RtF is donating Ad space to RR!

Short Version

You want to promote your site and we both like Tom Knapp's Rational Review, so you donate money to Rational Review and RtF gives you lots of one-way Text Links to your site. Say no more, let me Place an Order!

Not into spending money, but still like RtF? Join our Friends directory.

Long Version

Short version didn't explain enough? This thought of mine started out because I'm pretty tired of getting my RRND stuffed with 'pleadings' for donations every three months or so. And, since ... Ah, just read what I wrote back in September of '07...

RRND UPDATE, 09/14/07:

We're not quite halfway there, folks . . . make that goal . . . sooner the better . . . it means that I get to stop writing . . . you get to stop reading, or scrolling past -- this fundraising spiel[!]

– Thomas L. Knapp, Publisher

Tom hit my nail on the head with that update. So, this is a truly selfish act, as I'm tired of having to page down past Tom's pleads for contributions to read my daily Rational Review News Digest (RRND). To that end, (*cough* shutting Tom up, so I can more efficiently read the real news of the day!) I've made a unilateral decision to offer up text link advertising space here on from Reason to Freedom (RtF) and donate the proceeds to Tom's organization.

Actually you'll pay Tom (Rational Review, RR) directly, because as I'm an egalitarian libertarian (or is that just lazy?), I'd rather not soil myself with handling someone else's money. And maybe with enough contributions, we might even get Tom to start producing our daily email fix on Mondays? Worth a shot, I always say.

So what is RtF donating (selling)?
Yummylicious fully SEOed and PR packing one way Text Links on the body footers of all pages in a specific category. (See the bottom of this article body for an example.)

Which categories (aka Tags for you Technorati types)?
Any category. But do read the fine print as we are limiting the total number of categories sold. We don't mind whoring for Tom, but we're not going to do it to excess. For a listing of all our categories and how many articles are in each, see: Tags (Categories).

(Hint: The closer aligned the category is to the site you want the text link pointed at, the more relevance search engines give it. Blatant Hints: If you have a finance site, pick our Finance category, if you have a wine related site, pick our Wine category...)

Show me an Example?
Sure, see “Link Space Donated to Rational Review” at the end of this article body for an example for the specific category “Ad Providers.” Then click on the tag/category “Ad Providers” above to view the other pages in this category.

So, how much do I have to donate?
After long and pernicious internal debates (okay, so I wasn't bleeding or anything, but I did give myself a headache), I came to the conclusion I'd let you decide. The highest 5 bidders that meet the category's reserve get the links. If there are only four links taken in a category and you meet the reserve, you get the fifth spot.

Tool for determining Category prices: http://www.text-link-ads.com/link_calculator.php
Enter URL: http://www.reasontofreedom.com/
Example Website Category: Finance
Number of links to be sold: 4
Single Page
Click dark green box just below “Primary Content”
Results: “Single link value: $37/month”

Which is making the claim that RtF could sell four links on one single Finance page for $ 37 / month each ($ 148 total). Which is overinflated, (see Q&A below for details) but, we'll use that as a guide to setting the reserve prices, as we're offering all pages in a specific category, which should offset their single page inflation by numerical advantage :)

[And of course the Text Link Ads calculator is now “down for maintenance” and I never copied the full list of results. In the interim, please use the below extrapolated Category pricing list.

30 Autos
29 Education
37 Finance
49 Gambling
24 Politics
31 Real Estate
24 Technology
31 Travel
24 Web Development

-- MJ]

Minimum Prices:
Again, I about gave myself a headache trying to think of a mechanism to automate coming up with the minimum prices. As, there is no way I'm going through every category on the site and manually setting one... So, the rough guide is the dollar amount given by the closest category match from the Text Link Ads' tool above plus the square root of the total articles in the category and rounded up. A few static examples (old now):

10 – Finance = $ 41 / month (Finance, 37 + 4 )
140 – Ethics = $ 36 / month (Politics, 24 + 12 )
29 – Education = $ 35 / month (Education, 29 + 6 )
6 – Home Schooling = $ 32 / month (Education, 29 + 3 )
98 – Wines = $ 41 / month (Travel, 31 + 10 )

And lets face it, $ 41 for 98 links is a steal. 42 cents for a PR 4 site link that can go for $ 20+ per month?

Fine Print (Yes, everyone needs a little fine print in their lives.)

Basic stuff I couldn't figure out where else to put.

• First come, First served.
• We are taking bids on any category, but only the top five revenue producing categories will be live at any one time.
• Only five links will be sold per category.
• Donations are for a minimum of four months.
• You may donate for as many months as you wish (e.g. multiply your bid by months and donate that amount to Tom though his donation page) to lock in a rate.
• Your link will stay on our site in its category for the time you purchase plus the initial partial month.
• Once Tom confirms your payment your link will go live.
• You may bid on a currently full category. As the existing Link holders in that category terms expire, they will be given the opportunity to beat your bid by $5 per month. They don't take it, you're in.
• This is a permanent offer. (Unless Tom does something very un-libertarian).
• All sites to make a donation will get permanently added to our Friends directory.

While I expect the majority of people making bids to be of general libertarian character and not truly need to be told the below, it doesn't hurt to clarify it either.

• Your link targets will be fully vetted for some relevance to the category, non-(Google/Search Engine) badness, and existing inclusion in at least Google. This is done to protect both ourselves and all other buyers. We'll even send you a copy of what we've uncovered.
• Your link will be removed immediately without a refund:
  • If your site drops more than one PR point per Google.
  • If your site drops to zero PR per Google.

  We want to help you all we can, but we're not trashing our site because you've angered the Google Gods...

How do I Place an Order?
Copy, paste, and fill out the below into our Contact form:

Subject: I want to donate money to Rational Review.

Category:
Donation per month:
Duration in Months:
Link Text (15 chars):
Title Text (80 chars):
URL:

When and How do I pay?
After sending us the above, we'll check out your site to verify the Search Engines like you and then send you an approval email with the amount to donate to Tom. Once you get that, make your donation to Tom using Tom's donate to RRND mechanism. See: “one-time contribution” on the right side of most any RR page. As I'm not a tax genius, I'll say that you'll have to use Tom's mechanism and not the ISIL tax deductibility route. Bummer, but who knows what weird paperwork I'd need to fill out otherwise.

After you make the donation to Rational Review, send us an email stating such and I'll co-ordinate with Tom for donation verification.

# # #

Well that's about it, as I think I've covered it all. If not add a comment asking your questions. Hopefully we can get Tom off of fundraising and back to real work...

So buy now, buy often, and buy a lot!,

M.J. Taylor
Publisher
from Reason to Freedom

[1] As long as no one has replied to your comment you can update and edit as often as you want. So, please don't reply to anyone's comments. (Obviously I spend too much time in the super-user account...)

Q&A (FAQ)

Hey, why the four month minimum buy?
Your question leads me to believe you're a Net Newbie... If you don't know I'm not going to tell you??? Okay, so I will. The word on the street is Google, in its wisdom, doesn't give much page rank value transfer to your inbound links (e.g. what we're offering) if they haven't been around for a decent amount of time. That could be two months, it could be three months, it might be one month, but four is a pretty safe bet that your site will be getting value from us.

Is that tool for determining Category prices accurate?
No. The market for advertising space is so dependent upon what a single advertiser is willing to pay, that all I can reliably say is it's been inflated so Text Link Ads can get more publishers into their network. I couldn't even really give you a guess as to how far off their calculations are, but, given all that, it's not astronomically wrong by a factor of say 10, but could very well be off by a factor of two. But it is 'good' enough as it is showing results for a single page, and many of our categories are dozens of pages.

Why use a square root to figure out reserve prices?
More sifting Google tea leaves, but the general consensuses is: 100 links from a single site is not worth 1 link each from 100 sites. If you could pull the actual information from Google, I'd be interested...

Dude, what the everliving %@#& are you talking about?
Ah, never mind, it's probably not for you anyway...