Another new advertising system that is causing a bit of a buzz at the moment is Linkbucks.com.
It’s currently in beta (isn’t everything these days?) and has a different model to many others (one I’m not sure I’d use personally).
From what I can tell – LinkBucks is different because it doesn’t actually require you to place any ads on your site at all. Instead you insert code into your blog that displays ads after readers leave your blog either as an intermission ad (an ad that momentarily shows up before readers get to the new site) or as a banner ad showing at the top of the next site.
I’m not really a fan of this type of advertising as it interrupts a reader’s experience and publishers using it run the risk of annoying those using their site (ironically one of the benefits that Linkbucks mentions of their system is that it helps you ‘Extra Money without annoying people’).
Payment isn’t that lucrative either at $1 per 5000 top banner impressions or $1 per 3500 intermission impressions – that’s a pretty low CPM, especially with such an intrusive type of advertising.
one word: text-link-ads.
;)
I’ve never heard of LinkBucks before.
However, there are many affiliates of this type that I’ve come across. I too believe that this sort of advertising may get annoying over time, on a particular site.
With that said, it annoyance level will probably depend on what type of site it is that one has.
It got me interested until you mentioned the CPM, who would want to join a service with 0.20 CPM?? that’s like telling yourself you’re doing so bad with Adsense, TLA and BlogAds, that this LinkBucks thingy would earn you 40 dollars if you get 200K hits a month…=
Allen.H
This kind of advertising will have a very negative side effect. You will remove all the link juice from the people who deserve it (or at least the ones who the blogger intended to give it) and pass that juice to the linkbucks website. With a very low cost.
Yeah, that CPM is totally not worth the type of ad this is…
“one word: text-link-ads”
what I dont like about text-link-ads is the fact that you give 50% of the money to them, if you have a decent readership you should be able to set up your own advertising deals, cutting the middle man and increasin your profits
Daily Blog Tips:
You’re NOT giving 50% of your money to them at all. Look at all the benefits they provide: $100 in free ads (that we publishers get $50 of!), discounts for life if you purchase ads during certain periods (we still get our cut), they also give out great affiliate money (which we don’t pay one dime of out of our cut), and they take away all the stress of having to sell ads AND collect on them AND make sure you properly update your sites when advertisers quit advertising on your site.
TLA is one of my best sources of income across my my various blog networks, so I can’t complain in the least. For me, the added income (almost 5 figures a year) from TLA is worth me giving up 1 inch of screen space for the ads, versus AdSense which is always a journey for me.
I’ll happily pay a 50% commission because I know that TLA doesn’t take 50% of the money as profit. I’d think they’re closer to 20% of the take in actual profit, if that much.
Daily Blog Tips:
Lost my previous comment (site error’d out, oops).
I doubt TLA gets 50% of our take — they pay out great affiliate rewards, they give $100 free to new advertisers (of which we get $50), they give discounts for advertising during their regular special (we still get our cut).
They handle selling the ads AND collecting and we get paid quickly. I’m thinking they probably make only 20% above all their payouts and costs.
I don’t want to sell ads, I don’t want to collect myself. I don’t want to have to update my sites when new advertisers pop in or out (sometimes people advertise for only 2-4 weeks).
For me, the (almost 5-figures a year) income from TLA across my blog networks is great, because I only give up 1″ of space for what is just as good as AdSense, which clutters up 3″ of screen space and is touchy at times.
Hold on, surfer goes to site A with linkbucks. No ads shown. Surfer travels to site B via site A, linkbucks shows ads. Isn’t the new ad being shown on Site B’s site with their content? What does site B get?
It seems like this system is perfect for spam mongering doorway page webmaster types. Where is the transparency? Where is the trust? Maybe I’m wrong, but certainly this form of advertising is deceptive, and deceptive advertising only works as long as people don’t know about it.
Smells fishy.
I hope it never catches on if it is all pop-ups.
I hope it never catches on if it is all pop-ups.
Isn’t their approach the reverse of Adbrite’s interstial ads? Instead of displaying the ads right before a reader views you page a full page ad is displayed, Linkbucks display them on the way out. Either way, they are still both annoying.
I’m with maxpower…it seems unfair that the ad shows up on site B’s page. If someone linked to me and had linkbucks activated such that the viewer saw an ad on the way to my site or heaven forbid ON MY SITE – I would be mighty ticked off. What a bad idea.
Another question: I understand that if you want to have TLA published on your site, you can’t have any other text link ads. So does that mean that you can’t publish Adsense and TLA on the same site? You have to choose one or the other?
This is definately not the type of advertising I’d want to put my readers through, especially for the payout.
Then again, if you’re not too worried about keeping return readers & you have a high traffic site it’s a good way to monetize your outgoing links.
Stuart
http://www.earnersblog.com
A banner ad at the top of the NEXT site? That’s downright evil. Outlandishly, ridiculously stupid.
I’ll know it’s a success when I start getting hundreds of complaints about new ads on my sites, when it’s actually the fault of the site they came from.
I make my income from web advertising, and I’ve been in the business for 10 years, and I even run pop-under ads on some sites. But something like this could even get me to install an ad blocker…
More importantly, I’m sure there’s a JavaScript trick to combat whatever framing / scripting they’re doing to accomplish that, and I’ll be deploying it on my sites the minute these ads go mainstream.
From their terms of service, more evidence LinkBucks is for spamming doorway pages:
“LinkBucks.com, may, but is not obligated to, monitor or review (a) any areas on the Site where users submit or transmit User Submissions, and (b) the substance of any User Submissions.”
I read that statement as, anything goes. Too bad, because I think the pure capitalism approach they are taking will bury them in the long run.
That sounds like a terrible idea. I would never visit a site again that did that to me.
Ok, so we heard the CPM is pretty low for such an intrusive ad, and low just generally speaking (0.20). So what are the alternatives? We have usercash, linkbucks and text-link ads , which don’t suit every site.
What else?
Tim
This is exactly a copy of usercash.com,only that it has a better CPM rate.But I don’t think this is a bad option for certain publishers,especially for blogs that have many links to other sites,just like mine.But yes the CPM is so damn low.
I prefer usercash over linkbucks because I feel it is more trustable and also because linkbucks is still in beta.usercash has a CPM of $1 for 9999(why don’t they say 10000?) redirects and $1 for 3999 ful page ads.I don’t use their full page ads option,since adbrite already serves one for me.I would switch over to linkbucks from usercash once they come out of beta version.
Linkbucks isn’t a scam and that’s the reason why people use it. Eventhough, it gives low CPM.
It’s not that obtrusive as other ads, and this is a good way to make money out of those visitors that do hit $ runs on your site lol!