Text-Link-Ads (disclosure: they had advertising on this blog for a loooong time — what’s up Patrick!) has recently unveiled one of its newest products: InLinks.com. This service aims to match bloggers with advertisers in the paid-link arena, and makes no bones about it. This is a marketplace which allows bloggers to sell their pagerank, as what makes this venture different — and stealthy, I might add — is that InLinks aims to be the silent broker between advertisers and bloggers.
What do I mean?
Advertisers pick the inline, or anchor, text they want to be the link through a search bar. Inlinks combs through its database of content to find blog posts with that particular inline text, and serves up a listing of such posts, that are sorted according to Alexa score, PageRank, and Date of post. Once the advertiser selects the blog post, some magic happens, and the link is rented. The starting rate for many links are about $10/month.
On the blogger’s side of the equation, the a static link is created on a given page to the advertiser’s designated landing page / URL with no “nofollow” attribute — pasing along the linkjuice accordingly.
The trick? Unlike other marketplaces, such as ReviewMe.com, you never get to see *who* those bloggers ar. And also unlike Payperpost, no one is asking you to write about, or review any particular thing. And obviously its not advertised *as* a paid link (under a helpful heading such as “advertisers”).
Translation: the hope is that Google will never find these paid links, as they are truly in the dark and under the table.
Why? Only because Google frowns upon paid links, and has even encouraged people to report sites which are thought to have engaged in the practice.
I won’t delve into the larger issue of whether its ethical or not, as I know arguments on both sides of the equation — that larger companies do it en masse, creating a difficult situation for smaller companies, but will never get penalized; that it pollutes the index with meaningless drivel; that Google is responsible for creating a link economy and so on and so on.
From a bloggers point of view, however, its just one more means to try and monetize their blog through a convenient marketplace that’s set up for you. If you don’t care about such things as pagerank, or how Google thinks of your site, or perhaps those of your peers (if they care about such things) then its probably worth a go. But then again, you’ve probably agreed to (or were sorely tempted to) rent out links private to people who approach you about adding blocks of text to some of your older and more popular posts, right?
And lastly on the issue of hiding paid links from Google, I do vaguely remember Google being able to algorithmically piece together who is selling links from their “snitch” reports in a pretty easy way.
As always, caveat emptor on all sides.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
[...] Tony Hung says the starting rate for such links are about $10/month. The linking is automatic and done via plug-ins (available for WordPress, Movable Type & Drupal) and unlike the regular text link ads, here blogger don’t give a site-wide link but only from a specific post. [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pm | Permalink
[...] per ad sold. I’m trying to get more details now from the company, but there is more on this here and here. CrunchBase Information MediaWhiz Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm | Permalink
[...] コンテンツサイトには売れた広告1件につきいくらという月額固定料を支払う。もっと詳しい話を同社に取材しようとがんばってるところだが、詳細はこことここに出ている。 CrunchBase Information MediaWhiz Inlinks Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm | Permalink
[...] コンテンツサイトには売れた広告1件につきいくらという月額固定料を支払う。もっと詳しい話を同社に取材しようとがんばってるところだが、詳細はこことここに出ている。 CrunchBase Information MediaWhiz Inlinks Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 5:19 pm | Permalink
2 posts in 2 days? YES!
November 19th, 2008 at 9:10 pm | Permalink
[...] At Deep Jive Interest - Text Link Ads Debuts InLinks [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am | Permalink
Yes, TLA has made a great move with the inlinks marketplace. So far, the links are selling like hotcakes, and priced at 7-12$ each, they make a great recurring income.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:27 am | Permalink
Readers should know that TLA is simply duplicating a service that was introduced by LinkXL.com over a year and a half ago. LinkXL has a hidden footprint on all contextual links and offers cheaper prices from $2 on up for monthly links.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:58 am | Permalink
[...] At Deep Jive Interest - Text Link Ads Debuts InLinks [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 3:13 am | Permalink
[...] At Deep Jive Interest - Text Link Ads Debuts InLinks [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 3:48 am | Permalink
[...] At Deep Jive Interest - Text Link Ads Debuts InLinks [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 5:14 am | Permalink
[...] Text-Link-Ads Debuts Inlinks.com — Hopes To Fly Under Googles Radar : Deep Jive Interests [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am | Permalink
[...] on this one. First, they either purchased some links on a couple of lesser known blogs, namely Deep Jive Interests and Digital Inspiration, or they simply waited for someone to just blog about their new product [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 1:50 pm | Permalink
[...] y vender links en páginas de terceros en multiples ocasiones y ya hay varios blog que comentan los pros y los contras de esta nueva compañía. Aunque hay algunas voces que dicen que será difícil para Google [...]
November 26th, 2008 at 11:20 pm | Permalink
[...] At Deep Jive Interest - Text Link Ads Debuts InLinks [...]