I was recently asked to review TNX, a new text link buying and selling service, similar to Textlinkads or other text link marketplaces. There have recently been a lot of reviews about this service, so rather than try to cover everything, I’m going to focus on the one side of TNX that would beneficial to people like me who own sites and are trying to monetize – the website publisher section.

Selling Ads on Your Site

Upon first visit to the TNX site (which I like to pronounce “Tee-N-Ex” although the actual pronunciation is “Thanks”), you are presented with two options: one for website publishers, and one for advertisers. Each link will take you to a FAQ about the service from the specific angle you might be interested in using the service for. Let’s take a look at a few of the Website Publisher FAQ’s:

Note: These are straight from the FAQ.

• Q:How do I benefit from adding a TNX system code on my website?
  A: When system code is placed on your website all the links that are purchased by advertisers will be automatically displayed on all pages that have TNX system code included. Whenever link on your website is sold to one of our advertisers, you get paid. The more pages you have on your site, the more links you can sell. Price of each link sold to our advertisers is calculated upon you page’s search engine rating. Links on all pages of your website are sold automatically, all you need is to place the TNX system code on all pages you want to sell links from.
• Q: What is TNX commission?
  A: TNX charges its members just 12.5% both, advertiser and webmaster to cover all expenses including web hosting, moderators salary and the most important – advertising all over the Internet so more people join.
• Q: Can I control link ads on my website?
  A: Yes! Once ad space on your website is sold, you can see list of all links and URLs in your control panel. You will have an option to block ads, delete them or ban the entire website which advertising you don’t like. We guarantee you will never see advertising of pills, drugs or any kind of ads that do not follow advertising policy. Every day we deny over 10,000 ads that do not comply with our policy.

On the left side of the FAQ page, I happened to stumble upon a Profit Calculator. I figured, what the hell, let’s see what’s possible. Upon entering in your url, the tool will calculate the amount of pages on your site and the link popularity. Once that is done, you have to adjust the PR for those pages. I set all of ours at PR6 (although we recently slipped to PR5). The calculator estimated I could make $8971.88 a month if I sold 2 ads per page.

Enough messing around – it’s time to register.

After registering, either as a website publisher or advertiser, you are presented with the TNX Dashboard. From here, you can generate the code to add to your site, add a new site, sell your TNX Points (used to buy links), create a new campaign, and view and manage your current campaigns (among other things).

You may have noticed how I said you can sell your points. Well, what exactly do points have to do with all this? Points are how advertisers purchase links on your site. Points currently cost $1.20 for 1,000 points.

To get your site setup, you first need to ad the appropriate ad code to all your pages which you want to have ads on. The ads will be placed their dynamically, so once you ad the code to the pages you want, you won’t have to go back and manually edit them every time you have a new advertiser. Once you have added the code to your pages, you have to add your site to the system. It will take about 1-3 days to get approved.

Other ways to make money

Maybe you are not interested in having text links on your site. That’s alright, because TNX also has an affiliate system which will allow you to place banner ads or your own links to the TNX service, and earn “TNX Points”. Now, you might be thinking, what do I want points for, I want cash! You can either turn around and use those points to purchase some link ads for yourself, or you can sell the points, either back to TNX themselves, or to another user.

Concerns with the advertising policy?

Many people get nervous with text links, especially a dynamic service where the code controls what is and isn’t shown on your page. No one wants to see their pages littered with links to purchase Viagra pills or anything like that. TNX does have a good advertising policy, which states that they will not approve links that “have nothing to do with the chosen subject or contradict it. Also, we will not approve campaigns that advertise pharmaceutical products and gambling.” Plus, because you can manage what ads get approved or not for your website, you have even more control over what kind of ads will be shown on your valuable pages.

Overall, if you are looking for another link marketplace alternative, give TNX a try. Have you ever used them? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Friday everyone. Edition 49, just three weeks away from a year. Wow, are you as surprised as I am?

Sites of the Week

Week 49, and the first site this week is BillQ. BillQ is another billing / money management web application. Both the site and the application are very clean, but there are many of these around these days, and I’d actually have to have some money in order to actually try them out.

9rules, the social network the content network, also finally released “Ali 2″. As the network I once belong to, I figured I’d share the news. And just for the hell of it, I thought I’d also love to point out how much more content is showcased in this new version. 4 “Most Popular Articles” (apparently based on views over the past 48 hours) and 5 “Most Popular Topics” (from 9rules notes).

And rounding out this weeks three is the Sundance Film Festival. A great festival to check out if you live in the area or just love independent movies. It’s hitting Park City, Utah (US) from January 17-27, 2008.

Digg Weekly

Design – 9 Artists Who Will Blow Your Mind
[From Digg Description] Remember, the following jaw-dropping pictures are of paintings or sculptures. Even if you think photo realistic art is pointless (which I’m sure some people do) there’s no denying the skill and patience involved in these creations.

Programming – Nothing amazing again this week.

New Side Project

Just a little heads up. While I am still busy trying to find a buyer for Devlounge, I am also in the process of getting together things for a new small project of mine, one that won’t require any content adding of my own so I can just “set it and forget it”. I don’t want to give anything away (plus I don’t know exactly what I’m going to call it yet), but I will tell you that is it going to help a lot of you if you’ve ever been in my situation with trying to sell a site and having discovered that there aren’t really any places where you can say “my site is for sale” besides forums and Sitepoint’s Marketplace. This project is also doubling as my Senior Project for high school, so I have to do a lot of analyzing of marketing, prices, etc. We’ll see how things turn out.

Articles sitting on the burner, waiting for me to light the match

I have some articles I’ve been waiting to write, but it seems like as soon as I get home from school every day, before I know it it is time for me to go back to sleep and start the daily patterns of life all over again. I am going to work hard to get them out over the next few days. Please excuse all the excuses I have had over and over for the past few weeks for the lack of new content – I just need to get over my busyness and get some things published. Soon. Hopefully.

Edition 48. Yes, that’s f o r t y e i g h t.

Sites of the Week

Kicking things off is TEN (Teaching Excellence Network). Pretty nice for a network dedicated to teachers. Obviously their web department doesn’t need much work.

Next we have a really minty design. This is the portfolio of Laco Janic, a graphic designer hailing from Slovakia. There is plenty of work in this portfolio, so don’t be surprised if it takes you a while to scroll through.

Built by Buffalo, our final site of the week, has done some really slick looking work. Their newest site, Rememble, looks to be really cool. I hope on reviewing it sometime this weekend (in between SAT’s and a bunch of other things).

Digg Weekly

Design – Super Slick Dusky Lighting Effect in Photoshop
This is a really cool effect, and a very long and detailed tutorial. By the comments on the site itself, lots of people are enjoying, so hopefully some of you will find it useful as well.

Programming – Microsoft to Release .NET Framework Source Code in v3.5
From the Digg description: Microsoft will begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries ASP.NET, Windows Forms, ADO.NET, XML, and WPF. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

Just thought I’d make a quick note that Sitepoint has released their Ruby on Rails book titled Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications up for free for the next 60 days. Some of you may remember that we reviewed the sample we were provided of this book, and it looked pretty promising. You can get it here.

It’s one noob after another. Today we check in with Keegan Jones, designer at Firewheel Design and one of the men behind Iconbuffet and Blinksale. Not to mention he also promotes how big of a noob he is on occasion.

Devlounge: Hello Keegan, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Mind introducing yourself for anyone who may not know you?

Keegan Jones: Hello internets, I’m Keegan Jones. I am a designer for a small company in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas called Firewheel Design.

DL: How did you get started in design? Was it a life long hobby, or just something you kind of picked up on? Did you go through any specific schooling for it?

KJ: Back in 1999, my family got a 400MHZ iMac DV (graphite colored, baby!) for Christmas. At the time, I was in high school and skateboarded a lot. I started editing skate videos in iMovie, and wanted a place to post them online.

One day I was at the library and checked out a book titled “HTML for Dummies”. I installed a version of Adobe Golive (which I wouldn’t recommend), and started aimlessly figuring out how to put together a website. My dad, who is also a designer, brought home a copy of Adobe Photoshop 5.5. Long story short, I wasted a lot of time in Golive and Photoshop and ended up building a website called “Ollie Jones“.

To answer your question, I haven’t gone through any specific schooling for web/design stuff. Most everything I learned from reading books and looking at good design. When I got my first job at Neubix, Ryan Sims was a big influence and helped me become a better designer by critiquing my work.

DL: Firewheel Design, your design studio, is responsible for some truly kick ass products, which I’m sure most if not all of our readership is familiar with in both Blinksale and IconBuffet. What is it like running two successful projects like that our used by thousands upon thousands of people every day. Is it intimidating at all trying to get things “perfect”?

KJ: We have a lot of fun with Blinksale and IconBuffet. Our main goal is building things that we use ourselves, and hoping others will too. Thankfully, it has worked out so far. We don’t worry too much about getting things perfect. It’s easier to evolve by listening what users want.

DL: For IconBuffet, what made you decide to allow users to “trade” free icons [through Free Delivery] with each other? In terms of marketing, has it worked successfully in getting more people to register and / or purchase premium icons?

KJ: For IconBuffet, we wanted to build a community around icons. Trading icons with others is the basis for our social network. It definitely has helped bring more people to the site. I’m actually not sure if the increase in registered users has translated into more purchasers of premium icons.

DL: According to the Firewheel splash at the moment, the doors have been locked while you work on a new project. Is there any way we can pry out any little bit of information about what this new project may involve?

KJ: Mums the word on our new stuff. If it peaks your interest, go to Firewheel Design and enter your email addy. We will drop you an email when we launch (which should happen before the end of the year).

DL: Last summer when we talked to Ryan Sims, The Big Noob was basically turned off. Since that, it’s made a powerful return, most notably with some sharp blue Noob shirts that even you have sported. What brought the Noob back out from the shelf?

KJ: The Noob was turned off because a lot was happening in our lives. Brad Smith and Ryan Sims had just moved to Boston, and I to Dallas. During that transition, we didn’t have time to keep fresh content coming. But life has settled down now, and we are back. Noob power!

DL: Alright, last question. When not designing, what are your other main hobbies?

KJ: I enjoying playing Xbox 360 (currently a lot of Madden ‘08), pretending to be a photographer, making silly videos, hanging out with friends, and trying new restaurants.

Thanks for your time!

Lots of people have been waiting all day for this, and now Wordpress 2.3 is finally out. You can grab it here. I’m going to be making the upgrade now, so if you run into anything not functioning over the next little while, that’d be why. Expect a full 2.3 report tomorrow afternoon.

Here we are with the forty-sixth time I’ve said this. It’s Friday Focus time. Welcome to the weekend everyone.

Sites of the Week

Kicking off the 46th edition of Friday Focus is Cornerstone Fellowship. This is just another great example of religious sites being designing and built right. Some of the nicest designs are now being found in places you wouldn’t expect.

Second this week is Mint (no, not that mint). Mint, the money management application that has been hyped for a long time finally went live, and although I have yet to actually try out the application (you kind of need to have money in order to use it), mostly everything I’ve heard and seen about it has been all positive.

And wrapping things up is Cottyn. The Virb/Purevolume crew is at is again producing some cool (and funny) tee’s. Right now there are only three, but I’m sure you can expect a lot more in the future.

Digg Weekly

Design – Advanced Glow Effects in Photoshop
Description from Digg: In this tutorial we’re going to create some really sharp looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the pen tool and colour blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.

Programming – Couldn’t find anything amazing or really standout, so we’ll leave this as is this week, unless someone has some suggestions.

Summing Up a Big Week

This was a very big week in terms of traffic for us. It was very nice to see, especially because it seemed like things were slowly beginning to die here as days went on and on and I didn’t write anything new. The font list post really woke things up and will hopefully create a nice spark from here on out. I have an interview with Keegan Jones that should be hitting your screens and feedreaders pretty damn soon, so be on the lookout. Over and out.

Lists definitely seem to be all the rage. It’s been less than 24 hours since the 30 Fonts You Want To Have list went up, and after just checking Mint it appears like it is going to be a record setting day. With just under 10 hours to go before the books close on today’s unique visitors, we are already at 4,000+. I’m excited to see what the day brings in at the end of the all, and what effect, if any, it will have on subscriber counts and comments / reads on other articles.

Everyone has their own personal preferences when it comes to deciding what fonts to you one their designs. Depending on the project type and what the design is for, certain fonts make more sense in certain situations than in others. There are millions of fonts out there – not one list could ever list them all. Some are available for free, and others will cost you a little bit of dinero, but in the end, the larger font collection you have the better off you’ll be in ensuring you have the perfect font to meet your clients needs.

We’ve compiled our own list of 30 fonts we think you should have if you don’t already have them. The list is a mix of some popular ones as listed in a “Favorite Font” thread over at Mintpages, and some of them I have added myself because I happen to be a big fan on them. Each font also has a url listed where you can grab it from (damn we make it convenient for you huh?) Enjoy!

The List

1. Rockwell [Paid]

2. Segoe UI [Free]

3. Helvetica [Paid]

4. Calibri [Paid]

5. TW Cen MT [Paid]

6. Bello [Paid]

7. Myriad [Paid]

8. Century Gothic [Paid]

9. Fat Love [Free]

10. Decker [Free]

11. Non Serif [Free]

12. Interstate [Paid]

13. Lane Narrow [Free]

14. News Gothic MT [Paid]

15. SF Arbocrest [Free]

16. SoopaFresh [Free]

17. Ubahn [Free]

18. Vrinda [Paid]

19. Babel Sans [Free]

20. Bitstream Vera Serif [Free]

21. Bold Bold [Free]

22. Franklin Gothic Demi [Paid]

23. GoodOT [Paid]

24. Din Regular [Paid]

25. Sansa 2 [Paid]

26. Marcelle [Free]

27. Avant Que [Free]

28. Stag [Paid]

29. Apex New [Paid]

30. Arrival [Paid]

Your Thoughts?

What fonts would you like to see on the list? Obviously like I said, we can’t list them all. I’m sure I missed plenty of great ones. These are just a few that come to my mind. Feel free to use the comments to let us know what you thought of this list – what shouldn’t have been on it and what should have.

Another weekend is upon us. This was a fairly busy week in terms of site changes around here, most of which have been received fairly well. Now that school is beginning to calm down and settle back into the usual “pattern” I can expect to be in until June, I should hopefully be able to get writing again over the weekend or at the beginning part of next week. Watch for it, because it is about damn time I write something other than these focuses!

Anyways, enjoy the weekend everyone!

Sites of the Week

This week was rather scare, and there wasn’t too much of anything that really caught my eye this week. One site that I did stumble upon and found pretty nice was Cabedge. Cabedge is a Nashville based web design and development studio. Besides offering design and development help, they also offer hosting to any of their clients.

Design Float / Digg Weekly

Design – 30 Secret Photoshop Shortcuts
A collection of Photoshop shortcuts aimed at boosting your productivity. From WebDesignerWall.

Programming – Creating Google Custom Search Engines
A custom search engine (CSE) tells Google which sites to search and which to avoid when dealing with a search query. This makes it much easier to get specific, guided answers to questions about a specific subject area. If you create a CSE you can use your expertise in a subject to control where Google looks for information about that topic.

Just thought I’d put up a quick note before everyone else starts posting about it. The latest beta build of Wordpress 2.3 is now available for download. Everything I’ve tested so far with 2.3 has been working superbly, and I’m really excited to see 2.3 go final and get it in use here on Devlounge. The first release candidate is due out next Monday (continuing with their new released every Monday pattern that’s been going on over the last few weeks), so we sure to watch for it. You can grab the beta here if you are interested.

Round two of the homepage updates have now been completed. You’ll notice that the homepage sidebar is now a little bit more populated than before. Header images have been added for each section, to give some visual identification to each section. You’ll now find the four latest news briefs and side notes in the sidebar as well. Lots to click on, but it is all leading on into the site. That’s good, right?