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Chapter 4: Trading Links and Traffic
Idea 19: Text Link Exchanges
Text Link Exchanges are programs (nearly always free) that you can join, where members show Text Link adverts linking to each other's sites: You show other people's ads, and in return, they show yours.
(Yes, this is extremely similar to Banner Exchanges covered in Idea 18.).
Different Text Link Exchanges vary greatly in many different ways, including:
- What types of sites are allowed to join the particular Link Exchange.
- Whether you can choose on what type of other sites your ads will be shown ("targeting").
- The size and types of ads allowed.
- The exchange ratio. For example: A 2:1 exchange ratio would mean for every two ads that you show on your site, one of your ads is shown on somebody else's site.
On the plus side: Text Link adverts are (usually) fairly unobtrusive, won't annoy your visitors, and can easily be integrated into most site designs. Additionally Text Links can often get a higher percentage of people clicking ("click-thru rate") than banner adverts.
On the negative side: You need your ads to be shown a lot (and therefore need to show a lot of other people's ads), before you get new visitors, for example:
- If (for example) 4% of people who see your Ad click on it, in order for you to get 1 extra visitor, your Ad needs to be shown 25 times.
- If (for example) you are participating in a Text Link exchange with a 2:1 ratio, then you'd need to show 50 ads for other people in order for your Ad to be shown 25 times on other people's sites.
If these numbers sound off-putting, don't worry, there are things you can do to generate decent results with Text Link Exchanges (see Idea 23, Idea 24, Idea 25, Idea 26 and Idea 27 for example).
Related Resources:
- DMOZ's list of Text Link Exchanges
At the time of writing, this is a surprisingly short list. However, I do know there are others out there (try a search in Google for example), so hopefully they'll update this page sometime soon.
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