New Link Sales Through Digital Point’s Forum
Sep 17th, 2007 by Dave
I had recently asked Kirsty of Nerdy Nomad a few questions about how I could better monetize my travel blog. She went above and beyond by writing up a full review (pro bono)! As I read her feedback, I realized how much perspective I had lost on a web site I work on every day.
One of her tips has already paid off to the tune of $55 in the past 24 hours. I joined the Digital Point Forum which is dedicated to internet marketing and search engine optimization. I jumped straight to the sub-forum dedicated to the buying and selling of text links, and performed a search for “travel.” I found quite a few results, and send out about 8 private messages to potential buyers. In less than 24 hours I had received $55 (via PayPal) for two different text link ads on my travel blog (1 month duration).
Despite my quick success with opening a new revenue stream via the text link marketplace in this forum, it is not my preference. Here’s a quick breakdown as I see it:
Pros’s
- Publisher receives 95-100% of sale price
- Greater flexibility with pricing (to suit individual buyers’ needs)
- Relationship building can lead to bigger sales in the future
Con’s
- If advertisers aren’t contacting you, then it’s work to go find them
- Manually managing short term ad buys takes time and good organizational skills
I consider myself lucky to be receiving the occasional ad inquiries through my site. The line from Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come” can ring true online. Being proactive from time to time in soliciting ad sales will be a nice compliment to the dependable and automated marketplace of Text Link Ads.
Hey Dave,
Nice to see you’ve already taken a few of my suggestions on board. I know what you mean about losing perspective. A fresh set of eyes is always a good thing.
Two links for $55 for one month is a pretty high price per link - much higher than I ever get! Well done. Keeping track can be a pain so set up some sort of spreadsheet system that works for you and it becomes easy after that. Take note of the buyer’s DP name and then contact them again when the link is about to expire to see if they want to renew.
Finding links is a bit of work but the payoff is better than TLA and you have more control. I raked in $700 in two weeks when I first started selling links last December and was amazed.
The major con for me is that it makes my site look spammy. I try to stick most links way down in the footer. Now that I’ve got a bit of money behind me and have other things working I might try to phase them out, but it’s always nice to know that if I need a quick influx of cash I can get back to selling them.
Good luck with it!
Kirsty
Thanks again Kirsty. Since my links sell like hotcakes on TLA, I’m quite sure I undervalue my site, however I’ve slowly started to increase my prices. Even though it ends up being a little too much for some advertisers, far more have been willing to pay!
Now I just need to build up a few more sites so I can multiply my available inventory!
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