Text Link Ads (TLA) has helped me a lot on my hosting and domain dues and other online transactions. Adding funds to Paypal was still not possible in the Philippines so my TLA payments are what I use to pay my hosting and domain. I don’t have a credit card (except for my mom’s GSIS e-card) so I have to depend on my Paypal balance to pay for these things.
I was earning at least $100/month with TLA and the links to this blog generate most of my earnings (>60%). For a starter in blog monetization, 100 bucks really mean a huge amount. However, after reading some of Google PR drops and sites getting banned from Google results because of paid links, I had to reconsider things.
John Chow’s blog for example was number 1 in Google results for “make money online” keywords but now it’s nowhere to be found. Some bloggers however, like Darren Rowse of Problogger.net suggested to “Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog” and further emphasized that it’s the quality of content that gives you traffic and that relying in Google is a bad move. Dosh Dosh also stated that Google PR are just numbers and a “webmaster fetish”, i However, for a struggling blogger who’s still building a traffic like me, the searches from Google and other search engines really matter a lot.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of my blog traffic comes from Google searches, this could mean that a large percentage of my Google Adsense earnings come from it.
Everyday, I try to check for the indexed pages for this blog. I get paranoid every time I see the number of indexed pages drop day-by-day. So I had to think things over. Sure, I am earning $100 from TLA, but I am earning more from Google Adsense. The latter entirely depends on the traffic generated from Google searches. So I had to choose one over the other. After few months of deciding and considering all the risks, I have decided to remove my Text Link Ads script (plugin). I also see some probloggers pulling out their TLA scripts, so why shouldn’t I?
My other blog (The Health Blog) however, is earning from TLA until now. So I could not entirely answer “no!” to my own question. I am only ready to give up 60% of my TLA earning and not 100% entirely.
Tags: Blogging, Google, Internet, Making Money Online, Webmasters Tools
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Feb 1, 2008 at 18:31:36
I’ve been facing this same issue since December last year. When my PR was slashed from 5 back to 4 because of the paid links on my blog, I really started to become worried especially that traffic really took a nose-dive. Up to now, I’m no where near the traffic levels I had before the decrease in PR.
So right now, I’m in the process of rethinking the way I monetize my blog. Dumping TLA remains a very likely option.
jhay’s last blog post..Achmed the Dead Terrorist
Feb 1, 2008 at 19:27:53
Yeah, I failed to mention that this blog was PR4 before. Now it has only PR3. Although, I am not as affected as other who went down to 0, I still worried about the decrease in my traffic. Some of my pages that were indexed before was removed from the search results.
Feb 4, 2008 at 10:30:29
my blog at http://berryblitz79.blogspot.com/ is PR 2 before. Now it’s PR 0
what did i put on my blog
can someone tell me what should i remove on my blog… thanks
berryblitz’s last blog post..Beware of Yaari.com
Feb 4, 2008 at 22:54:01
Did you join paid-reviews program like PayPerPost or ReviewMe? Blogs which had also posted paid links were affected by this PR drop.
Feb 5, 2008 at 08:20:17
oh. well that’s bad. I’ve joined on those paid-reviews programs
berryblitz’s last blog post..Hate Posts
Feb 6, 2008 at 01:46:20
I started my Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine last year and got some great traffic and readers, a few months ago it went from nothing to PR2, after that, 2 days later, it dropped back to PR0, until now. I have TLA on my blog as well, but the traffic remains good though, thank god!
borzack’s last blog post..The Unhealthy Caffeine Fix
Feb 6, 2008 at 10:15:10
Me too
My rank is 0 but I can see searches came from Google. I just hate seeing my blog on PR 0
berryblitz’s last blog post..Hate Posts
Feb 6, 2008 at 12:58:49
Yeah, you can be affected by PR sweep punishment but you really see a huge difference in traffic when your PR was dropped, just like what happened to Jhay.
Mar 31, 2008 at 21:06:48
hi, is adbrite text ads considered as paid links too
fiat2live’s last blog post..RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon
Apr 1, 2008 at 00:18:17
As far as I know of, they are not considered paid links.
May 13, 2008 at 00:01:55
Have you ever heard of OFFLINE text links?
http://www.unlimitedbusinesscards.com
Jul 10, 2008 at 21:03:13
Wow..20,000 from search engines alone. I think you should really consider. You might lose most of that traffic if your PageRank becomes zero, I think
Michael Aulias last blog post..Beware of DNS Poisoning Threat!
Jul 11, 2008 at 20:55:41
Yeah.My healthblog has been affected so I have to decide to remove it.