Do you use Text Link Ads? If so, do you use them to promote yourself for free?

TLA currently offer three ways of making money, by selling text link ads on your site, within your posts and within your feed itself. An example of a basic text ad is the offer of a ‘Free Wordpress theme’ in my left sidebar, and this is generated automatically by TLA once you have installed their plugin - when they sell an ad, it appears by itself, once the ad period has expired, it automatically disappears.

An example of an ad within a post, can be seen at the foot of my ‘Be a good stumbler post‘, as the ‘Related Link’ underneath the PayPerPost badge. These are an excellent way of monetizing old posts, and again appear and disappear automatically. You can see that particular post has a Page Rank of 3 on it’s own, so it’s a good spot for an advertiser.

Their third option, again automatic, drops a text link ad into your RSS feed, and will appear after your post content. Additionally, you can choose to have a number of slots available for your private use, which you could of course sell privately (avoiding commission) or use to promote your own blogs. I thought I’d start to make use of them to promote my other blogs, so in my feed for Thermal, I can encourage people to visit Blog-Op or my photo blog for example.

Competition

In a spirit of uncommon generosity though, I thought I’d also give away a free ad-spot in my Blog-Op feed to one of you.

I currently have around 120 Feed subscribers to Blog-Op and I’m offering an ad spot in my feed, free of charge for as long as this blog is going, which will hopefully be quite a while! All you have to do is deep link to any of my posts from your blog - take your pick, and it can be in the form of a full blown review, a single paragraph or a text link I don’t mind, but a review will count for 2 entries. You can have multiple entries, as long as each link is to a different post, and if you have more than one blog, feel free ;-)

I shall draw the winner at random on or just after the 23rd July, when I return from holiday, and the winner will get a text link ad in my RSS feed, which will be one URL with 40 characters of anchor text and 80 characters of descriptive text of your choice (TLA limits).

All entrants will get a mention and a linkback in the summary post at the end.

Summary

  • Deep link to any of my posts (Not the homepage) in a review (worth 2 entries), a paragraph within a post, or a single text link.
  • Enter as many times as you like, but each entry must be linking to a different post of mine.
  • Leave me a comment showing where you have linked, to ensure I don’t miss your entry.
  • On, or just after the 23rd July, an entrant will be selected at random to receive a text link of their choosing to appear in the Blog-Op RSS feed. This will be published as long as my blog is active.
  • The value of this feed ad is currently $60 per month according to TLA. No cash alternative will be given ;-)
  • All entrants will receive a linkback in a round-up post at the end of the competition.

Good luck!

Edit: The contest has been extended to the 23rd of July as I’ve extended our vacation.