SEO for Adsense

 

If you've been using Google's AdSense on your pages you obviously feel the need to somehow generate even more traffic for your website, which in turn would translate to more AdSense click and a higher income.

But who do you do this? Well, the major way you'll get visitors to see your website (other then using AdWords, which is encouraged as well) is to use some techniques to have search engines send more and more users towards your page, by ranking high in search results for your topics of interest.

Believe it or not this is a technique, better known as search-engine optimization or simply SEO. So here are a bunch of tips that come handy under every amateur or professional optimizer's belt.

The first thing you need to take care of is the actual source code and layout of your page. This has to be kept as simple as possible. The problem comes when AdSense and the search engines themselves begin to have troubles in extracting the most relevant keywords on your site because of a too complex layout.

Secondly, try to have each one of your pages target only one specific topic. This way it is a lot easier for them to get indexed properly and for the AdSense ads to be consistent with the content of the site itself.

Also, try not to include too many hyperlinks in your page as well. This also means you should try not to use too many AdSense ads on your page either.

If there are certain keywords you wish to target, make sure the word you wish to target is present in the title, in the first paragraphs as well as in the name of the file. While you're at it you might want to ensure the word springs up in the page's last paragraphs.

And of course, it's very important for your content to have original and compelling content. How do you do this? Well the easiest way to do it is to find something you're really passionate about. That way, providing you give it a lot of effort you're bound to have a great page quite fast.

If the content you use in your site is in the public domain (which is highly discouraged) make sure that you at least give it an original title, and add an opening and a closing paragraph of your own.

This takes a little while, but if, after waiting, you still can't find your page near the top, you should try rewriting your title and your first and last paragraphs. It doesn't take much, often just changing a few words will give you the right results. 

And of, course there's the use of keyword tools that may aid you in finding some good keywords to include on your page that will drive visitors to your site more and more.

So those are about the basic techniques in search engine optimization. You can find a lot of computer tools to aid you in doing this, and of course, Google is a great place to search for this.

In the end, you'll find that SEO is a complex topic, and entire books have been written on the topic as well. You might find that you have a lot of optimization you need to do in order to get more and more visitors to your site and clicking those precious AdSense banners.

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How Much Money Will I earn Through Adsense?

 If you're looking at Google's AdSense program you're surely asking yourself how much you could make from such a program, and you probably think you can't make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.

Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites.

While there's nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a website can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense. 

There are also stories of people exceeding $100,000.00 per month but it's a bit hard to believe such stories. The truth to the matter is that if you have a small website and you just want it to support itself, and don't wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can probably do this with AdSense.

AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages. Even if the said pages don't generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.

There's no telling how much money you're going to make by using Google's AdSense but you can sort of tell for yourself, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.

First, is the amount of visits you get every day. While there's no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you'll be making good money.

Also, this depends on what exactly your site is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you're bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).

Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site's visitors click the ads you'll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.

Then of course, there's the position and number of ads on your website. While you don't want to overdo it, having many links will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).

There's something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.

All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you'll be making a lot of money with AdSense.

Even if you aren't in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using because there's very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the post at the end of the month.

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How Adsense Changed the Internet

 Ever since Google came up with the master idea that is AdSense, the web has transformed in a variety of ways no one would have ever suspected. Some of these are good changes others aren't.

This is a small exploration of how a brilliant marketing scheme has taken the web by storm. It deals with the changes advertisers and publishers and even website visitors have undergone ever since AdSense has become a daily part of our on-line lives.

Even before AdSense came out a lot of people were advertising through AdWords. It ensured a lot of publicity through getting your site listed at the top in Google search queries. It took away a lot of the pain and price of SEO and the large amount of time you had to wait until you were finally on top. It made launching a website, a realistic way to instant profitability instead of a long term strategy with no immediate returns.

Through the use of AdSense, the possibility appeared of having your ads appear on just about any site on the Internet that has anything that even resembles your company is all about. And so it's for that reason that AdSense has brought a new sense of advertising to the Internet. Before PPC poorly ranked web pages had to advertise offline to get any real initial exposure.

Companies no longer have to hire expensive professionals to create extremely elaborate advertising campaigns. There are no high costs of running your ads on websites which you have to personally look for.

All you do is come up with a couple of meaningful words for your business, sign up with Google AdWords and let Google take care of the rest of the equation. Although it requires day to day management automation saves significant time for advertisers.

Of course, probably the largest change in the way the Internet works due to AdSense comes from the publishers' point of view. Whereas one would previously have to jump through many hoops to get a website to even support itself now people are making fortunes off their sites. This leads to motivation for content, and resources for web surfers.

That generally means site publishers have to worry more about what content lies on their site, and the overall way their pages look rather then be concerned with the economic specifics of maintaining a site’s profitability. Although time is invested in adsense, a large capital investment is not. 

It's no surprise that the blogging phenomenon exploded when AdSense came out a few years ago. Anyone could just write a page about a subject he was passionate about and making a living out of it through AdSense.

And thirdly, one can't ignore the impact AdSense has had over the casual everyday web surfer. Whereas people used to not even notice banners altogether (which psychologically is a very interesting thing to observe) the situation is completely different for text ads.

People nowadays will take a long look at a sponsored ad. Why? Well because the whole setup brings forth a feeling of confidence about the advertiser. People don't ignore a text ad as easily as they do a graphical banner.

Another thing to note is that graphical banners have become even less profitable nowadays. It is because of this that many people are walking away from affiliate type networks to AdSense.

Of course, there are bad effects as well, with people making websites solely for the purpose of running AdSense on them and just as well, with a large phenomenon of 'click fraud', people creating artificial clicks for various reasons.

But Google does try to control such behavior, and really isn't to be blamed for such individuals' actions. All in all Google AdSense is transforming the way the Internet works and it's doing so mostly in a good way.

Now those with ideas can write them down, and make money from them. Those looking for content can find it easier, and those looking to attract a customer base can do so in a targeted way. Adsense has changed the internet through supporting the economic interests of businesses, and the utility of consumers.

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Google PPC: Content or Search?

 When advertising with pay per click Google gives the advertiser two broad options. Advertising in search results, advertising in websites content or indeed many choose to do both. Advertising in search means that results are displayed in Google under searches, and in its distributors search results. Google content advertising applies to those websites who choose to incorporate “Adsense” into their websites. As adsense rapidly expands, it is now viewable on millions of web pages throughout the web. However, many advertisers are shunning this in favor of merely advertising in search results. 

There are several reasons for this, and the first is trust. This has been a result of smaller websites, through to adsense empires choosing to embark on Click Fraud. Although this issue occurs in search it is far less dominant. Those who commit Click Fraud on search are those trying to weaken a competitor’s ROI. With Adsense the same applies, along with the website owner trying to increase his revenues using similar tactics.

Another reason why website owners are choosing to market out with content is the motivation of the buyer when he is on a website. Someone who is on a different website, other than the advertisers might be there for entirely different reasons. For example a website discussing the disadvantages of Adsense, would actually return adverts for those selling “Adsense Websites” for example. People may click on it, but they are unlikely to buy after reading a negative review. The other reason could be that the person on the adsense website was actually looking for what is the best color palette to use. The person therefore would not find the advert relevant, but might click on the advert in a care free manner.

Adsense websites are also often rejected by the advertiser because they feel it involves more administration. Checking through websites to see how relevant they are, and editing their bids to ensure they still appear on a page. With some words having a network of over 500 websites, it is surely a tedious and expensive task. Although this is the case, many also find that their Adwords account returns websites, that don’t even appear to be trying to support their keywords. The example which is ripe, are those advertising under legal phrases who appear on adsense websites “terms and conditions” and “privacy policy” pages. 

Although many are rejecting content advertising, there are still those who feel it provides a similar ROI to search. A reason for this can be found through in the fact that more and more advertisers are only choosing search. As this occurs the advertiser has less competition so the price of the word reduces. Advertisers are also finding a good ROI from publisher’s websites who decide to actively promote the advertiser’s services within their content. An example of this can be realized from when someone is discussing printing services, and actually directly recommends the advertiser’s services. This is a positive move for both the publisher and the advertiser, and a good way for publishers to move forward. Despite this, publishers still have to remember, to not be too obvious in doing this, or savvy buyers will definitely calculate the publisher’s intention.

Another reason why advertisers are opting for content is to increase their scale, however this can also be done across other search engines. The fact however still exists that those who choose content advertising should choose the Google Adsense network. It is regulated far and above yahoo’s and others equivalents whilst its superior network of publishers means the advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through a diverse range of websites. 

Despite Adsense being the best PPC content distributor, it certainly doesn’t compare to search for the advertiser. On search the leads are more qualified, more regulated, and less fraudulent. This has seen advertisers consistently choose search over content. Despite this advertiser’s should always test adsense and see if it can provide the ROI they are looking for. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their business than search. This varies, however in general search remains King for PPC advertisers.

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Getting Started With Adsense

A very important element in the rapid adoption of AdSense is that it has been very easy for publishers to get the ads on their site as quickly as possible.

Integrating AdSense in your website takes only a few minutes, and you can be on your way with one or more nicely integrated AdSense ads. 

The first thing you need to do is navigate to http://www.google.com/adsense and either apply or log in with your existing account and password. What follows is a page presenting the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions which you must agree to in order to proceed.

You are presented with a report page which you can use to get a detailed status on how your AdSense advertising is doing. This allows you to improve your site's contents and layout to maximize your AdSense earnings.

On the top of your page you also have link to the setup section where you can generate the code that will need to be pasted on your website in order to have AdSense banners on your page.

You can use AdSense for text (the said ads), using a search box or with referrals. Your choice among these options depends on how users will navigate your site.

Finally, there is a "My Account" tab which allows you to set up details concerning your account, payment and tax information.

To add a text ad on your site, go back to the "AdSense Setup" tab and click the "AdSense for content" link. Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser.

You can make a choice between ad units and link units. The former contain text and or images concerning a certain site for each unit, most with a detailed description, the latter only contain links to certain types. 

Of course, it's a bit hard to know which type you should use so you should probably experiment with both for a while before you decide.

You can also view an example of how the unit will look to the right of your page. However, you may only use three ad units and one link unit on any given page. This is believed to be a step which Google takes for quality control.

The next step is to choose your add format and colors. You can basically select any color palette you choose with Google offering some of its own if you don't have the time or skill to create one. You can constantly view how the palette will look through the aid of an example. The one that works best in terms of appearance and revenues will vary with the look, feel and content of a website. 

However, your ad formats are limited to a choice of eleven formats. There's an "Ad Formats" link which takes you to a page that lets you see all even of these in action so you can decide best which one suits your site. Sometimes the most intrusive, doesn’t work best however again, this can vary from website to website.

After you finish with customization, you can click "Continue" from the bottom of the page.

You are now presented with a section entitled "AdSense for Content". You can click anywhere in the text and that shows the JavaScript required to get AdSense running. This will automatically select the text in the box. 

You can then copy it and paste it into your pages directly. If you use dynamic pages, you should paste this code within your template so as to ensure that it gets displayed on any page of your website. Some advertisers choose not to display Adsense on every page, and this is understandable. An example of this is a company that has adsense, may also have terms and condition which would inevitably provide legal resources which would probably be deemed inappropriate.

What is then left for you to do is get content on your page (provided you didn't have any already). Google AdSense crawlers will soon visit your site, making sure that the ads displayed are relevant to your site's content.

And you're all done. For a simple page this should indeed be a matter of a few minutes, which is precisely what makes AdSense the choice for so many. Although it is quick, its mass appeal also makes it the best. Through being the most popular, advertisers and publishers alike see Adsense and Adwords as their natural first choice.

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Click Fraud

 If you're using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computing called "click fraud". But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.

There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google's AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so called "hitbots". These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well). 

Google's AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.

Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they're prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.

Of course, there's a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.

To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What's even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.

And don't think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain. 

In fact there's so much that if search engine companies don't increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there's certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.

There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other's links (which is referred to as "clicking rings", or spamming people so that they click such links.

Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google's AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.

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Adsense - Pros and Cons

 You have that site on-line for quite a while, its generating a good number of hits every day and you're thinking whether or not to use AdSense advertising on it to make it generate some form of income.

Well this is a description of the pros and cons of this approach to Internet advertising. AdSense has definitely hit the Internet like something from another planet and people are very excited about it everywhere. There are negative aspects to Adsense and alternatives to consider. 

AdSense is generally a great tool for webmasters. Whereas, they would use to worry about how to raise enough money to keep their sites profitable, or at least keep them on-line those worries are gone.

AdSense allows webmasters to forget about those worries and concentrate on creating good content for their sites. In fact, the emphasis is now on creating quality content (often associated with the top-paying words) which will bring you many visitors.

AdSense can also very well integrated with your website, it's easily customizable in terms of colors, size and position which means you can experiment with it in any way you like to maximize your income.

AdSense is a very good means of generating a constant revenue on your site. All you need to do is create some quality content and keep it updated constantly and you can literally live off your website. A lot of people are doing just that nowadays with AdSense, so it's become sort of a business in itself.

It's also a great program because you can have the same account advertising on all your pages. This is great for webmasters wit a lot of content because it means they don't have to create many accounts unnecessarily. 

But as stated, above, there are some negative aspects to advertising with AdSense and here's a small list of such cons.

Clearly the largest negative impact the AdSense program can have on you is through Google closing your accounts. Most of the time this happens because of so called 'click fraud', which means somebody would be producing artificial clicks on your page.

There's one really nasty side to that. It doesn't have to be you making those artificial clicks. It could very well be your competition doing this in order to shut you down, or the competitor of whoever is advertising on your page, looking to drive their marketing costs up.

The earning AdSense brings you are by no means constant. In fact, they're not even close to that. Anything you do to your site could end up being a big mistake costing you a great deal of money. It's that kind of pressure that has a negative impact on you.

First of all, you constantly need to make sure your site is in the spotlight of search engines when people are searching for whatever it is your site is about.

If you fail to do that you won't have any visitors, and that of course means you won't have any AdSense revenue. In a way this is nothing new, as any form of generating revenue on the Internet with advertising has such a drawback.

And finally, another major problem is that you constantly have to feed your site with better and better content. Now, of course, certain sites are very well geared towards doing this but with some types of content this is rather hard to achieve. This is often why the services of a copywriter are employed to generate more and more content.

When writing original content, the best thing a website owner can do is research a topic thoroughly and then return to writing with lots of information they can out in their own words, and show their own opinion on.

So there are the pros and cons of using the AdSense network for generating profits through advertising. Now the choice of whether or not these work for you is yours.

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Adsense is for Everyone

 When Google's AdSense appeared, there were a lot of people who doubted Google's idea would be marketable and actually generate any profits. Yet as we stand here today it's probably the most well known pay per click venture in the world.

Yes, all those nay sayers ended up eating their own words in the end. And that is because the folks at Google never go and do something without assessing whether or not it will be profitable, or exactly how profitable it is.

But of course, as you might very well know, AdSense isn't just profitable for Google. It's also profitable for the people who advertise via AdWords and very profitable for publishers who use it to make earnings which are sometimes just enormous.

So one must ask himself why this is such a good deal for everybody. And the question in itself is very justified because you hardly ever come across something that's profitable for everyone in the chain. So why would AdSense be any different.

Well, AdSense is where it stands today, giving benefits for everybody in the game because it exploits a gap in the Internet's advertising model.

You see, the Internet is a very interactive environment, and its interactions come from the people who are browsing. They choose whether or not to follow a certain link and the term "navigating" is probably the most precise one at describing this situation.

So AdSense is great because it links together buyers and sellers. Yes, you have to hand it out to Google for a brilliant idea. They know there are people out there that want to buy stuff and people who want to sell them what they're interested in. And Google AdSense helps members of the two categories find each other.

It works for the visitors, because the model is very transparent. You don't see a huge graphic banner which tries to lure you into buying something. You just see a few words. And if you like what you see you can just click it. It works because visitors don't have that feeling of someone trying to lure them into spending money. Ironically, however, they're wrong.

It works for the AdWords advertisers because their ads go everywhere. Not only will they find themselves listed in Google's search which gets gazillions of hits per day, up front without working as much for SEO and waiting so much.

Their ads can reach any website that deals with anything similar to what they're trying to sell. Now you must realize they could never pull of such great advertising by themselves. And that brings us to the thing that makes Google's AdSense a publisher's best friend.

It comes from the fact that the ads are contextual, that they somehow related to the keywords you deal with on your page. Because people or on your site, which deals with a certain topic, you already know they're interested in that topic. 

But, hey, wait a minute, Google knows some companies which want to sell your visitors something related to their topic. Google wants your visitors, you want Google's advertisers and the visitors just want to buy stuff. And that is the essence of what makes AdSense a great deal for everybody.

This is by far the most profitable hook-up deal you're ever going to see anywhere on the Internet.

So you have to appreciate Google for realizing a killer deal. You have to appreciate how well thought out, yet simple this scheme really is. Sure, in practice it has a few quirks but those are minor and, up to this point everyone seems to be enjoying Google's AdSense.

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Adsense Alternatives 2

 

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.

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Adsense Alternatives

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

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