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.
