Update: The money is quite real, but I no longer feel comfortable recommending TNX as an ad broker. Check out this post about possible negative impacts on inbound Google traffic.

Quite some time ago, I looked into using TNX to generate advertising revenue on one of my old sites.

Initially, I wasn’t too impressed.  You could sell text links on your pages, and pages with low page ranks could net a handful of “TNX points” per month.  These points could be traded in for cash at a rate of about $0.95 per 1,000 points (a little less than a penny per page per month).

I also thought, in the beginning, that this required a lot of work.  When I continuously checked my TNX account, ads weren’t always getting placed – I had to do it manually.  The system was supposed to automatically match up links with my pages, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Turns out, it worked quite well.

Watched Pots Never Boil

You know the old saying.  Leave it alone, and things will start happening.

Today, I logged into my TNX account.  I figured I’d check out the current details and consider selling some link space in my footer or sidebar to generate some revenue.  I was quite surprised to find that my TNX account had almost 500,000 points in it.  At the current conversion rate, that’s about $400.00.

This income covers the period from March (when I signed up for TNX) through October – about 8 months.  That’s roughly $50.00 per month.  Not too shabby considering that I hadn’t touched the site in 5 months.

I requested a payout for a good portion of those points, and I should be receiving payment via Paypal in the next few days.

Want to Try TNX?  Leave a Comment

TNX has changed things up a bit, and it seems that you now need an invitation to join the network.  I guess they figure that existing publishers can guide and counsel the newcomers.

If you’re interested in testing it out, leave a comment and I’ll privately e-mail you an invitation.  I was a bit wary at first, but this now seems to be a nice source of advertising revenue for any content publisher.