BankonThat.com

Okay, I’m sure most of you are familiar with TLA. If you aren’t, TLA stands for TextLinksAds which is an advertising company well known for their large selection of purchasable text links and their free $100 in links offer open to anyone that you should see plastered on most money making blogs/sites.

About five months ago I took advantage of this offer and got my free $100 in text links. At the time they also had a 20% off deal going on and after reviewing my advertising budget I decided to give them a try (as I heard such great things about TLA) so I started up my $x,xxx/month budget. I had evil intentions initially (according to the big G) as I was hoping to move a PR5 site into the PR6 range. The PR juice is what I wanted and the click over traffic was just a bonus. I knew this going in as placement for most TLA ads aren’t prime spots, but lower on the page and often smaller in font.

I requested a proposal from TLA and they drew me up a list of 36 sites to advertise on. I accepted their proposal as well as selected some larger sites with enough PR to push me into the PR6 range no problem.

The FIRST problem I noticed about 2 months into using TLA. I was showing another web developer some of the sites I was advertising on that I thought were really impressive sites. I was kind of confused when I could no longer locate my own ads on this one site in particular. Waited a few days, contacted TLA, and a week later I’m told ads on this particular site haven’t been showing up for almost a month. They give me a few links on smaller sites and we call it even. A week later I noticed I got billed again for the site my ad is no longer on so I canceled the ad and ended up getting an email from TLA (within hours!) asking why I was canceling ads. After explaining the issue and showing previous emails where I was told that ad was being replaced, I got to wait almost a week again to hear from them apologizing and refunding me for that particular ad. They seemed more concerned with maintaining my ad budget then dealing thoroughly with support tickets. Thats the SECOND problem.

So time goes by and Im seeing a small boost in Search Engine traffic and hardly any click over traffic from the ads (expected). I have high hopes of getting to the PR6 oasis, my alexa is rising and PR predictors are saying this could be it… Let me use a scenario to describe what happens next. SO, I just got my favorite kind of ice-cream from the TLA ice-cream truck and I turn around from the truck having just paid for it and BAM! This fairly large scruffy looking guy in a wife beater carrying a poodle and wearing a black tshirt with a giant G logo on it smacks my ice-cream out of my hand and tells me not to be evil. As I stare down at the melting ice-cream on the sidewalk he slaps a badge onto my shirt that states “PR4″ after prompty ripping off my former “PR5″ badge.

Google Trends results for ‘pagerank’ and ‘page rank’
(Credit: Google Trends & News.com)

What happens next is a month or so goes by. TLA emails me every other day to tell me ” Unfortunately, we can no longer maintain on or more of your links.” At this point I’m happy to see they have stepped up their monitoring of ads to ensure they are indeed active. When they spot an inactive ad they give you the chance of refunding or choosing a personally picked ad replacement of equal value. My guess is the increase of publishers jumping ship is partly due to the Google crackdown on paid text links. Its a big no-no and can potentially get you taken out of the Google search engine.

A few days ago I canceled all my ads with TLA (through their one-at-a-time-cancellation-system). It was a good run but I think I just started advertising at the wrong time. In my future posts I’m sure you will come to see how I have a knack for getting into things a bit late, when they are winding down.

The site I was buying advertising for was one of my small myspace resource sites. A few of the big myspace resource site owners Ive noticed are still using TLA as they’ve always done. It might be working out for them but it definitely didnt have any worthwhile results for me. Link exchanges and simple guerrilla marketing efforts (all free but time consuming) proves to have better results than long term Text Link purchases.

TLA is worth a shot for at least the free $100 in links if you haven’t heard of them or haven’t used them as of yet. Just keep in mind you will most likely just be getting the free traffic from your links, and not any PR juice from the big G. Using up that free $100 in text links is just some quick free traffic.

Once my canceled ads run out of time, I think I will try TLA out on the publisher side of the fence and see if I cant bank on that.

This should be quite interesting for a first blog. A quick FYI, I’ve wanted to start a blog for the past two years. I now have some free time and am going to start doing 1 blog a week while tweaking design/setup of this blog so bare with me.

Jay-Z recently released his 10th studio album “American Gangster”. If you haven’t heard of this, its a concept album inspired by the film with the same name. By the way I’ve seen the film and it’s quite good, so go see that if you haven’t! Back to Jay-Z’s album; This album is predicted to be his 10th No. 1 album. This means he will have tied with legendary Elvis Presley for most No.1 albums which only further solidifies his status as a musical legend. Still awake? Okay next up is the fun part.

So on November 6th Jay-Zs album came out. I’m a fan of Jay-Z and I enjoy supporting artists who create awesome music so naturally I preordered his album through iTunes on November 5th. I’m a naturally busy guy, I cant stay idle for too long and I need to keep it movin’ so to speak so it took me a few days to find out he pulled it from iTunes. Earlier today I finally got around to checking iTunes to finish downloading the album (through iTunes you usually download the single available then come back to get the rest of the album on the release date) and his album isn’t there. I look at the single I downloaded and click to get information on the Album its from but it gives me the following error…

First I’m like… okay… Jay-Z must have released his album in the non-US store instead of allowing the US iTunes store to be able to download it. Wait what… this is strange. I spend another 10 minutes looking up his name, album, songs, etc. Am I trapped in some alternate universe where I’m not allowed to download rap albums at 3am in the morning while drinking redbulls?? Eventually I Google Jay-Z and his elusive album to find a few news articles talking about his removal of the album from iTunes. Why would you do this Jay-Z? Dont you know a few people use iTunes? Also why was I able to preorder it the night before?

But alast I’m a sucker for rap music. So okay Jay-Z, you win. Ill do what you want me to do. Heres part of an article from XXLMag.com,

 

Jay-Z pulled American Gangster from the popular iTunes Music Store. According to Jay-Z, he feels the project should be digested as a whole, and not as single tracks. “As movies are not sold scene by scene, this collection will not be sold as individual singles,” Jay said in a statement. Since its debut in 2003, iTunes has let users download individual tracks from officially released albums, allowing them to purchase only the songs they want rather than an entire LP. The album is available for digital download, in its entirety, at Rocafella.com, Amazon.com and Rhapsody.com.

There are articles all over the web about this issue. I found XXLMag first, but after that I bounced around to others like FastCompany and Variety.

Okay Jay-Z, its a bit of an inconvenience to download it from one of these places as I’ve never used them before. I decide to go with Rocafella.com since it is his site after all. I go onto his site, locate the digital album, punch in my credit card info (have fun maxing it out Jay-Z), sigh, and follow through to the download page. Apparently you have to download this little file from PureTracks.com that will facilitate the downloading of his masterpiece album that can only be bought as a whole.

The program loads up and the files start downloading at decent speeds. It clocks me in at 2 minutes remaining to have the album. I started to think how easy this was, and I was stressing over his decision to remove it from iTunes. Sorry I ever doubted you Jay-Z…. oh wait… whats this…

Its about 3 hours since I purchased the album from Rocafella.com and I still get this message. Apparently 4 of the songs (in a random order) are unavailable for download. They just say “Try again later”. I’m kind of irritated, frustrated, and confused. How am I supposed to “digest” your album in its entirety if I cant even obtain it in its entirety from Rocafella.com, where you mentioned people should get it instead of iTunes.

Jay-Z… what kind of sad irony are you going for? He doesn’t let iTunes distribute it because he only wants it sold in its entirety but his own site wont let me download it in its entirety.

I’m going to go back to work and occasionally check out the PureTracks page to see if I get to listen to the other 4 tracks off your album.

If I dont get the 4 tracks downloaded can I get a refund in its entirety?

So a quick warning to the wise, DONT purchase a digital copy of Jay-Zs album off of Rocafella.com.

I’m sure Jay-Z thought he could generate more revenue by not allowing people to get the individual tracks but he is hurting his brand and aggravating his loyal fan base.Will I be buying another album from Jay-Z? Dont bank on that.

Theres a lesson every webmaster or small business owner can take from this. If you are going to try and do something different, make sure you do it right (or as close to it as possible!) The last think you want to do is annoy your customers/visitors/fan base or come off as a money hungry hypocrite.