TNX.net - Another way to make money online
As I’ve been putting some work into this blog recently, and hope to keep that up, the results have come accordingly in terms of visitors. Because of this, I have been looking at ways I can monetize the blog (argh, yes, I do hope that it can eventually help me get my daily bread and butter), and one of the programs I’ve looked at is TNX* (pronounced “thanks”).
I haven’t had too much experience with the service just yet, but my initial impressions are that compared to the competing services out there which all want a piece of the advertising money we manage to bring in from our blogs, TNX has what it takes to stand out.
They present themselves as an ad-broker that combines the benefits of contextual advertising and direct text link sales, and that is quite accurate. They way it works is that instead of buying a certain text link for a certain fee, advertisers first buy points, and then use these points to purchase text links. As opposed to what we’ve gotten used to however, links aren’t purchased on a site-to-site basis, but when buying links you rather specify requirements within certain metrics (Category of site, Yahoo Backlinks and PageRank) and you then specify how many points your are willing to use.
For instance, if I want to buy links within the Business category from sites with 5,000 to 50,0000 registered backlinks in Yahoo and a PageRank of 4, I will get four text links if I spend 30,000 points, or about $38 USD. In comparison, if I just switch the PR requirement to 0, I will all of a sudden get around 2,400 text links for the same price! Right now they are even giving you a chance to get free text link ads if you list your name and TNX ID only by listing your TNX ID in a thread over at DigitalPoint.
For publishers the program is equally simple to work with. All you have to do is place a snippet of code in your footer, and you’re good to go as soon as your site is reviewed and approved. The requirements are simple enough to meet, all a site needs to qualify is to be indexed in Google.
When advertisers start buying your links from your site, your account will be credited with points, which you then can “sell” back to TNX in return for money. What’s interesting is that points are not set to a fixed value, but rather the value of the points increases as the service gains more popularity. This essentially means that you as a publisher can sign up early, earn points, and wait a while with cashing them in, and earn additional money from the inflation. According to TNX, the value of points grows with at least 2% per week.
Of course, you can do your part in making sure that the network grows and your hard earned points become more valuable by utilizing their affiliate program. This one should be a darling for people out there who have an extended network of contacts, because the terms of the program are great. When you refer a new webmaster to TNX, you will get 13.3% of all the credits that person earns with TNX, not for the next six months, not for the next year, but for as long as that person continues to earn points with TNX!
All in all, TNX looks like a real gem. At the moment they suffer a bit from a disorganized website, which initially makes it somewhat hard to get a firm graps of how things are connected and work, but I’m sure they’ll get that fixed up eventually. It will also be interesting to see how they will fare after the recent hit by Google towards blogs and websites that sell text links.
I will of course keep you updated on my experiences with TNX, and whether or not I can actually earn any money from the program, and once I start up any new ventures, I will most certainly be trying out their advertising program. In the near future, I will also be reviewing other programs I’ve tested, and see how the fare in comparison to TNX, so be sure to keep coming back, and you can even subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you never miss an update!
(*) Referral link - I will earn money if you sign up through my referral links.