OTHER CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING PROGRAMS AND HOW TO USE THEM WITH ADSENSE

AdSense is probably the easiest way to generate revenue with your website. At the beginning of 2007, Google changed its Terms of Service to allow publishers to place other contextualized ad systems on the same pages as AdSense units.

The barrier……………………..

There’s just one restriction: those other systems’ ads can’t look like AdSense units.

That still leaves you a huge range of possibilities. In this page, I’m going to look at some of the other programs that you could use — either instead of AdSense or as well as AdSense. I’ll explain how they work and how you can make them work with AdSense.

Let get started………………..

Kontera — Making Your Words Pay

Kontera (www.kontera.com) is a great way to make extra revenue. Instead of putting ad units on your site, like AdSense does, Kontera highlights particular keywords in your text and brings up an ad when the user mouses over them.  The words are marked out from regular links by an underline and a second dotted line, and you can change the colors of the text and the links. For some of the biggest publishers, the ad inventory even includes some very high-earning video ads

But like AdSense, you will need to play with them to maximize your revenues. There are so many different factors that affect your incomes with Kontera, such as which keywords you want highlighted, where you want those words to appear on the page and which colors to choose for the best results, that it took me some time to figure out all of the best combinations. It also took me a few phone calls directly to the people who’d created it to get an idea of what happens behind the scenes of the program so that I can maximize my income. The key issues are the number of links you should place on your Web pages, the color of the links and how those links are distributed.

The first issue is pretty simple. Kontera lets you place up to six ad links on each page and recommends that you take all of them. I don’t see any reason to argue with that. In general, your best strategy when building a website that earns income through advertising is to keep the pages relatively short and focused on just one topic. That will keep your ads relevant. If you’re following that strategy, then it’s unlikely that your page is going to look overstuffed with Kontera’s ads. You’ll probably find no more than three or four on a page, and because they only appear as links they won’t distract the user.

What to note about Kontera………

The color of the links is a tougher question. Usually, it’s best to choose a different color to the one you’ve used for your AdSense units. That’s because Google and Kontera tend to pick up on different keywords. Offering different links in different colors helps to emphasize that variety and lets Kontera’s links stand out. If you’re thinking that the goal of optimization is to blend the ads into your site, you’re right. But these links are going to be embedded in your content. They’re also going to be double-underlined so that they’ll look different anyway. You want people to see them and to place their mouse over them. Visit Kontera website for more information or reach to us at Slymedia

ContextCASH — Affiliate Revenue The Easy Way

If you don’t like either of those though, you could also look at ContextCASH (www.contextcash.com). This system looks pretty similar to Kontera and Intellitxt but it works in a very different way. You still get the highlighted words that appear in your text but instead of bringing up an ad when you mouse over, these links lead directly to affiliate sites. Again, the links are unobtrusive, they don’t clash with your ad units and they’re compatible with AdSense.

And they can also bring in good money too... provided you get the sales that win the commissions. Remember, with ContextCash, you get nothing if users click out of curiosity. You only get paid if they buy. While that will give you more money than the small amounts you’d get on a CPC basis, you have to make the sales. The factor that is likely to have the greatest influence over whether or not you get sales is the context of the page and — like any affiliate system — whether or not you’ve recommended the products.

And with ContextCash can be a problem. Usually, the best way to generate income with affiliate products is to choose them carefully and talk them up in your content. ContextCash’s affiliate ads though could change constantly so it will be difficult to recommend them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good though. Far from it, if the ads are contextual enough, the sites reputable enough and your content geared towards buyers you could see some great rewards. And you do have some control over all these elements.

Not only can you optimize your links in all sorts of ways making them easy to blend in, you can also pick the keywords yourself, filter the source of your ads (most come from Amazon or Clickbank), view the list of ads that would fit your site and choose which ones to place on your page. In short, if you’re thinking of using affiliate ads on your site, this is a pretty unique way to do it. I think it’s worth testing them on one site and seeing how you get on.

Chitika Premium — Different Ads for Different Users

Kontera, Intellitxt and ContextCash all fit so neatly into your site, you’ll hardly notice the difference to your page. You will notice the difference in your revenues though. Chitika’s Premium units are more intrusive than text links but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of their greatest advantages is that they are just so well-targeted… especially to users most likely not just to click but to buy.

The Good news…………..

They attracted eyes, drew attention and as long as they were placed on a site related to products, they brought clicks too.

The problem……………..

Unfortunately, if you didn’t have a site related to products, they didn’t generate a lot of clicks. Worse, many of the clicks they did generate didn’t result in sales. So the advertisers started getting uppity and they demanded Chitika provide ads that produce conversion rates — not clickthrough rates, conversion rates! — Of at least 2 percent.

How it works

Enter Chitika Premium. These show a list of ads, a little image next to each link and a search tab that allows users to look for other ads if they want. Like AdSense (and the old eMiniMalls) they pay on a CPC basis, so each click gives cash, and they’re compatible with AdSense too so you can use both types of units on the same page.

Homework, try this…………..

That’s an easy strategy to test. Run two AdSense units together for a week then swap one of those units for a Chitika Premium unit with an AdSense alternate and compare your earnings. If you find that you’re earning more with a Chitika unit, you’ll have picked up some valuable information about the behavior of one subset of your users. You’ll know they’re more likely to click these ads than AdSense units. You’ll be able to offer them those Chitika ads they love and you’ll still be able to serve regular AdSense units to everyone else. That’s one very easy and valuable strategy you can — and probably should — test on your site.

What you need to know

In general, the rules governing placement of Chitika’s units are the same as those for AdSense units: blend the ads into the page but make them unmissable by putting them above the fold and where eyeballs will be looking. The most important question you’ll have to answer is what the alternate ad should be and whether you wouldn’t do better just by offering everyone an AdSense unit. The answer might be different for every site but with a little time and a little effort, it’s a question that every publisher can answer.

A tougher question concerns keywording. Although Google provides very few tools to help publishers influence the ads they receive, as we’ve seen, there are a number of things you can do to bring up more valuable links. Chitika’s ads however are prompted by a user’s search term. You can’t influence that, but you can influence whether your site appears in a search engine listing for that term

The hidden benefit

To look at, Chitika’s Premium ads appear to offer little new. In fact, it’s what they don’t offer that makes them so interesting. By showing different ads to different types of users, they could allow publishers to make the most money from everyone. At the very least, they make it easier to A/B tests your most valuable users. You can sign up as a Chitika publisher here.

I shall give you more in my next post but i can recommend this