Adsense Alternatives

September 29th, 2007

Adsense for blogger, friend or foe?

Blogger sentiment regarding Google Adsense is often like that old cliche “you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it.” For many Google Adsense is not just a tool to monetize their blogs, it is their primary method of monetization and source of income. Blogger earnings often rise and fall with every Smart Pricing (a Google algorithm that discounts non-converting clicks. More on this below) tweak. Well fear not Google minions, there is hope. In this post, I hope to inform you of some simple ways you can wean yourself from Google Adsense.

Adsense Alternatives… Why do I need an alternative?

Even if Adsense is going well for you there are plenty of reasons to expand your horizons. In fact, I can think of four excellent reasons:

1. Do NOT put all of your eggs in one basket. Diversify your revenue streams!

As a blogger and webmaster I used to make a very nice profit from Adsense, in fact I was so pleased with Adsense, that it was my only source of income from site. Well things were going great, until one day Adsense Smart Pricing was introduced (more on this below). My profits began decrease.. RAPIDLY. In retrospect this was a blessing, because it forced me to explore other avenues of revenue generation which turned out to be much more reliable and profitable!

2. Adsense Blindness – Long time readers of your blog will learn to ignore you Adsense ads.

I have no empirical evidence of this, but my own experience. That being said, I rarely click on Adsense ads for blogs that I’ve been a long time reader of. I believe there are a couple of reasons for this. Primarily because our brains are probably the best natural ad blocking tool around, and it’s pretty good at focusing in on what it thinks is important. Moreover, a repeat visitor who is familiar with site navigation and layout, is really just coming back for the content, and if there is nothing there too jar their senses, chances are they will read your article and move on. Which brings me to our second reason, ad rotation is critical. Developing different forms of ads to display on your site will keep your visitors from going ad blind. There are plenty free tools on the internet that allow you to rotate ads with ease.

3. Smart Pricing – If your ads do not convert, your payout will continue to decrease.

Smart Pricing is a Google technology that automatically discounts the cost of click traffic that doesn’t convert. Google’s explanation of Smart Pricing is “We are constantly analyzing data across our network, and if our data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), we may reduce the price you pay for that click. You may notice a reduction in the cost of clicks from content sites.” In other words, if you (as a publisher) are sending clicks that don’t lead to sales, please be prepared to get paid less – a LOT less! Furthermore, Google does not tell you what amount the reduction of the cost is, which makes it very difficult to diagnose the problem. If you are being penalized by smart pricing, you should seriously look to diversify your income.

4. Adsense is not always the best way to monetize a content site – until you experiment with new ad products you will never know what type of opportunities you are missing.

The lure of being paid for every click regardless of a converted sale is very enticing. It’s fun writing an article and getting paid months after it was written. However, if you are not experimenting you might be missing out on a LOT of income. If you remember my story from reason #1 where I lost most of my Adsense income? Well, I managed to regain all of it and more using a little thing called Affiliate Marketing or Pay for Performance marketing as they say in the biz. With affiliate marketing you get paid not for the click, but instead for the conversion of the sale. Now you are probably thinking getting paid per click sounds a whole lot easier… And you are probably right, but learning how to convert sales by finding the right niche for your blog can be MUCH more profitable then sending those potential sales to another advertiser. Would you rather get 50 cents for a click that becomes a $3000 sale or 3% commission on the sale?

So what are my Adsense Alternatives?

First I recommend reading our nice summary of Money Making Widgets, you should get a lot of ideas there. If you like the idea of getting paid per click I would recommend rotating your ads with something like Chitika or Shopping.com. Both of these ad networks pay by the click and are very good choices for technology or shopping related blogs. If your blog is not shopping related, you might want to try a contextual pay per click network like Kontera.

If you are bolder, you should try AuctionAds or even Tumri’s Ad pods. Sure you’ve got to convert some sales, but remember this can be very lucrative if you target the right products. Finally, you might want to consider the many available affiliate networks that offer access to thousands of merchants like CJ, Linkshare, Performics, and Sharesale.

In Conclusion

I can not stress enough how important it is to try new things to monetize your site. Don’t get complacent and just bank those Google checks. Not only will you diversify your income, but also protect yourself from future changes to Google ad pricing. You might even discover something more profitable than you ever dreamed of.

One last note, I have to get in a plug for our own little blog monetization monster – it’s called the Buxr Ad widget and it’s coming soon. We think it is so great you will want to feature it and not simply rotate it with other ads:)

If you sign up here, you might even be lucky enough to participate in our Beta.

Entry Filed under: General