Using Alternatives to Google Adsense to Monetize Your Website

Image by via CrunchBase

What Are My Choices?

There are plenty of other advertising options if you do
not want to go with Adsense. A search for “Adsense
alternatives” will net you a long list of other advertising
opportunities.

Some work in much the same way as Adsense, others provide inline ads or banners. You should try a few different advertising programs to see which one works the best for your blog.

Some advertising opportunities are similar to Adsense and display text ads; others display
contextual ads, the double underline words in the body of your text, and others work with
graphic ads. Here is a list of other advertising sources for your blog, any of which may be the perfect advertising solution for you.

Some of the most popular choices

Clicksor – This advertising solution serves contextual ads within the body of your blog. These ads are simply words that are underlined twice and when clicked, send users to the sponsor’s website. Clicksor requires that your site gets at least 5000 pageviews per day or 150,000 per month and that you do not have free hosting.

TargetPoint – Cost per click ads that display ads relevant to your content. They claim to pay out 50% of click revenue and offer many customizable features. Which includes Adpoint, Imagepoint, Exitpoint and Underpoint. These are some really cool and innovative options.

Adbrite – They have a few different advertising options including text ads, banner ads, inline ads, and full page ads. There website is extremely user friendly.

AdBrite is the Internet’s Ad Marketplace. The company makes it easy to buy and sell advertising online, giving advertisers and publishers more transparency and control than any other ad network. With banner and text ads, as well as innovative formats like BritePic, InVideo and Full Page Ad, AdBrite has created a simple and more effective advertising marketplace for advertisers and publishers of all sizes.

AdBrite helps advertisers tap into highly targeted demographics across 70,000+ premium and trusted sites, reaching over 85 million unique users every month. AdBrite serve ads on over one billion pages a day.

Chitika – Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 2 billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. This advertising option is designed specifically for blogs and there are different
advertising programs to choose from including text ads, inline ads, and graphic ads. Check
out the video for a quick preview.

Kontera – This is another inline advertising source where ads are placed as highlighted words that display a message when they are hovered over. In Text Advertising is online product placement based on the contextual relevancy between an advertiser’s brand and online content, much like product placement in movies and TV programs.

With In-Text contextual advertising, the advertiser’s brand is linked to a relevant keyword appearing in the online content which is matched to the advertiser’s ad.  Kontera’s proprietary technology consists of a series of algorithms which analyze the online content in real-time and select the keywords and topics that are most relevant to the reader.

In addition, Kontera can also provide links to complementary information, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, or other sources of third party content, which enrich the reader’s experience.

Bidvertiser – You only display ads from the highest bidder with this advertising solution and you can block ads that you do not want to appear on your site. The payout level is set
relatively low at just $10.

In order to prevent offensive websites from displaying their ads, they manually review each site. They also monitor sites after they have started displaying BidVertiser ads. If your site was found to violate their policies at any time, they will warn you, suspend you or terminate your account.

The Final Analysis

As you can see, there are plenty of other advertising solutions for your blog, and there are plenty more out there besides the ones mentioned here. You can always sell ad space directly,
to companies or businesses that are related to your blog topic.

There are a few things you should remember before placing ads on your blog, however. Unobtrusive ads will seldom drive traffic away, but too many tacky ads will cause visitors to leave. You want to find a good balance where you can earn income but not chase off visitors. Make sure your ads are relevant and not annoying. Make sure that they do not take up too much space or become the focal point of your blog.

p.s. If you found this post helpful please leave a comment and let me know.

If you did not, please leave a comment and let me why so that I can improve future posts.

Basic tips on how to start a money making blog

It’s not as hard as you think

One of the great things about blogging is that you do not have to
be a professional writer to have a popular blog. You do have to obey
common grammatical rules and at least be able to put together
coherent sentences, but you do not have to be a highly skilled writer.

Blog readers are looking for interesting, relevant topics to read,
not the next work of Shakespeare. Make sure what you write is
interesting, edgy, or even controversial. Popular blogs are never
boring and add value to reader’s lives either through information or
entertainment. Make sure your blog adds something of value to your
reader’s life otherwise you will not develop a large fan base.

Your audience awaits you

Making your blog popular is a lot like driving traffic to a website.
You can use many of the same techniques to drive traffic to your blog.
Finding places to link back to your blog is a good way to drive traffic.
Social sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and You tube provide lots of
opportunities for this. You can also use social book marking sites such
as Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg to promote your blog. Blogging on
a popular blog site such as WordPress and Blogger are also good ways
to make your blog more popular as these blogging sites help to bring
in traffic for your blog.

Whether you blog on a blogging network or you have an
independently hosted blog, you need to make sure your blog is
designed well. It is true that content is king and if a blog has great
content is may receive lots of traffic even though it is ugly, having a
well designed blog that is not ugly or annoying will help to drive repeat traffic.

Jazz it up a little, but don’t over do it

You want your blog to look unique, but not too unique. Keep
with internet formalities such as blue links and use large font for
headings.

You should break your post up into small paragraphs each with a
headline if possible as internet readers tend to scan the screen looking
for relevant information rather than reading everything word for word.
Make sure your colors do not contrast too harshly and that the text is
easy to read. Using good design will make your blog aesthetically
pleasing and make readers more likely to come back and remain on
your page.

Show me the money

The very first thing you should try to do is get your blog
indexed by all the major search engines. Some forms of blog
monetization require that your blog be indexed by search engines
before they will allow you to participate in their program. The higher
ranked your blog is, the more visitors you will receive and the more
popular your blog become, the more money you make.

All forms of monetization for your blog require readers, to work
successfully. Before you try to implement your monetization
strategies, make sure your blog has enough readers to make your
efforts work. If there is no one to click your ads, visit your affiliate
sites, or read your reviews, you do not stand much of a chance of
making money.

Tip of the day

Now that you know how to make your blog popular, it is time to
profit from it. One of the best ways to monetize your blog is Adsense,
and this advertising program will work with just about any blog and if
you receive enough traffic, it can be very lucrative.