With all the recent talk over buying and selling of text link ads causing a negative effect on your Google PageRank, I’ve decided to disable the text-link-ads.com WordPress Plugin (ie. stop selling text-link-ads). That’s about $100/mo that I’m kissing goodbye just to avoid the possibility that Google might punish me. Here’s why –
They send me more traffic than anyone else. I can’t say I’m entirely happy about the situation, but there isn’t much I can do about it. One thing I can do, is email the folks @ text-link-ads.com and ask if they’d consider adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to each ad they sell. Here’s what I sent -
Hi TLA folks -
With all of the recent talk of Google punishing Text Link Ad buyers
and sellers, are you considering adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to the
link code? I ask because I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop
participating in the TLA program if there’s a chance that it will hurt
my Google rankings/indexing, as Google is by far my #1 source of
traffic. I’d *like* to keep TLA running on my site, as I have 7/8
spots filled and I’m quite happy w/ the service – but again – I can’t
risk a Google punishment for the income that TLA provides. Your
response would be very much appreciated!Thanks!
Ross
That went to sales@, Patrick Gavin (the TLA President), and whomever receives the mail generated by the “contact us” form on the TLA home page. So far, I’ve yet to hear anything back. I’m not surprised, they’re (TLA) probably holding frantic meetings trying to figure out what to do – since this latest not-exactly-official-news has probably seen a lot of folks like myself dropping their service.
I pulled out of TLA for a much simpler reason … absolutely no ads from their service was ever displayed in the sidebar widget nor in the RSS feed. I tried the service for various periods of time since TLA first came on the scene – usually for three month periods at a time.
The last round of inaction was enough and as much as I may not like using AdSense at least I finally go a check from them after a year
.. hopefully it’ll only be 10 months before the next one LOL
@Steven Hodson:
Yeah I have another blog that (in theory) runs TLA – but I’ve never had anyone show any interest in advertising on it via TLA. What I find somewhat amusing is that both blogs have the same PR, so if people really do just want to buy links from sites w/ decent PR, why does this site sell 7/8 and the other 0/8.
I think Steven steered me away from TLA when he divulged his profit. I’d be kidding myself to think I’d do any better. So this Google PageRank thing is just more evidence to aid my monetization procrastination.
Hi Ross, just want to tell you that I found your website pretty dam good
I’m getting a lot of information for myself. Thanks! Also, you’re a canadian eh? I’m too 
In addition, I do have TLA on my blog but as you, I’m going to take it out.
See ya!
Edited by Ross
1. The purpose of removing the Text Link Ads service from my site was to avoid any kind of punishment from Google associated with selling links. The service that Tom suggested (and I’ve edited out) doesn’t use the nofollow tag, so there’s no reason to use it over the TLA service.
2. I think Tom just wanted people to visit his site/review and in turn sign up for the service using his referral tag. Hence my removal of the link.
—Semi-original comment by Tom—
Another similar program worth considering is *****. I’ve been using this service for a few months now and so far I’m quite happy with the results. I haven’t had a chance to advertise with this system yet, but as a publisher I love the freedom to sell ad space based on my own prices. Check out this review (link removed) that I wrote for more info.
I also removed text link ads from my site.