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Make money using Text Link Ads

Every once in a while I plan to talk about services or affiliate related companies that I use to monetize this site or my other websites and blogs. One of the companies that I’ve been working with for at least the last 8 months is Text Link Ads.

Text Link Ads is a service that helps you monetize your site by helping you get advertisers to purchase link space – usually in your sites sidebar – for a week or a month at a time.

I know they base which sites are accepted by a mix of stats which include page rank, Alexa rank and I believe how many RSS subscribers the site has at the time of submission.

I went to test my theory. I’ve got two sites that haven’t been accepted yet so I resubmitted them and got the same results – well let you know when your site is accepted. Then I decided to try adding my husbands site Guitar Licks and it was accepted right away.

The only major difference between my husbands site that was accepted and the two of mine that are still waiting is that his has 8 more RSS subscribers … yet it’s a PR 3 and the site of mine that’s been waiting the longest (6 months) is a PR 4. I wrote to them to ask them to re-evaluate the two sites that I’ve had waiting for months manual. Hopefully they will do that for me because frankly I don’t see much difference in the stats of the site that was just accepted and the two that are waiting.

My advice is to not try to add a site until it’s at least a PR3, had a decent ALexa rank and hopefully at least 40 to 50 RSS subscribers.

BTW if anyone wants to subscribe to this sites RSS feed I’ll be happy to take a look at your site and return the favor.

Once you’ve added your site and it’s been accepted you must add a blank xml file to the root of that site. This is where any text ad info will be placed when Text Link Ads sells some links for your site.

Then you’ll be asked to set up how you’d like the links to appear once you have some. You can decide how many link spaces to sell. I think generally starting at 6 or 8 is good. You can also decide if you’d like the text links to be outlined in a box, if there should be a background color behind the text links and what the link color should be. I generally only use the text link color.

Oh there is a wordpress plugin that you can download and use on your site if you have a wordpress blog. I have a few blogs on the same domain. The plugin can only be activated for one site per domain.

Once you’ve set everything up properly and added the code that’s been created for your site to your sidebar you’ll see the words “Text Link Ad” in that space for approximately 6 hours. This will tell you that you did everything correctly.

After that there’s nothing else to do but sit back and wait for an advertiser to purchase a link on your site.

Some people have success almost right away, while others wait months before getting their first text link ad. Just keep working on your site, maintaining it’s current quality or improving it and I’m sure you’ll eventually get some links.

Advertisers might also be interested in purchasing Post links. These links are placed underneath a post. You can only use this feature with the wordpress plugin. I use the plugin on my main blog Tricia’s Musings and I’ve sold a number of post links.

You can approve or deny any text link or post link offers that are made. I believe you have three days to accept. If you don’t come to the TLA site and mark the offers as approved or denied I believe the links are automatically added.

I’ve never had a link offer that I’ve denied. They’ve all fit with the sites that they have been requested on.

I’ve done well with Text Link Ads. I make several hundred dollars each month with them and as I said I’ve still got sites to add (this is one of the sites waiting to be accepted) and empty link spaces to fill.

There’s certainly nothing to lose in trying the program.

Click this button to sign up now:

Feedburner

by Tricia

As you probably know by now, your blog has an RSS feed. Blogs are often set up by default to list your 10 most recent posts in your RSS feed. Feeds can be read in your browser, sent to site visitors by email via services like Feedburner, or read using a feed reader.

I’ll discuss a few on the most popular feed readers in a future post, but I’ll just tell you that if you have a number of sites that you enjoy reading it’s sometimes easier to keep track of them by listing their site feeds in your feed reader and quickly reading their posts or post summaries in the reader. You can visit the site to read the full post or to comment on their post – and you should do that every now and then anyway so that the blogger knows that you are a regular reader.

You’ll notice that I have my sites feeds listed in the top right sidebar. Those are the default feeds that my WordPress blogging software creates for this blog. However, I’ve also created Feedburner feeds for my site too. You’ll can subscribe to my Feedburner feeds by clicking on the second subscribe listing a little further down in my right sidebar.

I have created Feedburner feeds for my site because it allows me to optimize my feeds, and add a little flare or personal touch to the feeds. Feedburner feeds can easily be read by browsers or feed readers, but they can also be sent by email if a subscriber wishes to receive them that way.

Feedburner is actually the worlds largest feed management provider. Bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers use Feedburner to promote their sites and provide content to their subscribers.

One great thing about using Feedburner for your site feeds is that Feedburner keeps track of how many people subscribe to your site feed. It’s nice to know if you have one person subscribing to your feed or fifty.

There are far too many Feedburner features to discuss in just one post, but one recent change at Feedburner is well worth mentioning. When you create a feed for one of your sites at Feedburner you can add some extra code to your site that allows Feedburner to track your site traffic for you. In other words Feedburner not only helps you manage your site feeds but it also provides valid site statistics. I think this was a great addition to the many valuable features of Feedburner and I use it for all of my sites.

DIY Search engine Optimization tips #2

by Tricia

Continued from DIY Search Engine Optimization Tips #1

6. When writing your articles or posts on your pages be sure to include important keywords and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end of the article.

If you are using good writing technique when composing your pages and articles you shouldn’t have a problem with this phase of SEO. As you might know, a well written article usually begins with a paragraph that describes what the body of the article will be about; the mid section of your article goes into more detail or greater depth regarding your initial statement in the first paragraph; the end of the article should come to a conclusion regarding the information you have discussed in the mid portion of the article.

Write naturally, but do remember to use terms within your post that might be used by people when they are searching for the type of information that your article contains.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

Keywords should be used in your links. When you are linking to another page or subpage on your site use a descriptive keyword or phrase to describe the clickable link. Don’t use terms like “click here” as that offers no description of what the link is for the search engines.

8. Make sure your site can be navigated easily by your visitors as well as search engines

When someone links to your site, or when you submit your site to a search engine it is often only the index page of the site that is given to the search engine. When the search engine visits your site it will index your main page. Your main page should contain some links that lead deeper into your site but if you have a javascript based navigation system the search engine spiders may not follow the links deep into your site as easily as if your links are text (html) based.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

It’s important to get all of the pages on your site indexed by the search engines. Creating a page that contains links to all of the pages within your site, a sitemap, helps the search engine in this matter. As you probably know, visitors using your sitemap will be able to find items on your site easier as well.

You can create an xml version of your sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemaps. Google has links to third party XML sitemap creators in it’s Webmasters tools area. Once you’ve created your xml sitemap you can submit it to the sitemap area and google’s spiders will visit your site on a regular basis depending upon how often you update your site.

10. Off-site optimization

Now that you know how to optimize your site, and write articles and sub pages for search engine optimization you should concentrate on off site optimization. Google places a high measure of importance as to where you site is ranked on factors such as how many other sites link to your page, the page rank of the sites linking to your site, and the type of sites linking to your site.

The best way to get off site links of course is to create a website with valuable information that will make others want to link to you. If you exchange links with other sites try to exchange links with sites that are similar to your own. For example if you have a gardening site you should attempt to link up with other gardening sites – of all types.

You can also write informative articles and get them published on other websites which will result in a link back to your site. This may also help increase the amount of visitors coming to your site as well. Submit your links to all of the main directories- Google, Yahoo, MSN, the Open directory, and directories that are perhaps related to your sites genre as well. Participate in forums in order to promote your site and perhaps get more visitors to your site as well.

All of the tips that I have listed should help you promote your site and get better rankings on the main search engines.

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