Text Link Ads (TLA) is another good way to monetize your site without taking up a lot of precious real estate on the screen. TLA is a link broker or a middleman who sells text links on your behalf. If you’re considering selling text links, you’ll have to register for an account and submit your site for consideration. I’ve submitted a few sites and I’ve noticed that those with low or no PR get rejected.

Background information

TLA was founded by Patrick Gavin who has given some interviews here and here. I also saw their booth at SearchEngineStrategies 2006 in NYC.

How to choose which category to advertise in?

Here’s a tip. If you choose a category that doesn’t already have a lot of sites advertising (less competition), your chances of selling your text links are much higher. You can scope out the competition by clicking on “Buy Links.”

You’ll see the categories on the left side of your screen.

Notice that some categories are further subdivided into smaller sections. Others like “Baby” and “Books” are just by themselves. I checked on the baby category and there are currently no sites listed. That means that if your site gets accepted, it’ll be the only one shown on the page. If there are many sites listed for the category, there is a chance that your site may be listed on the next page which decreases the likelihood that it’ll be seen by prospective advertisers.

How much can you make?

I’ve seen prices listed from $20 to $1000 per month, depending on the popularity of the sites and the number of pages the links will be placed on. Your share is 50% of the revenue. So if your link sells for $100 a piece, your share will be $50. You’re allowed to sell up to 8 links, so you could potentially have $400 in passive income every month as long as the advertisers keep their orders.

You can also recruit other webmasters or advertisers and get paid a flat fee of $25 per referral. They either have to get accepted into the publishers program or purchase a link (as an advertiser).

So the bottom line is, if you’ve got an inventory of websites and want to make some extra passive income, be sure to check out Text Link Ads.

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