still young, so it’s only fair to expect some growing pains. However they offer a very viable solution to all Organic based Affiliate Marketers. The ability to point 30-50 links to your site over a period of time for a mere $10/month is quite nice. Remember, you have to make investments to get returns in this game. If a $10/month investment means an extra $1,000/year from 1 site. Then it’s a small price to pay.