If you're a TLa Publisher (and if you're not get over there now) then you may have gotten an e-mail today regarding their new "post level" Text Link Ads offering.

Unlike their previous setup, which only offered site wide links to advertisers, the new system allows advertisers to buy text links that appear directly on some of your site's most popular posts.

The idea is novel - rather than buying a review or post Text Link Ads is offering their advertisers the ability to buy links on a site's most popular posts. This means that when a post gets dugg a single link could generate huge amounts of traffic for an advertiser.

After spending some time examining the service this morning (and looking at it running on John Chow's blog) I have to say I'm kind of impressed. Not nearly as impressed as I would have been if the links were PPC rather, but still impressed.

One thing that does bother me a bit about the links is that they're nearly invisible. Check out John's post "My Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins." Without using your browser's search feature find the added link and tell me it's not barely distinguishable from the post's text. The CTR on these will probably be pretty high... of course TLA doesn't pay by CTR though so that doesn't mean much to publishers.

While I haven't updated my plugin yet I think I might make the jump tonight. I'm curious to see what level of customization we can make and I'm looking forward to seeing how it boosts my overall rating on Text Link Ads. At this moment a Text Link Ads ad purchased on Bill2me dot Com is $20.

I'm definitely interested in seeing how much a post will go for and how popular that ends up being.

If you're using the Digg Integrator plugin be advised that I'm releasing a small bug fix tonight. I had originally intended to include a small tracking widget in the plugin to let me see what sites it had been installed on.

I never really finished developing that portion of the code and ultimately abandoned the idea. Unfortunately a remnant of the test code got left behind and had an unforeseen side effect - it's basically causing a linkback that Technorati can read.

There are two ways to fix this. Either download the plugin again (it's got the old code removed and is now ready for use) or you can edit the plugin directly. The offending code is on lines 269 AND line 294. Just remove the linked image that traces back to this site.

The updated plugin can be found here.

If you have anymore questions just leave a comment here.

Hey folks - just wanted to offer up something for anyone using my digg Integrator plugin. If you're currently using my plugin on your WordPress blog please let me know. I'm going to be starting a list of all the sites using the plugin and would love to offer up free links to any sites that have the plugin running.

This will give me a chance to see how people are integrating the plugin into their own blogs as well as give me the ability to see how the plugin is doing out in the wild. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you all.

As of this posting the plugin has been downloaded 40ish times in the past few days so I'd also like to invite any feedback from any of the folks using my plugin.

Earlier today I found and fixed a few bugs as well. They've been fixed in the current download so feel free to grab version 2.0.2 now.

Earlier today I installed a new WordPress plugin that I thought was worth mentioning. If you regularly post files (like themes or plugins,) or if you have one or two files that you would like to track, you've probably thought once or twice about finding a "download counter."

I've tried searching for them in the past with little to no success - none of the ones I've found have been particularly helpful.

Until today...

Today I discovered a download counter over on Yellow Swordfish that was exactly what I was looking for. Besides being able to track downloads it also gives you the ability to put a download counter on your page. I'm pretty sure (there may be a bit of tweaking involved) that it can also be used with Google Analytics for goal tracking.

It is specific to WordPress but it's also quite a helpful tool. Head on over and check it out.

By this weekend I hope to have a new version of the diggIntegrator plugin up and running for everyone. While that release date moves closer I thought I'd offer up a little code snippet for anyone interested in including the new Digg Buttons without adding a plugin.

One of the major downsides Digg's newest implementation is the lack of a "not dugg" state. You basically just get a digg counter set to 0 until your post is submitted and dugg - that's why the diggIntegrator plugin is so nice. Now, if you're ok with the 0 count then there's a quick way to get the JavaScript up and running without a plugin - here's how it works.
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