As you know I’m an enthusiastic proponent of Text Links Ads (TLA), who have sold 4 links on my Thermal blog now. They recently emailed their publishers to let them know about a new monetization scheme called Auction Ads.

An example of these can be seen in my right sidebar: they are simply eBay associate ads linking to current eBay Auctions. If a reader clicks on an auction and ‘takes action’ (which is defined as a winning bid, a Buy It Now or signs up as a new eBay user) you will get paid according to eBays’ Affiliate program. The link explains it best, but essentially you can earn up to 65% of eBay’s revenue per referred purchase, and $12-16 per new referred user. Auction Ads will pay you 100% of the eBay commission.

They also have an affiliate program themselves, whereby any user that signs up for Auction Ads through one of your adblocks will earn you a commission equal to 2% of their Auction Ads earnings over the first 6 months.

You may use them with Google Adsense as they are not contextual - when you set them up, you choose keywords for your blogs and the eBay auctions are served based on those tags. They are also fully customisable for colour and blending, and all the popular shapes and sizes are available.

I’m not convinced that these will prove to be high earners, or even equal to my TLA earnings, although they may do well if you have a very high traffic website. If you would like to sign up for them, I’d be grateful if you use my affiliate referrer by clicking on the ad block itself, otherwise you can use the non-affiliate link in this article, and my children will go hungry.