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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This article will mostly discuss placement techniques for contextual advertising that can dramatically raise your revenue from clicks. Contextual advertisers include Yahoo Publisher Network, Google, and Adbrite. These ads usually display a link followed by some description text or the url of the link.

Tip #1 - Placement
Ad placement is crucial for a website. Ads that people can’t see won’t be clicked on, so make sure the ads are located in a prime spot that will generate interest. The best spots for an ad is on the top fold of the webpage, meaning the viewer can see the ad without having to scroll.

The most clicked on ads are ones that are embedded within content. For written content I prefer the ad placement that is shown below.

This ad placement is successful for a number of reasons. First, the linking text stands out on the screen from the regular text. This helps to make the ad stand out more and gives a better chance for the viewer to actually read the ads. If I was writing an article about increasing revenue and you see an ad for “making money with your own website” you might be enticed to click it in order to gain some more insight on the matter. Secondly, since the ads are embedded so close to the text, it’s harder for the viewer to miss. Ads located on the sides are oftentimes looked over, which is exactly what you DON’T want visitors to do.

Tip #2 - Ad Blending
Some users will also click on ads if you blend the ads well with the rest of the content, but usually these clicks are generated on accident as you are essentially “tricking” your visitors into clicking ads by making the links seem like pages of your site. You should combine the methods mentioned in the first two tips, using ad blending on the navigation parts of your site, while making ads stand out more when they are embedded within content. An example of ad blending is shown below.

Among all the contextual advertising publishers, Adbrite is one of the easiest to modify the code in order to blend the link well with your webpage. Below is an example of a page that has embedded Adbrite ads with their own page links. As you can see, the ads look just like links to pages on their site. The other big dogs in the CPC business, Yahoo and Google, don’t have ads that blend in as well. This is why I reccomend that you choose Adbrite for a 2nd-tier CPC network.

An article that I found useful regarding ad blending can be found here. You can try this guy’s method to ad blending and see if it provides results.

Tip #3 - Images next to ads

Putting small, relevant images next to ads has shown to drastically increase ad revenue. The reason is because this attracts attention to the ads, and people are tricked into thinking that the picture is content related to the ad. Some publishers allow this method, however it seems like Google and Yahoo prohibit this. Read the TOS on certain publishers to get more info on whether this is allowed or not.

Tip #4 - Make the ads relevent

The best part of contextual advertising is that the ads are relevent to your site (Adbrite does not have this feature, they just put up generic network ads). Google and Yahoo both target their ads decently well, but Google Adsense definitely has the best ads that are relevant to your site. To increase ad relativity, make sure the keywords that you want ads for are repeated throughout. For example, if I wanted to display ads related to “making money” I would repeat the phrase making money many times on my page. If you want to be making money, and making money is what you want, then make sure that you are making money by implementing these ads well. It’s also best to spread your keywords throughout the page instead of concentrated in one area like above.

Tip #5 - Keep to one theme

This kind of ties in with making your ads relevent, but make sure your website concentrates one one certain type of category. For example, GameSpot.com is a site that focuses on games, while IGN.com has sections over games, movies, comics, cars, etc. GameSpot, if they used Google Adsense, would be serving the most relevent ads - gaming ads. While IGN, if they used Google Adsense, would be serving ads about all sorts of things because they have so many sectors. If a gamer goes on IGN and sees an ad about Japanese Movies, they probably won’t be enticed to click. Of course, these statements are just theoretically speaking, the main point is that if your website is focused on one topic, the ads will be better served to your target audience. If you have a website that covers many things, it will be harder to generate ads that interest your users.

Tip #6 - Do your research

Each publisher allows you to create separate channels for your ads so you can track how each individual ad unit is doing. Look over your ads and see which ones are performing the best, and then make a judgement as to which ads you should keep and which ones you should alter or get rid of. Constantly looking over your statistics is a key factor to increasing your ad revenue.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about increasing your ad revenue.

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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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