Hi I found link-vault.com it looks just like the co-op except that the links aren't always rotating and are more permanent. They also claim to adhere to the categories and language settings. These are the only problems I've had with the co-op and am wondering if anyone has tried them out? I signed up an account and will try them myself and post back about my experience. Link-Vault.com is the link.
My take is if I want a few links, I can achive that on my own with related sites and have the related perma-link easily. I like the coop because of the broad range of sites I can advertise on. You never know who may be into one subject but be interested in yours too. Advertising introduces them to you.
I'm testing it on a couple of sites... It's got a nice UI. I'm quite keen on it, but I'm really not sure quite how many sites I'll actually be getting links on. I'm not showing many links yet on my site (It seems to take a while to propagate) but It's only a day since i've been running the ads so they might pop up somewhere... What I did like was the ability to add related phrases and getting relevant ads displayed on your site.
city2 is poolgo the site you have on the network? I would like to see some of the sites already populating this system.
City2, I joined Link Vault for reasons I mentioned in another thread. Even so, I find your blaring, in your face, link to them a bit offensive here. If you must trawl for referrals here could you not do it with a little more subtlety?
I set up link-vault on one of my sites a couple of weeks ago. It's slow, steady growth (max 20 links per day per URL) and starts out by placing your ads on low PR pages. Once you have acquired enough of these links it starts to issue you links on higher PR pages - think they described it as being like an expanding pyramid or something (PR0 being the bottom layer). The reasoning behind this is that there are lots of PR0 pages with links on but not so many higher PR pages, so you have to 'earn' your positions on the higher PR pages. So - I wouldn't expect the instant gratification you get with the co-op, but in the long-run that might work to your advantage - slow, 'natural' link growth. I recommend giving it a go, they certainly seem to have put a lot of thought (and work) into it. I won't even bother posting my referral link.... but you don't lose anything if you go through a referral (unlike the co-op). You also don't gain much in the way of weight or 'vaultage' as they call it - instead you get 'features' on your account the more referrals you get - like seeing where your links are... Having said that - if anyone would like to signup using my referral URL - feel free to send me a private message
Correct me, if I'm worng.. any site already part of the co-op can not sign up for this new ad network as per the co-op TOS? It has to be a freash site not part of the digitalpoint co-op.
It doesn't have to be a "fresh site". It just can't have DP Coop ads. This is a guideline by Shawn, not by Link-Vault. Note that some of us are testing it. I will be logging my entries and give my overview on the new system and see if it's any better/worse than the coop. Hopefully I can have something up by the weekend.
Link-vault seem to have all what coop has been ignoring... 1. permanent links 2. use of categories. That's where Google's agorithm (and other engines probably soon too) is heading - age of links and themed sites. We have discussed this here in several threads, but seems like coop guys are too comfortable with their old school model. That's too bad though, becasue this is a much bigger network with lots of good sites, whereas link-vault does not have many sites in their network (yet). Coop will either have to wake-up and improve their model, or face the consequences of people switching to better quality networks like link-vault... Rigth now I don't think link-vault is much better value because they lack the quantity of domains to share the links with, but if the things stay the way they are, I can see them becoming more popular than this network...
I look forward to hearing more about this. As usual, what you get isn't always what you're promised. I'll be interested to see how this one pans out. One question though. It's *contextual* in that links are related to your category/theme. Does this place it among the 'other contextual advertising' that is defined as acceptable by the TOS ? It's a bit of a grey area to me because it's about persistent links (rather than dynamic such as the coop), and they are specific to your sites theme/category/language, which in my view makes the resource contextual. They really are two different creatures - almost as distant as RSS (which feeds dynamic linkage (albeit news/articles etc)), but the same net effect. ***SHAWN*** I'd like to know if this is correct.. would participation in this vault thing be against the TOS ?.. Cheers, JL
Ilike it. Get 3 referers... Nice, you get to see your links on other sites. To start they are all low PR but I am noticing growth in PR links backs. I am not sure if I agree with thier methodology, as E doc says. When I started I threw in 1 site, 13400 pages index ALL but a few range from PR 1-5. With Link-Vault you do not have to run the code on every page. In my case I did put it on every page. I have noticed that they are very slow to flood a decently ranked site with links. This tells me that they are being very fair about the distribution of links. I sill have most of my weight at DP because it is simply amazing with MSN and Yahoo. However I have no doubt that COOPS like link-vault are a better in the long run.
John, am pretty sure someone failed to validate today because they were running that co-op on their site. Shannon
Don't you wish DP would just come out and say what he thinks instead of hemming and hawing like that?