Well the Holiday Season sure sucks for making money off the internet. Already revenues have dropped 40% or more overall. This is especially bad since I need money to get gifts! Doesn’t help that we’re in the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Haha, well anyways it happens every year so don’t worry too much about it. Advertisers are spending less money around the holiday season and more money putting gifts under the Christmas tree.

Currently I’m working on some CPA work which hasn’t been doing much. In the past three weeks I’ve made one sale, netting me a grand total of 13 bucks (edit: now 18 bucks). I really hate CPA but it’s currently the only untapped revenue source that I haven’t looked into.

Merry Xmas!

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Ever since I quit using Adsense in 2006, I’ve been scouring the internet for viable CPC alternatives. I had to spent quite a bit of time experimenting with each network to see which network would be best for my niche. Each network has its own ups and downs, so you should probably do some experimenting on your own as well.

The network you should avoid: Bidvertiser

Don’t try Bidvertiser. Sorry, but it sucked for me. Not only did it not deliver relevant ads at all (I chose to target towards “entertainment” and it delivered stuff like poker ads), but it gave me a horrible revenue per click (averaging like 3 cents a click).

The network that you should test out: Yahoo Publisher Network

Of course, not everyone can use YPN due to the fact that it is invitation only at this point. However, YPN for me had its ups and downs. There were times where I was getting GREAT revenue, but then recently it slowed down to a trickle (like $0.35 a day at its worst). The good part about YPN is that IF you can get targeted ads, you should be making TONS of money. YPN’s revenue per click is top notch, but the ads they serve unfortunately aren’t targeted as well as I would like them to be.

The network that has performed most consistently: Adbrite

Adbrite has been the most consistent stream of revenue for me. Although the revenue per click varies between 0.03 and 0.10 (pretty low), I’ve found that I can get TONS of clicks. The ads aren’t even targeted at all, but they are actually INTERESTING ads that should appeal to a majority of web users. Also, I’ve been getting a lot of revenue from selling ads as well.

More reviews later guys! Here’s some Leah Dizon for ya

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Your site gets a lot of traffic but not quite the amount of clicks that you desire. You may also feel the need to replace those ugly contextual text ads with some cool flash banners. In these cases, CPM (cost per thousand impressions) networks are definitely your best choice.

So what exactly is a CPM network? CPM networks are revenue programs that will pay you to display certain ads on your website. Usually these are flash/image ads. For every 1000 impressions, the network will pay you a certain amount of money.

CPM networks are much more selective about which sites they allow in their programs. The top networks are Tribal Fusion, Burst Media, and Casale Media. These networks are referred to as top tier networks because only the highest and most-trafficked websites can be selected. Tribal Fusion has the best rates for CPM ads, but they are also the hardest network to enter. Unless your site is bringing in 100,000 unique visitors per month, it will be hard to be admitted into Tribal Fusion. The other two, Casale Media and Burst Media, are also very selective, but they do admit more sites into their program than Tribal Fusion. Rest assured, if your site gets admitted into any of these CPM programs then you are set to make cash.

This brings us to the second-tier networks. These networks are decent, but they will not bring in as much money. The upside is that they don’t have requirements that are as strict as those of top-tier networks. One of the best 2nd tier networks is RealTechNetwork, which is the closest thing to top-tier that a second-tier can get. If you must choose a second-tier network, try your hardest to get into RealTech. If you are denied, then look at this site for a good list of CPM networks. I won’t go into detail about each second-tier network since I have yet to try all of them.

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So you want to start monetizing that website but you’re not sure how. If you’re selling something then you would make money off your sales, but we are going to assume that your site is an information based site (such as my blog). The best way you will make money is through an affiliate program.

So how do you choose the right affiliate program? Hopefully you’ve heard of Google Adsense, and if you haven’t then its about time you heard. Adsense is a CPC affiliate program, meaning you will place some of their ad code on your site and earn revenue everytime someone clicks on one of the ads that is being displayed on your website. CPC affiliate programs are good for smaller sites, since their traffic will not make a CPM-based affiliate program worthwhile (we’ll cover CPM shortly). Below I will list the best CPC ad programs and what makes them so good.

#1 - Google Adsense - Google Adsense is one of the top affiliate programs because they serve the most advertisers and they actually provide ads that are relevant to your website, meaning there will be more incentive for users to click on your ads. Furthermore, they allow sites to display relevant images next to ads, which has shown to be a good method of increasing ad revenue.

#2 - YPN - Yahoo’s ad network. It is comparable to Google and the contextual ads look very similar, but the only negative side to YPN is that the relevancy of the ads is sometimes not quite as well targeted as Google Adsense. The upside is that Yahoo generally pays a better RPC (revenue per click). It’s definitely a great alternative to Google. Also, they only allow certain sites into their beta program for now, but they should soon end the beta.

#3 - Adbrite - Not quite as good as either Google or Yahoo, but the benefit to Adbrite is that their ads can be formatted well, meaning it is easier to blend in with your site, meaning you will generate more clicks (remember, better blended ads = better revenue). Another benefit to Adbrite is that they allow advertisers to directly sell links on your website, which is a service that Google Adsense has as well (but not YPN as of now). Adbrite is also very lenient on its restrictions, which is why the affiliate program has been popular with many publishers. Be aware that you can run Adbrite with Yahoo, but not with Google Adsense.

Other Affiliate Programs - There are others, but it seems like most publishers will agree that if you are going for CPC ads, the top three are your best bets. The others will provide less revenue, and should be avoided. This page has a list of some of the better known CPC programs if you are interested.

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