I find it sad that you’ve gone through that problem with TLA. What I would suggest is to acquire a tool which would allow you to automatically monitor if the links are still active and to alert you immediately per email as soon as they are not there. That’s a precaution to take if you want to safeguard your interests.
You could also diversify by buying (one-off payment)permanent text links on high ranked web directories such as asondheim.org. You don’t need to pay a monthly fee, so you can use your money on something else, such as on other web promotion methods.

Well Rog, I think it’s sad too, because I have had a relationship with them for quite some time. However, if I’m gonna take the time/effort to monitor my own links…what use are they, why pay the premium?

Sorry, it just does not fit into my business model anymore, I’ve got more important things to do.

@Rog: You kinda missed the point of Nails’ post. If he had the time, he wouldn’t need TLA and could, therefore, buy many more links for the same amount of money.

@Nails: Wow! I’m kind of surprised to hear that, actually. Big operation like that, you’d expect that they would monitor every single link in their inventory. Hell, they should be monitoring submitted sites as well, whether they have been granted links or not, just to make sure they should still be offered as real estate.

Have you tried Linkworth? I started using them when I saw my TLA payments nosedive. Linkworth lets you choose your own price for selling. Maybe look into it if you haven’t already.

P.S. You got yourself 2 cute girls, there. Keep up the good work!

Someone from LinkWorth contacted me, but I have yet to look into it…my life is a little hectic right now. And the sad part about TLA is that it’s happened on more than a handful of times and now I’m just done.

So, I guess you are using LinkWorth to sell links then?

Yes. I have been using Linkworth to sell links for maybe a year now.

1. I set my own price.
2. I can sell different links (sitewide, specific page, entire blog post, contextual ads, etc.).
3. I know they’re checking link placements. I had server issues before I moved to a VPS and I heard from them.

I get your point, Zap. Nails doesn’t certainly want to spend all his time checking if the links paid for are still active. But I still think that having a small software that does it for him would be a wise investment. Worth trying to think about it.
I like your suggestion of linkworth.com. It might be a good alternative. He might use it after he recovers from his current frustration. In the meantime, as you sell links and you are in touch, he can see if you can list his link(s) directly on your website(s). He doesn’t need to go through linkworth for that, does he?

@Rog: He could buy them from me, but I have so very few sites to offer real estate on and like any smart webmaster out there, Nails is going to want to place links on related websites. I may or may not have sites that are appropriate to the content that he is looking to place links into.
He will have a much better variety of sites to choose from if he uses a service, helping him get the biggest bang for his buck.

That’s right, no offense to my main man Zap, but unless he has a related website it would be a waste of time and money.

At one time I was keeping a running invoice of $300-$400 per month in continuing link subscriptions, which is more links than any 1 website owner could probably offer. This is taking into consideration the relative small price I pay per link and my need to spread it out over numerous IPs.