Google AdSense is the grand daddy of content-sensitive web-based marketing. Google's terms and conditions are very strict, so many web publishers cannot use adsense adverts on their sites. They are either denied from joining or in a some cases from google is so little that they start thinking about alternatives. Also, these days a lot number of publishers are also finding their Adsense accounts are being disabled for reasons that are completely beyond their control. Google Adsense has become notorious about banning publishers without giving them proper reason.
The problem is that most of the alternatives to Google's Adsense are pretty useless. Most of the good ones (such as doubleclick) are only interested in very large volume customers and so are not interested in the little guy with his blog who wants to earn a small income on the side. For this reason, I have compiled my Top 4 alternatives to Google's Adsense that are ideal for the small time publisher. Click on each link below so see its details:-
1) AdBrite
AdBrite, is currently one of the best alternatives to Google's adsense. They offer the most commonly used ad formats. In addition they offer inline page links which have some great click through ratios as well as interstitial full page ads which offer an excellent way to monetize all traffic to your site not just traffic that clicks on your ads. Their payouts are also very competitive. They have more relaxed terms and conditions than Adsense and are much more accepting of smaller publishers including bloggers.
If you're a publisher, use AdBrite to set your own ad rates, and approve or reject every ad that's purchased for your site or just have AdBrite auto accept ever ad. AdBrite enables you to instantly sell ads to your visitors via a "Your Ad Here" link, in addition to selling through AdBrite's marketplace and sales team.
Revenue is typically split 75/25 in your favor. Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, they handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. About half of AdBrite's sales are generated from the marketplace and sales team, while the other half are generated from users clicking "Your Ad Here" on your website.
While AdBrite can provide publishers with more revenue and better ads than traditional ad networks such as Google AdSense, they work fine along-side them as a way for you to generate additional ad revenue by selling ads directly to your visitors -- something the other ad systems don't do. Ad Brite also lets you select your own minimum bid prices and give you the option of showing an alternative ad service such as Clicksor when bid prices fall below your minimum.
If you're using AdBrite on your website you also have the option to turn off AdBrite's "run-of-network ads" and AdBrite will only display ads that have been approved by you allowing you to prevent competitors ads being shown on your site. If you have no ads running, AdBrite will display nothing but "Your Ad Here" or your alternative ad provider.
Note, from my experiences it can take a day or so from when you signup with AdBrite and put their code on your website to actually start seeing relevant ads showing up. So if you see the message "Advertize on this site" just be patient and give it a day or so and you should start seeing relevant ads showing up.
Click Here to visit AdBrite
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2) Chitika
Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) was founded in 2003 and is the industry's leading impulse merchandising company. Chitika was founded in May 2003 and is based in Massachusetts. Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) helps web publishers generate revenue using innovative publisher-side advertising and merchandising solutions and services.
Chitika doesn't really stand alone as a single advertising solution but instead provides you with a way to compliment your existing advertising / publishing program with some additional Ad Units which are altogether different from the standard ad boxes, pop-unders etc that everybody else provides. Instead of displaying these 'industry standard' advert boxes with text and image ads that all look the same they instead provide active boxes that show targeted products from different manufacturers. If you run a blog for example and discuss a product you may find the chitika box showing links for this product and competitors products. If people purchase these products you get a paid a commission. This is referred to as impulse marketing in the form of Premium Ad Units (eMinimalls). Feel free to give it a try although I think the ideal use of this service would be as a compliment to another advertizers service. E.g. you could show Clicksor context sensitive ads on your site and then compliment these with Chitika's eMinimalls.
For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue. If you visit a site showing Chitika's ads from a search engine then the Chitika premium ad unit kicks in showing you ads that are specific to your searching - otherwise you can have it show an alternative ad provider, such as adsense, or you can just have it collapse away to show nothing.
Chitika allows you to display targeted products based on what people searched for to get to your page and you get paid for clicks. It provides a robust comparative shopping experience for your visitors. Visitors will love the interactive search code -- and it makes you money
Click Here to visit Chitika
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3) Exit Junction
Exit Junction offers a unique approach to advertising that is compatible with all the other Ad Networks included Google Adsense. The key to Exit junction is that they focus on showing ads to users as they leave your site rather than as they arrive or as they browse. This approach offers you an additional way to monetize your traffic and also capture ad revenue from those that stumble upon your site from a search engine and then immediately leave. The postive thing is you can also use Exit Junction on same page alongwith Google Adsense, hence you can increase your revenue greatly.
By adding a small piece of Exit Junction code to the header section of your site users are shown an advert as they hit the back button. For example, if a user came to your site from a Google search and then immediately hit the back button to return to that search they would be shown an Exit Junction Ad in between your page and the Google search and you get paid for this impression. The ad is directly targeted to the search term that brought the visitor to your site in the first place. Hence Exit Junction is an ideal way of complimenting your existing ad services and so increasing your sites revenue without having to switch from your current ad provider.
Exit junction also covers all countries. You get paid for all traffic exiting you site regardless of its origin.
They offer fee free payout via Check or PayPal with earnings of as little as $25 on a monthly basis.
Click Here to visit Exit Junction
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4) Clicksor
Clicksor is one of the current leaders of the small publisher Adsense competition. They have payouts upto a market leading 85% and unlike a number of alternatives the cost per click bid values are high enough that you can earn a decent income. They are also, in my experience, much more tollerant than Google. Their terms and conditions suggest that you should only place one copy of their code on a page but as long as you only place a single pop-up or DHTML code on a page they seem happy to let you place many context sensitive ad blocks on a single site.
Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus while you can provide keywords, they have technology that will also show ads targeted to the content of your site. This means your visitors are exposed to ads of the same subject as they were searching for when they reached your site and thus vastly increases the click thru ratio and thus your sites earning potential. The context sensitive nature also saves you the hassle of having to specify keywords for all of your sites and decide in advance what people might be looking for.
The online stats provided by Clicksor are not perfect but they are enough for you to keep track of the trends with your site. They also allow you to add as many sites / domains as you want under a single account. You also only need the root page of your site approved. Once this is done you can place ads on all of your sub pages.
The payment schedule with Clicksor is also much better geared to the small site owner. In any pay period in which your earnings exceed $50.00 ($20.00 with PayPal), payments are made either by check or instantly through PayPal ($20.00 minimum for PayPal). Revenue totaling less that $50 (PP $20) will rolled into the following period. The pay period is based on a 15 day schedule so you can get paid much more frequently. Clicksor also do not require a Social Security (SSN) or Individual Tax Identity Number (ITIN) to join and so while this 'technically' does not help US site owners with their tax liability it does make it much easier for non US citizens to join up and start earning revenue.
Click Here to visit Clicksor
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