At the beginning of last month I joined a new text link network called Post Links, they offer to sell links in the guise of blog posts, comments and the more traditional text link ads in a sidebar. They were recommended to me by several people so I thought I would give them a month’s run on some of my smaller blogs to see how they fared.
I liked the idea that I could decide whether to only accept blog posts, comment, text links in sidebar, a combination, or all of them together to increase my chances.
If an advertiser wishes to purchase a guest post, comment or text link they will do so and it is automatically accepted, you can decide whether you wish to delete them anytime you wish, you will be paid in credits, the amount of credits you are paid is determined by your Page Rank.
PR1 = 1
PR2 = 5
PR3 = 10
PR4 = 20
PR5+ = 40
At the end of the month the network says that they will count up all the credits you have made during the month, look at how many advertisers they have attracted, look at the credits other publishers have made, and then give you a share of money, basically they work on a revenue sharing module.
So, in the month of July I sold the following:
Posts = 742
Comments = 222
Text Links = 23
I pulled in a grand total of 1779 credits.
How Much Did I Earn?
When August 1st came around I checked the site a number of times to see how much I was due, I was assuming I’d be in for at least $100 at the very least for shifting so many posts, comments & links. So imagine my face dropping when I finally saw the price they were going to pay me…
Posts = 742
Comments = 222
Text Links = 23
Total Credits: = 1779
Amount paid: = $3.79
All that for not even $4.00.
Deflated was an understatement, I contacted the network and was rather rude and blunt in telling them what I thought of their revenue share. They told me that they pay in monthly instalments over a ten month period in order to stop people taking the money and running, so even when you consider that those 1779 credits are worth $37.90 in full, I don’t believe it is worth the hassle as the posts that were published were some of the worst things I have ever seen in my life.
On the positive side they do pay, an hour after sending them my ‘stinging email of criticism’ the $3.79 was in my PayPal account. And their affiliate scheme seems rather generous, if someone signs up under you and makes at $2.50 in a month then you get $25.00.
If you are looking at giving them a try then I would suggest maybe not accepting posts, because they are an absolute pile of rubbish (some of them are not even 50 words long!) and if your niche is a certain topic they tend to sell loads of posts (my law blog received over 400 posts in one month) and you cannot edit them, only delete.