I just got an email from Tom Vadnais at ValueClick informing me that they will turn 10 years old this year. Here’s the email I got:

ValueClick commemorates its tenth anniversary today, representing a decade of performance and leadership in online advertising. On behalf of ValueClick employees worldwide, I would like to take this opportunity to say a sincere “thank you” for the contribution you have made to our success.

From our humble beginning in 1998 as a cost-per-click ad network, to our position today as one of the world’s largest online marketing services companies, ValueClick has always focused on delivering cost-effective customer acquisition for advertisers and robust revenue streams for publishers. Along with our dedicated team, it has been a commitment to performance by you, our advertiser and publisher clients, that has driven the phenomenal growth and success of ValueClick.

Today ValueClick operates in all major online marketing channels and some traditional marketing channels, including affiliate and search marketing, display advertising, lead generation, ad serving and e-mail technology, agency management software and comparison shopping. ValueClick brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Mediaplex, PriceRunner, Smarter.com and CouponMountain.com.

Together we have built a strong and diverse organization designed to help propel you into the future. Thanks again for your business. We’re excited about the opportunity our relationship represents and look forward to growing with you in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Tom Vadnais

I’m also looking forward to grow with them in the year ahead, but I would rather have received a nice gift from them then just a “thank you” (with “” around ). Wouldn’t you?

One thing that’s amazing me about ValueClick is the lack of technology development from their side. I’ve been using WebSponsors.com for a few of my sites because they got great freebies and sweepstakes, but what they really need to work on is the lack of innovations. For example you have to manually select your offers, they don’t have any feed you can import your offers from like for example TradeDoubler.com got. Another bad thing is that when a visitor clicking on the ads are not from the desired country they redirect the user to another offer, but it doesn’t look like you (the webmaster) will get any commission on that sale

When WebSponsors.com where a part of Web Clients (before ValueClick acquired WebSponsors.com) they had a co-branded web site called free2try.com where you as a publisher could setup a sub-domain with your own layout Really cool since you could redirect your visitors to an up to date directory backed with free offers, sweepstakes and trials and get commission on everything. The best part was that you could set your own brand on the site so the visitors could feel at home. This service was silently cancelled when WebSponsors.com became a part of ValueClick

If ValueClick will survive another 10 years they really need to create some new and innovative like the peel-off ads from adtoll.com, a community like Entrecard, integration with webmasters blog feeds, ad auctions like Project Wounderful or maybe just ad feeds like Tradedoubler. Good luck ValueClick, you really need it if you don’t start develop your technology and your services.

There are a lot of services letting you earn some money from placing links on your web site and TNX.net is one of them.

TNX lets you as a web site owner earn money from links on your web site and advertisers can buy links to their sites from sites in the same niche. What’s different from TNX and some other similar services is the point system they use instead of cash. For showing link on your site you earn points and as an advertiser you spend points which can be sold to/bought from TNX. I have to say that I don’t really like the point system . I would have preferred hard cash instead since it’s easier to understand how much you earn/spend, but one good thing is that the $ amounts are also mentioned almost everywhere.

If you’re selling link on your site you can of course spend your earned points on advertising campaigns promoting your own sites, so you don’t have to cash in your points if you don’t want to .

Something really good and surprising these days where the registration process. It was so easy it almost scared me. No CAPTCHA, no email verification link, nothing !

Webmasters

All webmasters (i.e. people wanting to earn points) have to add a special PHP or Perl code to their pages. The downside with this code is that it’s not working on all pages on your site. You need to have the possibility to run scripts. Ok, most webmasters do have that option today, but some don’t .

You can of course ad more then one site and also add the code on more then just your main page.

I wasn’t able to find any information on how popular you site must be to earn 1000 credits, but I guess this part from the advertiser FAQ will give you an idea:

What can you do with 20,000 TNX-Points?
In case website characteristics are not important (YahooBacklinks [YB] below 500, category “Fun and Games”), then you can buy a month (in case spots are available) of static links to your site:

- 20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites
- 400 different PR1 pages from different websites
- 200 different PR2 pages from different websites
- 100 different PR3 pages from different websites
- 40 different PR4 pages from different websites
- 20 different PR5 pages from different websites

So from one link on a PR3 page you should be able to earn 20 000 points / 100 links * ($0.78 / 1000) = $0.156 . $0.78 was taken from the “Sell points”-page and is the market value of 1 000 TNX points at 2008/04/09.

Advertisers

As an advertiser you get several options when you create your campaigns. You select category, language of the sites, Yahoo back links and Google PR on the sites you want to advertise on. What really confused me was that when I selected only one category I got 1750 links to my site for $11.20/month, but when I selected two categories I only got 1400 links for the same amount . Anyway, $11.20/month for 1750 links sounds like a good deal to me

When I signed up my account they had 15685 sites I could advertise on in 17 categories:

Affiliate program

As most advertising networks TNX got their own affiliate program where you can earn extra points by referring webmasters and advertisers. You get 13.3% of all earn credits from webmasters you refer and 5% of all payments made by referred advertisers. The affiliate program is located here.

Get some credits for free

At DP forums there is a campaign where you get up to 5 000 points just for joining. Read more at Limited Offer from TNX.net: Get LINKS from 5,000 quality websites for FREE!

Today I read a post at Tysblog.com about linking to a blog you like. This is not like the link love I wrote about in “Link love - good or bad?“, but this is actually real link love since you’re only linking to one blog (and also a blog you really like ).

I think Tysblog.com deserves a little bit more attention, more readers and of course some extra boost on his Alexa ranking so I select Ty’s blog . I’ve been reading his blog for about a week or so, but it’s already one of my favourite blogs. The sub title for his blog is “Tips, Tricks, Mumbling and More…”, but the blog is more focused on SEO and Internet stuff with a slight touch of humor.

As you can see I’m not the only fan he got :

When you’ve checked out Tysblog.com, subscribed to his feed, then write your own post about a blog you enjoy!