I have written this article to compliment my video called Making Money From Blogging. In the video I talk about some of the methods used in order for your blog to start earning revenue, one of which was Google Adsense and Google Adsense Alternatives. In this particular article I have written what I consider to be some of the best Google Adsense Alternatives, along with information about how to sign up for an account with them or what is required of you, before you can be accepted. I mentioned on the video about Affiliate Marketing and so I have added a short section on this subject also. I would also like to mention that I have not placed this list in any particular order and it is also important that you research all ad campaigns to ensure they are right for your particular circumstance.
Google Adsense – Before you can start using Google Adsense you must sign up for your Google Adsense Publisher ID. In order to obtain this publisher ID, it is almost like an application process, Google will ask you to fill out a submission form, here you will be expected to tell them your site details, Google also expect you to adhere to their rules and regulations should you be accepted. It is pretty easy to be accepted for Google Adsense, you just have to make sure that your blog or site is publishing decent, well constructed content on a consistent basis. The name of your blog may hold bearing also, if your blog title has a profanity throughout it, you may not be accepted as this would reflect bad on Google, obviously this applies to your content. The way Google Adsense works is, companies pay Google to place adds on blogs and web sites that fall into their area of business. For example a fishing tackle shop is not really going to want their advert to be placed on a blog about Young Mothers and so Google make sure that the ads placed on your blog fall into your demographic of expertise. You then make money from people reading your blog and if they click on one of the ads placed on your site, you will make money. It is important to understand that you are not permitted under any circumstances to click your own ads, nor are you allowed to ask others to do this for you. Google have highly sophisticated algorithms in place to detect this behaviour and should you be caught, Google will stop you from using Google Adsense. It is always better in the long run to play by the rules, cheating will only help you out in the very short gain.
AdBrite – AdBrite is an excellent alternative to Google Adsense and pretty much identical in many respects. Again you must sign up for an account and you will have to wait while they access your blog and verify it for their ad campaigns. The main difference with AdBrite is the flexibility in determining ads for your blog, you have a bit more control of quite a few aspects of the selection process. Although there is a selection process before being accepted by AdBrite, they are a little bit more relaxed in their selection, which is good for the smaller bloggers of us out there. With Google Adsense you have to reach at least £60 or $100 US Dollars respectively, before they will send you out your first payment, no matter how long that takes to accomplish, anything after £60 and you are paid on a monthly basis. With AdBrite the default is set at roughly the same as Google however you can lower that so long as it is more than £5.
BidVertiser - With BidVertiser you get pretty much the same set of services as Google Adsense and AdBrite, although many of the alternatives I am showing you here are very similar, they are all worth taking a look at, if you want you can sign up to all of them, there is no rule against doing so. However you can only run three Google Adsense ads on the one page which is a good reason to have more than one of these companies working on your blog, giving you a bit more coverage. This will very much depend upon the size of your blog, the last thing you want to do is plaster ads all over your blog, were it becomes difficult to distinguish content from advertising.
InfoLinks – The format of InfoLinks is different from the other ad groups but the concept is very much the same. Although with the other ad companies you can opt to have a graphical ad banner or a text based banner, InfoLinks selects keywords throughout your blog and turns them into a link based advert. When you are customising this particular ad group you can have the links stand out completely or have then blend in more with your content by choosing which colours to use for the text link. When a view logs onto your blog and they hover over the links with their cursor, a small picture based ad will be displayed, this has been very effective method of revenue for such a lot of people. Once the link is click and the viewer is then take to the page of the advertiser which of course is the bitter sweet to all adverts on your site. You try so hard to get the traffic to your site and when they are there you want them to click the adds so that you can make some money, however in doing so they leave your blog.
Chitika – Chitika I have found are very selective about who they use to advertise with, when I was running Tech Planet 30, I applied a few times and was turned down, after one month of launching Techmedia Fusion I applied and was accepted. I do not have a definitive answer as to why this was the case, never the less my thoughts behind this are that Tech Planet 30 only reached a Google Page Rank of 2 in two years, where as with Techmedia Fusion I reached a Google Page Rank of 3 in three months. Taking all this into consideration I would say it has to do with how popular your blog is and how well written your content is. Chitika have a good payment system in place and seem to pay quite well.
Clicksor – Clicksor again are a little bit selective in who they advertise with, however if you are fortunate enough to be accepted they do work well on your blog, if maybe a little bit annoying for your viewers. Clicksor offer so pop up type ads which are big hitters in this game however be very careful with this type of advertising as it really can alienate your viewers. If you select this type of ad on your blog make sure you set the pop up to come on maybe just the once, when the viewer first logs into your blog. With this type of ad on some of them you have quite a bit of control as to how frequently they appear, maybe every 30 seconds or every minute or every page turn, this type of interference can be quite troublesome and something not to get carried away with. Don’t forget the long game is more important than the short term gain in almost every situation.
Although I can’t tell you which of these are the best, or which of them will make you the most money, I can say this, research all of them very carefully, follow their rules and regulations and you can’t go wrong. Try to mess about with the system as a means to earn loads of money and you will get caught and that will be the end of any earning potential you may have had. I know following the rules may seem old and boring but in my experience I have always found this to be the best way forward, not only earning a little bit of cash but more importantly respect and friendships.
Another method for earning money is affiliate marketing and the most popular probably Amazon Associates. With Amazon Associates once you have signed up for an account you are then given a lot of instructions to help you make the most of your earning potential, if you follow the instructions and work constantly with it, you can earn quite a considerable amount of money. You can do this by adding widgets to your sidebar, within the widget it will display Amazons bestselling products of that week, should someone click on the product and then buy it from Amazon, you will earn a percentage of the product, it is as simple as that. I would like to mention that once you set any of these alternatives on your blog or site, including any affiliate marketing, money is not simply going to start pouring into your account. The more work you put into your site the better, you must retain a level of consistency and ensure your content is well constructed and follows correct etiquette. As far as Amazon Associates is concerned, provided you work at it you can earn a considerable regular income.
