Link Advertising with TNX.net (a Review)

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. (Source: Google).

TNX (pronounced “thanks” as in text/SMS-speak) is a new text link advertising platform that targets both publishers and advertisers equally well. For publishers, TNX offers the opportunity to earn TNX points which can be used for various purposes simply by displaying TNX text ad links on their pages. For advertisers, TNX provides a cheap and effective way of getting high-volume, non-reciprocal links from thousands of websites that are part of TNX’s program.

Joining TNX is free for publishers and TNX has made it a breeze to join–only the most basic information is needed. Publishers and advertisers can register at http://tnx.net/register.php. You automatically get 2,000 TNX points upon sign up. TNX also has a promo by which you get an additional 5,000 points free by posting on this thread in the DP forums.

Once you’re logged in, you’re greeted with TNX.net’s main dashboard, which will be your main starting point whether as a publisher or an advertiser. As a note, I think the main page’s design can benefit from a more vibrant color scheme. But otherwise, it’s been setup to be intuitively easy to use.

The sidebar provides the tools you need in starting with TNX.

For publishers

For publishers, the sidebar includes easy access to the TNX code that you need to paste in your blog or site theme for the TNX ads to appear. You also get quick access to site management (adding and managing TNX-registered sites registered) and the TNX-points transfer.

You can monetize earned TNX-points in two ways: either by selling to other TNX users at a price that you decide, or by selling to TNX itself at a given fixed price (currently $0.61 per 1,000 points). TNX will then send you the funds via PayPal. There is a minimum $5 for payouts and a 150,000 point daily transfer limit. As a security measure, users can only transfer up to 50% of his existing balance at a time.

The TNX code page provides code both for Perl and PHP. You have a choice of codes–TNX provides a variant of the PHP code that allows the ad output to be cahed, minimizing server load and bandwidth. TNX also provides an experimental code for ASP and ASPX. All the things you need to get started earning TNX points has been well prepared by the TNX team.

One nifty feature is the earnings calculator that will help you estimate how much you can earn, based on your website’s parameters (PR, link popularity; of course, assuming all your links are filled).

For advertisers

For advertisers, the sidebar gives quick access to starting an Ad Campaign. Thanks to TNX’s well-organized Ad Campaign wizard, creating and ad campaign is easy and intuitive. You can set the parameters for the sites where your ads should appear on: website categories, geo-location, number of Yahoo Backlinks (YB) and Google Page Rank.

TNX even provides a calculator of how many links you will get on based on the parameters you chose and your spending plan (in TNX points)

After setting your spending price and the other parameters, you have to load your actual ad copy to the TNX registry. There are two way of doing that: for campaigns with large volume of links (maximum of 2000 links), you can upload a text file containing the ads; or if you have a few ads, you can use the provided form. TNX also provides excellent tips for an effective ad campaign; starting advertisers can learn a lot from them. It’s also nice that TNX has made this part easy and painless.

Affiliate program

TNX also features an affiliate program that provides an opportunity for publishers to earn TNX points by simply referring people to use TNX’s service. There’s a 13.3% payout percentage from the earnings of the websites of users you directly refer. TNX provides more than one way of advertising options that the affiliates can use: direct links on your sites registered to TNX.net, referral links, or direct links on other sites.

In summary, I think TNX is a great new hub for your text link ad needs and opportunities, catering well to both advertisers and webmasters. The use of TNX points instead of plain ol’ dollars makes things more flexible.