Okay, so this post is in response to the post I made yesterday regarding the change of the Text Link ads referral links to that of TinyURL format links.  I received an e-mail this morning from Alex over at WP Text Ads letting me know about his Wordpress Ads Management plugin that allows you to sell text ads directly from your site without having to go through any type of outside source.

This begs the question - Would I be better off selling my text link ads myself, or letting Text Link Ads do it for me?  Their are definitely advantages and disadvantages to doing either so let’s go over the big ones.

When you let Text Link Ads sell your ads you get the advantage of a gigantic marketplace in which advertisers specifically choose your blog to advertise one, you don’t get this when selling your own text links and you need to hope that the visitors that are coming to your blog are willing to buy your text link directly from you.

Which brings my to my next point, pricing.  You can choose your own price when selling your own text links instead of having to use the TLA ads engine to determine how much your ads are worth, which is based several factors including Pagerank and Alexa rank.

Not only do you get to choose your own price per text link, but you also get the full amount without having to worry about TLA getting half of what you yourself have earned.  I’d like to think that being able to set your pricing scheme as well as getting the full amount paid will make up for not having that big database of advertisers to sell to, but I don’t think that it can unless you have a popular website that gets tons of traffic.

The Test

I’m going to test this anyway, so I’ve added the WP Text Ads plugin to SuperJustin.com and will be selling Text Links at the top of the navigation on the right on every single page on this blog for a mere $30, and other pricing/placements are available.  if you’re interested purchase one, it’s a great opportunity to get some targeted traffic from a popular website.

Marketplace

After installing the plugin I realized that the plugin provides a Marketplace for you to enter your information into the WP Text Ads marketplace so advertisers can find you easier.  Good luck in selling your text ads everyone!