At the prodding of James Huff, I’m going to get bold and take a shot at selling my own ad space directly on the site.

In a nutshell, at one time there will only be a maximum of 5 ad slots filled which are randomly displayed on any page that’s browsed site wide. Since the site gets roughly 97,000 page views per month, thats a potential of nearly 19,500 ad impressions for only $10 — or fractions of a fraction of a penny. You can’t beat that price with a stick, no matter how hard you try.

[Update 5/18/07] – Well that was a huge flop… Not a single bite, so I’ve decided to abandon the whole idea. Oh well.

[Update 6/1/07] – I’ve finally gotten an inquiry, so I’ve reactivated the ad code. Two slots are tentatively taken, leaving three open. Snag yours while you can.

I knew this would happen! Within hours of clicking the publish button¹ in ecto, spewing forth my frustration with Text-Link-Ads across all the internets, Patrick Gavin got in touch with me about my listing problems.

While I’m not sure if it was because of the post, or if he was finally able to respond after decompressing from the Search Engine Strategies show in NYC, I can say that he was totally apologetic about not getting back to me quicker, and very sympathetic about my frustration.

It would have been very easy for him to say “whatever” and ignore me after slamming him like I did. Instead, he made my issue a priority, and passed it on to the very capable Justin Klemm, who was able to resolve the problem in short order. That’s customer service.

So here’s my big bite of crow; Sometimes, sitting on the “give me” end of things, it’s easy to forget that Web based businesses like Text-Link-Ads can consume huge portions of life for the people who run them. More often than not, it’s just a couple of individuals who keep all the balls in the air. I should have kept that in mind before wielding my mighty publish button.

While I still stand by my opinion that a customer should be acknowledged quickly if they have a problem, I can honestly appreciate that they were just too busy to help me any sooner than they did.

So now, more than ever, I’ll be recommending Text-Link-Ads as the best option for monetizing your website. Sure, it took them longer than I would have liked to get back to me. But once they did, they were total pros when it came to getting the problem solved.

1. See I am a good button clicker! [↩]

Throughout my AdSense woes, I’ve touted Text-Link-Ads as the best alternative to monetizing a website. I’ve even referred a person or two to sign up as publishers and/or advertisers. I wouldn’t say I’ve been a top notch publisher for them, but then it turns out there’s really no way we’d be able to know.

Houston, We Have a Problem…

I recently discovered that my TLA listing for this site has — shall we say — issues. It has for some time. Actually, it’s totally borked. For some reason, changes I make which directly affect my available link inventory get reset at the top of the hour without fail. Once it resets, my listing says that I don’t have any links to sell, when in fact I do.

Additionally, my listing does not display under the categories I’ve chosen. In fact, it won’t appear under any category at all, nor can it be found when searching for it by any keyword I use. That’s not good. No wonder I’ve not been selling any links. No one is able to find me.

I contacted Text-Link-Ads through their online form asking for help. The next day I got a response that read “…are you hitting the ‘update’ button after you make these changes?” Now, I may not always be the sharpest tool in the shed — but I am pretty darned savvy when it comes to clicking buttons, especially those that read “Update” — so yeah, I’m sure I’ve clicked the update button. More than a time or two in fact.

Silence is Golden. Or Is It Just Tin Plated?

Being confident of my button clicking abilities, I did some legwork and gathered what I thought Patrick Gavin would need in order to resolve my problem fast, allowing us both to be back on our way to filling our pockets with TLA cash. I sent it off to him in a friendly manner, then did a little more fact finding and sent those results to him as well.

That was four very quiet days ago. Ever since his “are you so dumb you can’t even click a button?” response, I’ve heard nothing. No “we’re looking into it on our end” email. Not even a “I don’t have time to bother with your problem right now” type of reply. Nothing. Not a peep. Is that what Text-Link-Ads thinks customer support is supposed to be? Bad news for them if they do.

One Unhappy Customer Makes a Mob

My work demands I provide support to users for both my day job, as well as my WordPress themes & silly little Mac applications — even if I don’t feel like it, or think their support question is stupid. No matter how trivial, I always make a point of addressing support issues quickly, within minutes if possible. Were I to wait 4 days (or more) to respond to the needs of a user, I’d either be fired from my day job, or my online reputation would be shot to hell by word of mouth.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s a little of my own word of mouth; Text-Link-Ads is great when everything is working and Mr. Gavin is making money. I’m sure most of his clientele would give the service high marks. I probably would too if I were able to sell links and make money myself. Heck, I’d give it an even higher rating had my support issue even been acknowledged.

However, when something goes wrong, it would appear Mr. Gavin’s idea of customer service is to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. That’s bad business. I wonder if it would be the case if my site had higher traffic, or if my name was “known” in the blogosphere somehow?

Conclusions

I know what it is to be busy. I’m aware that sometimes you’re just not able to get back to someone right away. However, I’m a firm believer that if you can’t help someone right now, you should at the very least acknowledge them. That’s good customer service, even if the problem hasn’t been solved yet. That didn’t happen in this case.

So whatever the deal is at Text-Link-Ads, since I’ve been pretty much ignored after multiple friendly attempts to get their support, I’ve chosen to remove all banners and links from my site and post my experiences with their customer service — or lack of it — here. Man, am I getting grippy in my old age, or what?

So, Sonny boy, what’s been your experience with Text-Link-Ads?

[Update] – See this post where I thank Patrick for helping me if you’d like to see a more humble side of my persona.