Please note if you plan to buy text links despite the inherent risks we recommend using Text Links Ads (click the image below) for all your text links needs.

They are better than the rest we’ve looked at.

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A couple of months back I decided my SEO company should try selling text links via one of the text link brokers who list webmasters inventory in a searchable format allowing a potential purchaser of text links to find relevant sites. Basically saves us time dealing with site owners looking to add links to our sites (takes quite a lot of time!!).

The text link broker we tried was www.textlinkbrokers.com and this post is a review of their service from the perspective of a link seller. We are writing this review because it didn’t go well and feel we’ve wasted our time for nothing!!

The sign up process was confusing because we have so many websites that we could sell text links from (their signup process more suited to a webmaster with one domain).

We settled upon starting with 3 websites and mentioned others we might list in the future, the person dealing with our emails either got confused or cherry picked the best sites as they accepted one of our most important sites (that was mentioned as a possible source of links in the future) and ignored others not so important (lower PR).

So we started with three domains, one with a PR6 home page (not our most important site though as this was a test of their text link service) and two PR5s.

For the PR6 site the payment structure was as follows-

Premium Homepage Payout
PR6 – $32.81/link/month

Subpages
PR6 – $19.25/link/month
PR5 – $15.75/link/month
PR4 – $12.25/link/month

Hosted Marketing Pages
$50.00 /HMP/month

Seemed a little low (it’s a very popular site, 10,000+ visitors a day), especially as we were only accepting 4 links for the home page. But it was a test of service so we went ahead, though didn’t go with Hosted Marketing Pages (hosting a page they create filled with links!) since I think they are a very bad idea if done poorly.

Within a few weeks we had the first link partner, for the PR6 home page link. We added the link quickly and while there tried to find our percentage of the revenue. With that link we get $32.81 each month and believed it was a 50/50 split (so www.textlinkbrokers.com also receive $32.81/link/month) but couldn’t recall how I’d come to that conclusion (in hindsight think it was from another text link broker site).

I think 50/50 is a fair split, while at the site I found what was clearly our PR6 site in their inventory and found the following prices-

PR6 Home $94.00
PR6 Sub $55.00
PR5 Sub $45.00
PR4 Sub $35.00

This is what a webmaster pays www.textlinkbrokers.com every month for a single text link from our site!

So our share isn’t even close to 50%

PR6 Home $94.00 : $32.81 – we get 34.90%
PR6 Sub $55.00 : $19.25 – we get 35%
PR5 Sub $45.00 : $15.75 – we get 35%
PR4 Sub $35.00 : $12.25 – we get 35%

We build a great site, we maintain the content, PR, the text links etc… and we only get 35%!!

That’s not right, so we tried to discuss the issue first asking by email what % do we get even though we knew the answer (seeing how honest they are).

Text Link Brokers: No response to our email!

Another text link is requested, this time a PR5 sub page, we add the link quickly and resend the email.

Text Link Brokers: No response to our email!

Another week or so passes and we resend the email threatening to remove the 2 text links within days if no response.

Text Link Brokers: No response to our email!

Another week passes and another text link is requested, PR6 sub page.

Since no responses to our reasonable questions we are in the process of severing our relationship with www.textlinkbrokers.com. Not only do they take more than a fair share of the revenue for text links they ignore their partners emails!

Update: We’ve removed our sites from their text link selling service.

Penalty for Selling Text Links

Update 2: We tried another text link broker and was doing OK, nothing amazing sales wise, but considering how little benefit a single link passes and the prices they charge their clients it’s well worth it.

That is if it wasn’t for the risks!

A few months after adding links to a couple of our sites there’s been signs of penalties, most obvious penalty was a site loosing over 8,000 unique visitors a day!

We can weather this loss since we have multiple sites, I could not imagine how bad this would be for a small business with one site trying to make a little extra cash to make ends meet and WHAM, online sales are DEAD!

Since we can realistically only sell text links from reasonable PR pages and they tend to be our best pages, we’ve had to stop selling text links because it’s too risky.

Since we lost a couple of very good sites through this, we’ve put a re-inclusion request admitting to selling text links and explaining they have now been removed.

I have a feeling Google employees are checking the inventory of text link broker sites and penalizing when they find a site selling links.

Please note if you plan to buy text links despite the inherent risks we recommend using Text Links Ads (click the image below) for all your text links needs.

They are better than the rest we’ve looked at.

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