There is a great risk joining Text-Link-Ads because many people who joined have had some kind of punishment meted out by Google e.g losing their page rank. Unless it makes you lots of money, it is really not worth joining. It is after all selling links and Google hates that as you mentioned here too.

what about tnx.net, they look decent.

Hi jitterbug978,

I have given TLA a thorough testing. I found their pricing system to be somewhat lacking. They base their prices primarily on Alexa ranking which is easily manipulated. The websites in their system are dominated by webmasters who have mastered the manipulation of Alexa rankings. So consequently you will be buying links on sites with faked traffic.

If you research the sites you might find one or two for your niche that has real traffic. My opinion is that you would be better off if you used Quantcast to find sites to advertise on and contact them directly for a link.

TLA could improve their service immensely if they shifted away from marketing links for PR and focused instead on marketing links for targeted traffic. They would need to drop Alexa and PR as primary pricing points and use third party verified traffic as a pricing model.