What is Xomba.com? It’s just another site you can write for on the ‘net – and get a share of the revenue through your AdSense account. This makes it ripe for writing short articles that feature your own website – full of targetted backlinks.

There are two types of articles on Xomba – Xombytes and Xomblurbs.

Xombytes are typical articles. They should be a couple hundred words (or more). If I write a Xombyte about one of my websites, I use the same tactic that I use on Associated Content – I write an overview of a topic and include links to two or three of my own articles. For optimal SEO, I usually try to sneak in a link to my front page as well on a targeted keyword like “PHP,” “programming,” or “web design.”

Xomblurbs are even simpler. They seem ripe for backlink generation. They’re essentially social bookmarking articles – you submit a link and a short description. That description can contain html.

So in a Xomblurb I write a short title, add the link to my own article, write a two sentence intro, and then end with something like “This is one of many web design and traffic improvement articles located at the site.” In the last sentence, I link to two of the categories on my blog.

Although I only write a couple of sentences, I can quickly generate three backlinks to my site – two with nicely targeted keywords that are good for SEO.

There’s probably not a whole lot of PR in these pages, but it’s a ridiculously simple and easy way to generate backlinks to your site. I’m going through and writing one or two Xomblurbs a day on my old articles, and I plan on posting most of my new articles there as well. Seems well worth the investment in time for a bit of SEO.

Here’s a sample Xomblurb if you want to check it out.

One method is to sell text link ads. A major ad group on this front is Text-Link-Ads. However, while I’m building up my pagerank, I decided to test out a different provider – TNX.

The site works a little differently from Text-Link-Ads. Instead of selling a block of ads, you get to select from a list of pre-approved links and add them to your site.

The way I have it set up, a cached list of links is generated on my server. A snippet of PHP then accesses the cache and inserts the individual links where I want them to go.

I can add up to four links on each individual page. They can be bunched up in a list or spread out a bit. It doesn’t seem to effect the payment where the links are placed – as long as they aren’t obfuscated and hidden (which is a violation of ToS).

How much can you make? Well, that waits to be seen.

TNX uses a points trading system. An advertiser offers to pay for a certain type of site – based on # of links and pagerank – and offers to pay a certain number of points. When you accept that publisher, you’re paid the points for one month. You can then either spend those points on your own advertisements or trade them in for cash.

Currently, the points are worth about $0.75 per 1000 points. When you look at your list of pages, it tells you how many points a link is worth. For my new site, which is still officially pagerank 0 and has about 350 Yahoo backlinks, the going rate is 3 points. Not a whole lot.

With about 120 pages of content, I could place approximately 1400 links on my site (at four links per page). That would yield about $1.00-$1.25 per month. Hmm… not a lot.

Of course, I realize my site’s page rank and stats haven’t climbed to the point that it will attract real advertising revenue. I added links to a few pages, just to check out the system, but I plan on waiting and seeing how the price changes as my backlinks increase.

In general, text link ads are a great way to add a steady stream of revenue. They’re more stable and predictable than AdSense – and they can be a boon if your site typically has a low click-through rate. I’ve seen people with successful sites earn $500+ per month with a block of text links.

I’ll post again in a few weeks to report on any changes with TNX. At the moment, I’m not terribly impressed with the potential – but it may improve drastically with pagerank and backlinks. Who knows.