Adsense Alternative

Many people have started using Google's AdSense program, but there are some who find it a bit too uncertain or simply not suiting their own requirements from an ad program.

But thankfully for such people, there are many alternatives to AdSense which attempt to alleviate some of its shortcomings. Here is a list of the most noteworthy ones from the lot with a description concerning each one.

AllFeeds (http://www.allfeeds.com/?action=publishers) AllFeeds has a great pool of online advertisers to choose from. It also features many display formats that you can choose from. These include banners, buttons, XML feeds, DHTML pop-ups and so on. It also features real time reporting of your ad status. The site will mail a check every month, provided that you earn more then $25.00, while rolling over earnings for the next month if you don't. Another interesting thing about AllFeeds is that it integrates with Google AdSense, maximizing your earnings with AdSense.

MarketBanker (http://www.marketbanker.com/mb/sell.php) MarketBanker allows you the unique possiblity to set the pricing for your site. It also allows you to allow or reject any link that appears on your site (although AdSense itself does a very good job of this as well, with URL filters) There's also a statistics section which will allow you to see how well your site is doing. The ads are small just like AdSense's and they're just as easy to set up. Also, registration for MarketBanker is free.

BidClix ( http://www.bidclix.com/PubTop.html) BidClix is different because it has advertisers compete for clicks on your site, which in turn is meant to generate the highest possible profits for your page. It also has a very large pool of advertisers which ensure there are plenty of people to choose your site. However, it does require more polish on site contents then AdSense. As most sites, real time statistics are available and its very easy to get started with this service, but it's also very flexible.

Chitika (http://www.realcontext.com/index.php?option=RealContext:+Contextual+Targeting+Engine) RealContext uses Artificial intelligence to retrieve the most relevant ads for your page. And there's an extra feature which makes RealContext unique as well. Keywords are selected based upon which previous selections payed off and which didn't. That means there's a constant feedback process that ensures you gain better revenue from your ads. It also supports blocking certain adds and child-safe filtering and many more options.

AdHearus (http://adhearus.com/webmaster.php) AdHearus is a very feature-packed contextual ad provider. As with AdSense, advertisements are targeted but it doesn't stop here at all. The ads are very flexible, you can select from text-ads, banners, rectangles, pop-ups, pop-unders or skyscrapers. You can also display your own ads, through rotation, both on your site and on other affiliate sites, which makes AdHearus a hybrid with conventional advertising technologies. There's a very comprehensive on-line real time reporting feature and, as usual with such services, starting out is free and it's a breeze.

AffiliateSensor (http://www.affiliatesensor.com/) AffiliateSensor has highly customizable ad blocks, which you can make for yourself with an easy to use on-line interface. You also get realtime reporting with clicks-by-domain, page and refferer. There's integration with Google AdSense as well, through the google_alternate_ad_url so AffiliateSensor can be used as a substitute for Google PSA's (Public Service Ads).

Kanoodle Bright Ads (http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cool) Kanoodle's offering allows publishers to get ads related to topics or segments, and not the traditional keyword oriented ads. The site also groups publisher sites with advertisers by hand to ensure high-revenue generating ads. And speaking of revenue, the amount of money you receive is a clear 50% share of the amount of money Kanoodle recieves for an advertiser.

TargetPoint (http://publisher.targetpoint.com) TargetPoint is oriented more towards content publishers. It offers full control over the look the ads, statistics over your site's overall performance and better revenue. It's free to register and you earn a guaranteed 60% of the total revenue. You can get payed with Paypal of Bank checks and (most times) wire transfers as well.

Clicksor (http://www.clicksor.com) Clicksor will earn you as much as 60% from the amount of money your website produces. What you get is about the same as AdSense, there are targeted text ads, you can view the revenues from your website in real time. You can receive money via PayPal or through a check every two weeks, provided that you have earned more then $50. If you haven't made that much, your earning roll over to the next period

Bidvertiser (http://www.bidvertiser.com/) Like AdSense, Bidvertiser displays text ads in your page. But the difference lies in the fact that advertisers bid over your advertising space, ensuring you earn as much revenue as you possibly can. This also means that bids will increase over time, earning you even more cash. You also get a great way to customize your ads with a very easy to use tool and detailed reports on your site's status.

Quigo AdSonar (http://www.quigo.com/adsonarpublishers.htm) Quigo AdSonar achieves relevancy by placing a filter according to your site's categories. It also offers you on-line reports of your site's status and the possibility to add your own custom ads replacing ads that don't gain you any revenue. The setup is very simple, in a similar fashion to AdSense's and quite customizable as well.

Vibrant Media IntelliTXT (http://www.intellitxt.com/site/web_01a.html) Vibrant Media IntelliTXT offers user-activated ads, highlighting certain words within the content of the page and presenting relevant ads when a user hovers his mouse over them. It uses a pay-for-performance pricing scheme and can easily be used along with other advertising methods, because it is unobtrusive. It places you in full control, allowing you to easily integrate it within your site with some simple JavaScript.

Nixie (http://www.nixxie.com/display.php?section=Partners) Nixie claims to hold a technology that can read and understand your site, enabling it to display the most relevant content to your site. Besides text ads, Nixie also features price comparison listings as well as live auction advertising. It's very easy to implement and has a good payment policy as well.

MIVA AdRevenue Xpress (http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp) MIVA AdRevenue Xpress is targeted towards small and mid-sized publishers. It implements Search Box functionality and also features things like a Category Directory as well as the handling of 404 error pages. It can be integrated with your page using a simple on-line wizard.

Fastclick (http://www.fastclick.com/publish.html) Fastclick offers you an impressive 65 percent of what it makes from a click on your website. Payments are done monthly, via PayPal or through checks. The ads can be formatted as you wish, and Fastclick even offers a free support serice for its members and no fees are required to register with the service.

contextWeb ContextAd (http://www.contextweb.com/Corporate/publisher/publisher.shtml) ContextAd offers the possibility of contextual ads for dynamic pages, meaning ads will change as soon as your page does. It's very easy to use and free to sing up for and offers a transparent payment policy. The ads are fully customizable and real-time reports are available 24/7.

AdBrite (http://www.adbrite.com/) AdBrite offers publishers the possibility of integrating text ads in their pages. These are done on your own rates, with the websites you approve by hand so it bares some similarities with a classic advertising scheme. You also have the option of adding a "Your Add Here" button that buyers can immediately click to ad space on your page. It can also be used in conjunction with Google AdSense, maximizing your CTR and offering advertisers the possibility of showing their links in your Google AdSense space. You have full control over the look and feel of your adds and finally, you get an incredible 75% of what the advertiser pays for on every click.

So, as you can see there are many offers for this kind of advertising, and many hybrids based on AdSense like advertising. Also, a lot of services can work together with AdSense to earn you an even greater amount of revenue for your ad space.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

About the author: John Ugoshowa. For more information about affiliate marketing see the affiliate marketing section of The Free Ad Forum.

Chitika - What Went Wrong?

All I have to say is WOW. I haven’t seen this kind of vitriol since the last Democratic Convention, and all directed toward Chitika, a startup ad company that was supposed to be the Google killer. Their crime? Cutting people’s revenue checks after they’ve earned the money. Not a great PR move. And it looks like there are more problems with what, on the surface, looks like a great idea. I have to admit I don’t understand how anyone (including Chitika) makes any money with their revenue model.

Darren Rouse of problogger.net, who I respect immensely (and who makes a couple hundred grand a year blogging), has really flogged the heck out of Chitika. Right from the start I had trouble understanding how they were going to make any money.

Chitika Mini Malls allow you to sell specific products (merchandise) within the pages of your website or blog. The ads boast the best price for a specific product, and then allow the user to click to (supposedly) buy the product. They also include tabs for search and other functionality built right into the banner-like ad.

Publishers can choose to show ads by keyword (they pick the words), or by page context like Google (having both ads in contextual mode on your site violates Google’s terms of service).

Apparently Chitika has deals with companies like Shopping.com, Ubid and others to share in clickthroughs. Or they may just go through channeladvisor.com, a syndicator of content for the major shopping sites (which explains why they all have the same content).

From my comfortable chair I can see where the trouble begins. When someone comes to Shopping.com they’re looking for something, whether it is duck boots from L.L. Bean or a battery charger from Sears, and they’re looking for the best price, presumably so they can buy the product (it’s not called just looking around.com. It’s shopping.com.

So Bean or Sears doesn’t mind paying Shopping.com fifteen cents or a quarter or whatever to get the person to press the buy button, because they know the person is ready to put down the credit card number.

I’m not sure moving that model out to my web site is going to pay off in a pay-per-click model. Back when we did CASIE-award winning (5 awards actually) campaigns for John Hancock, the goal was to capture someone having a specific life event such as having a baby, marriage, graduation, etc., and get them to Hancock. The presumption was that they would be ready to buy. Chances are if they saw a banner that said Ready to tie the knot? Are you covered? or some such thing and they clicked, they were ready to buy, and it would have been worth paying for the click.

Shopping.com is similar. If you’re there, the life event is a new TV (not quite as profound as marriage, but important just the same).

I’m not sure how much a click on the Best price for a TV MiniMall ad by someone who is not ready to buy a TV is actually worth. Remember, they haven’t come to Shopping.com. Shopping.com has come to them.

Keeping that in mind (the value of a click from my site vs. the value of a click from the Shopping.com site), all of the controversy makes perfect sense.

Let’s start with the auditing fiasco. They told a bunch of publishers how much oney they made from people clicking on the ads, then decided to take back some of it. They claimed to be taking back money from clicks from countries where the products couldn’t be shipped and accounting for click fraud. While this is annoying, I can understand it, though I’m not quite sure how they could examine every click and figure this stuff out, especially when rumor has it the system isn’t exactly a technological powerhouse. In fact, according to Shoemoney.com, the technology is a PHP ripoff.

So they threw out a few clicks, right. Big deal. But here’s where Chitika crossed the Rubicon as far as I’m concerned — they decided that they were going to filter out what they called curiosity clicks, which they loosely defined as clicks that are not likely to result in a sale.

Wait a minute here…no one said anything about sales. As I mention in my previous article about Pay-per-click advertising, the publishers responsibility in the pay-per-click model is to get the user to click. The rest of the chain is then out of the publisher’s hands.

Chitika has basically created its own model here, and I call it Pay-per-selected-click. They are, in effect, deciding that some clicks are more valuable than others. Specifically they are saying that clicks resulting in sales are better than clicks not resulting in sales. Viola! They have invented Pay-per-Sale (or Pay-per-Action for those semanticists in the audience).

Other people call it BS. Actually so do I. I think it is dishonest to tell publishers that you will pay them for every click and then decide which clicks to pay for. That’s like telling the lottery agent that you’ll buy the tickets now for $1 each, but you’re coming back after the drawing to return the ones that didn’t win for your dollar back.

Put another way, if you’re giving away 70% of what you earn (60% to the publisher and 10% to his referring publishers), you can’t be throwing around dollar bills. And if your model is stupid (which this one clearly is), you need to pull some hocus-pocus man-behind-the-curtain give-with-one-hand-and-take-away-with-the-other kind of magic.

The most amusing part of this has to be picturing the look on the marketing weenie’s faces at L.L. Bean and Sears when the bill for a million clicks comes in and they find that they made four sales.

The bottom line here is that in this context (selling someone merchandise) a click from Shopping.com has more value than a click from Bobsblog.com.

Chitika turned me down for an account. They said that I didn’t meet the qualifications. Darren Rouse says that web sites that are product centered. Chitika says the same thing.

This proves my point even more. If a website is product centered (in other words reviews computers or exhalts the virtues of a Palm Pilot), then the fact that you are on that site means you have some interest in the product. Your Chitika MiniMall is the Buy It Now for that product. This means that there won’t be as many curiosity clicks, and Chitika won’t take as much of your earnings back.

You are getting subjected to Pay-Per-Action criteria with Pay-Per-Click rewards. If you want to see how publishers are reacting to this, you might want to Google Chitika sucks, or look up one of the anti-Chitika web sites like Shitika.com. Jensense also has a nice synopsis you might want to take a look at.

Without looking I’m going to guess that the angry people are the ones furthest from Shopping.com in content and model, and the ones who had the least taken off their earnings are more product centered (whatever the hell that means).

Chitika claims to be The Leader in Impulse Merchandising. Their model puts a different spin on the word context. For their ads to work, you have to be predisposed toward purchasing the product on one of their banners, and the theme of the site on which the ad appears is the actual context of the ad, not the keywords you supply or context Chitika uses to choose the banner.

I’d replace Chitika with a Pay-Per-Action ad that fits the theme of your site. If you’re lazy stick with them, at least until they either change the model so they make more money or go out of business. At this point I’m not sure which one to bet on.

About the Author: Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time.

How to Display Adsense on Wordpress with Adsense Plugins

While Wordpress itself is a robust and complete blogging system, to really maximize the software and make money from Google Adsense you'll need to install and use a couple of Adsense "plugins".

Most of the plugins can be found by doing a search on Google, and installation is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is upload the plugin to your web host using an FTP, and activate the plugin inside your Wordpress administration area.

1) Adsense Deluxe Wordpress Plugin

The first and most important is a plugin called "Adsense Deluxe". While this plugin will help you to display Adsense ads on your blog, it also serves other purposes. You can use this plugin to insert Javascript, PHP and almost any other type of code into your blog posts.

The Adsense Deluxe plugin will allow you to insert Adsense ads into your blog posts by including a simple code like this:

<!--adsense--> You can create multiple ad formats in the plugin's settings page, and you can always change these later without having to modify the individual blog posts. This makes it easy to test different ad formats over time, and also to replace your Adsense codes with other ads if the need arises.

2) Adsense Injection Wordpress Plugin

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin, the "Adsense Injection" plugin will insert Adsense codes automatically into every blog post, including older posts.

This is great if your blog already has a lot of existing content, and you don't want to insert codes manually into all of them. As the name suggests, when you use Adsense Injection you "inject" your Adsense codes automatically and randomly into all previous and future blog posts.

Thus, you will not have to worry about what's called "ad blindness" as your Adsense blocks will appear in different positions within your content. You can also randomize different ad formats and different alignments to make sure that no two pages have the exact Adsense codes on them.

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin however, the Adsense Injection plugin cannot display other Javascript ads or PHP codes.

3) Adsense Beautifier Wordpress Plugin

The Adsense Beautifier plugin just makes your ads prettier. By adding an image on top or next to your Adsense codes automatically, the plugin can help you to achieve a higher CTR (click-through) and ultimately higher Adsense earnings.

The images are generic so you can use them with any type of content. You can also create and upload your own images to be used with the Adsense Beautifier plugin. If you do this however, make sure you check with the Adsense support team as you don't want to violate any of their terms of service.

The basic plugins are all you need to start earning from Adsense on your Wordpress blogs. Although there are any more tools and plugins you can use, you'll be safe for a long period of time if you stick to these tested and proven-to-work methods.

About the author: Gobala Krishnan is a micro-niche specialist that coaches Internet marketers to cash in on profitable markets using Wordpress and secret blogging tactics. Get started now by reading a copy of his report "Wordpress Adsense System" at http://adsense.easywordpress.com

Read More Here: http://brokencodes.blogspot.com/