Buying and Selling Text Links at TNX.net

So last October - or was it November - Google went on the warpath.

They lowered the pagerank of sites that had any type of paid posting and also paid links.

It hurt companies pretty bad…You can see the huge drop for payperpost in the image below:

Right around November when Google came out with an update - wham - their traffic dropped.

After much moaning and gnashing of teeth, webmasters figured out that it was caused by them having text on their pages like “Sponsored By” or “Paid For By”, etc.

Now, I’m not going to debate whether Google should be doing this or not because, quite frankly, it’s business as usual for me.

I’ll do what I want, when I want, and Google can piss off

With that said, there is also the realization that if you do want traffic from the big G, you need to game the system a bit.

So I’m always looking for new ways to get more traffic. Typically traffic comes from links…The way most of the search engine algorithms are currently written, links are the lifeblood of a website.

Well, I found out about a newcomer called TNX that is currently in beta.

Apparently they’ve been around for over a year. They also experienced a drop like payperpost but they’re recovering much better than payperpost.

Now, with various paid to post programs, the links that you get are directly related to the number of sites that you pay to link to you.

That can be good in some cases - for instance - if you wanted a link from a popular website and an article about your site. Third party endorsement really helps. That’s why marketers use testimonials so effectively.

On the other hand, there are systems like TNX. TNX does it differently.

Basically the way that it works is that you purchase ‘points’ from their system. Depending on the PageRank of the pages linking to you will determine how much value you get from your points.

For instance, let’s say that you purchased 20,000 points. That would cost you roughly $30.

Here’s what you could get from that:

• 20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites
• 400 different PR1 pages from different websites
• 200 different PR2 pages from different websites
• 100 different PR3 pages from different websites
• 40 different PR4 pages from different websites
• 20 different PR5 pages from different websites

Not bad when you consider that (last time I checked) one PageRank 5 link would cost you $30 for a month.

Now, when you’re getting these types of links, there are a few things that are very important:

1. The network must be very difficult to detect.
2. The links must be static.
3. The links should be categorized.

Now, TNX does meet all three of these requirements but they’ve also added some other features that I haven’t seen with programs like this.

In addition to Google PageRank, it also looks at Yahoo Backlinks, Categories and even geo-targeting!

I actually like the geo-targeting feature. It’s one of those ideas that I wish I’d thought of

They have an income calculator which is a great idea but falls flat on it’s face in the implementation for one simple reason. Take a look at the screenshot below:

I don’t know about you but I surely do not want to count all of the pr0, pr1, pr2, pr3 and so on links on my site. This type of process should be automated.

A couple of years ago I ran a network of 50,000 sites. Not only was it entertaining, it was also quite profitable.

However, there were several lessons that I learned at the time.

One of which is never, ever use file_get_contents() (that’s a php function) to retrieve data.

The second thing I learned was to cache my data!

It’s great and wonderful if you’ve got the server power to handle it but if you don’t and you grow rather fast, you’re gonna be in a world of hurt if you have connectivity issues or something else that takes your servers down.

You’ll also have a lot of pissed off customers

Well, TNX actually provides you with two versions of the scripts (although why they couldn’t combine it into one for simplicity I dunno). One will cache and the other does not.

They also support Perl and ASP.

The layout of the site is clean. It also loads fast. I hate it when these types of sites load slowly. It just doesn’t bode well when I know my server is going to hit their site requesting data…

DigitalPoint has a service similar to this. However, one of it’s big flaws - in my ever so humble opinion - is that you can’t sell your points.

TNX will let you sell your points to other members and - if you want to - you can sell them to TNX.

Points are generated by the number of pages you have in the system, the number of backlinks, the PageRank and so on.

Of course they have an affiliate program so you can earn money with them as well. They payout 13.3% - that’s an odd amount but - hey - it’s better than 0%

All in all it looks like a pretty decent site. I can’t really think of any negatives about using their program to generate some links - and perhaps some cash from the affiliate program.

G-Man

P.S. One other minor nit - they really need to update the text on the site in a couple of ways. First, it appears that it was written by someone who uses English as a second language so it is readable but not professional. Secondly, since they support geo-targeting, providing the site in other languages might be nice as well.

P.P.S. In the interests of full disclosure and to get my site dinged by the almighty Google, this post was sponsored by TNX - OMG!