What's the best place for selling / buying text links?

**3Six** · May 10th, 2010, 12:01 PM

I've used textlinkbrokers.com but they seem to have very few advertisers and most inventory goes unsold.

I've used text-link-ads.com but their customer service is appaling. They have a lot of advertisers but their system is screwed up, keeps flagging that links seem to be broken when they're not and end up wasting a lot of my time proving to them that I am doing what I said I'd be doing! Arrgghh! (I use their manual system as I don't want their script on my sites).

There's the option of Digital Point, but there are so many crap links being sold there it would be difficult to get my quality sites - not dropped domains, not fake page rank, not nofollow, not sitewide etc - to stand out.

My ideal situation is to do deals where the payment is monthly via Paypal subscription or yearly in advance (slightly cheaper). The sites are really top notch sites with material written by experts, links only to relevant destinations, very limited outgoing links and top Google rankings in tech, webmaster, teaching, software and other industries.

Despite the limited under the radar advertising I accept with no more than 1-2 links to the page, I've got about $5,000 pm of inventory for text links. Any suggestions?

**ClaytonL** · May 10th, 2010, 08:43 PM

I don't have any help, but please keep us informed of what you find.

**Matt Mickiewicz** · May 10th, 2010, 09:08 PM

text-link-ads.com got sold for $30M by Patrick Gavin a while ago.

**benitez17** · May 10th, 2010, 10:37 PM

I had a number of poor experiences with textlinkbrokers.com, though I've never really had a good experience with any text link broker. If you find a reliable service, I'd love to know about it.

**Clinton** · May 11th, 2010, 08:26 AM

Which others have you tried, benitez17?

Thanks, Matt, nice to see you around

Patrick Gavin did well in building both TLA and ReviewMe. Did Mediawhiz really pay all of $30 million for TLA? I saw that figure repeated a few times in the past and never found a source for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had some inside info on that, Matt.

**Andy** · May 11th, 2010, 09:02 AM

I know know nothing about buying text links. Anyone care to elaborate on this subject or point me to some info?

Andy

**benitez17** · May 11th, 2010, 06:50 PM

Clinton, I have tried text-link-ads/inLinks, textlinkbrokers, direct-link-ads, TNX, Linkworth, and LinkXL, plus direct sales, and probably a few others that I have forgotten about. I have been the happiest with the results from inLinks and direct-link-ads, but it's all relative, because I wouldn't say that I have been particularly satisfied with any of them.

I was so annoyed one day that I wrote a script that would allow me to place in-text links automatically on the Wordpress, Drupal, and VB sites that I own with the intent of selling links directly, but haven't followed through on actually selling anything yet.

**Clinton** · May 11th, 2010, 07:05 PM

Andy, have a look at the sites of brokers mentioned here. The concept is simple: they find you text link buyers and they get a commission.

benitez17, hmmm. So there's a market for a good text link broker?

**tke71709** · May 11th, 2010, 07:20 PM

Originally Posted by benitez17

I was so annoyed one day that I wrote a script that would allow me to place in-text links automatically on the Wordpress, Drupal, and VB sites that I own with the intent of selling links directly, but haven't followed through on actually selling anything yet.

OIO Publisher does this for WP sites and you can charge more for follow links v no follow, etc...

**tke71709** · May 11th, 2010, 07:24 PM

Originally Posted by Clinton

benitez17, hmmm. So there's a market for a good text link broker?

The question is how does one become a good text broker? The concept and business is so simple (which I think is part of the problem because anyone can start one of these).

The other problem is the fact that Google frowns on text links being sold which is a whole other issue.