The Contextual / PPC Affiliate Bandwagon
There is no doubt that Google Adsense (which will be celebrating it's 3rd birthday this year) changed a lot of people's online businesses. It was a great boost in income for many and it was also the START of any income for many people who had busy websites, but no income streams. It was and still is, definitely a winner.
It seems now that everyone is trying out by creating a contextual ad network or some kind payout-per-click affiliate program that you can join. But let's face it - most of these programs will never match the earning potential of Google Adsense. A big exception may be Yahoo's contextual ad program, but the last I checked...they would only take me if I was a U.S.-based publisher. I'm a busy gal, so if that's changed, please do let me know.
Anyway, back to the point.
Getting paid per click seems just too good to be true, and in most cases it is. Many of these new ad networks don't have the advertisers to serve you relevant ads with good payouts. Some of the networks are founded on faulty principles where the companies *think* that they will have money to pay their publishers...but in the end they don't and they fold.
It reminds me of the "glory days" of pay-per-click afiliate programs that ended soon after I started my online business. Many of these programs folded because of fraudulent clicks. Technology is much better now to detect fraud - but so many more folded because they just simply couldn't afford to pay their affiliates per click.
Of course, I'm not saying don't try any of these new programs...just don't drop everything to dedicate yourself to something that may not pan out. I also don't recommend rushing out to tell all your friends about the program and tell them it's great...unless you KNOW it's great and you've been paid a few times.
I saw this happen recently with Chitika and I'm partly to blame. I waited to try Chitika until others reported good results and received payments. I tried it out and saw half-decent results (nothing like Adsense and I clearly said so) and told my subscribers it's worth trying out, but I didn't promise anything. Now, we're discovering that Chitika has done some huge auditing of accounts where many affiliates lost nearly all their income. In addition, they have not completed their audits for November and their payment is behind. We shall see...I hope that Chitika recovers and gets things back on track. But who knows, it could end up in the payout-per-click graveyard.
If you're going to try one of the ad networks, here's my recommendation:
1. Don't overhaul your entire site to test the ads out. Test it on a few high-traffic pages and pages you'd expect a high payout on. See how they pay out per click; what your clickthrough rate is and how it compares to Adsense or other programs you may be using.
2. Wait until you get a few payments, especially if this is a new company. You never know if you're going to get paid. And even if you get paid the first month, you never know what will happen the next.
2. If you do make big changes and place the ads throughout your site, make sure you use something like server-side includes (SSI) or if you use FrontPage, you can use "included content" files. For most networks, it's likely you'll be taking the ads down because they don't work out very well. You want to be able to make changes from more central locations throughout your website.
Again, it's okay to experiment, but don't lose all your valuable time and potential earnings doing it!
It seems now that everyone is trying out by creating a contextual ad network or some kind payout-per-click affiliate program that you can join. But let's face it - most of these programs will never match the earning potential of Google Adsense. A big exception may be Yahoo's contextual ad program, but the last I checked...they would only take me if I was a U.S.-based publisher. I'm a busy gal, so if that's changed, please do let me know.
Anyway, back to the point.
Getting paid per click seems just too good to be true, and in most cases it is. Many of these new ad networks don't have the advertisers to serve you relevant ads with good payouts. Some of the networks are founded on faulty principles where the companies *think* that they will have money to pay their publishers...but in the end they don't and they fold.
It reminds me of the "glory days" of pay-per-click afiliate programs that ended soon after I started my online business. Many of these programs folded because of fraudulent clicks. Technology is much better now to detect fraud - but so many more folded because they just simply couldn't afford to pay their affiliates per click.
Of course, I'm not saying don't try any of these new programs...just don't drop everything to dedicate yourself to something that may not pan out. I also don't recommend rushing out to tell all your friends about the program and tell them it's great...unless you KNOW it's great and you've been paid a few times.
I saw this happen recently with Chitika and I'm partly to blame. I waited to try Chitika until others reported good results and received payments. I tried it out and saw half-decent results (nothing like Adsense and I clearly said so) and told my subscribers it's worth trying out, but I didn't promise anything. Now, we're discovering that Chitika has done some huge auditing of accounts where many affiliates lost nearly all their income. In addition, they have not completed their audits for November and their payment is behind. We shall see...I hope that Chitika recovers and gets things back on track. But who knows, it could end up in the payout-per-click graveyard.
If you're going to try one of the ad networks, here's my recommendation:
1. Don't overhaul your entire site to test the ads out. Test it on a few high-traffic pages and pages you'd expect a high payout on. See how they pay out per click; what your clickthrough rate is and how it compares to Adsense or other programs you may be using.
2. Wait until you get a few payments, especially if this is a new company. You never know if you're going to get paid. And even if you get paid the first month, you never know what will happen the next.
2. If you do make big changes and place the ads throughout your site, make sure you use something like server-side includes (SSI) or if you use FrontPage, you can use "included content" files. For most networks, it's likely you'll be taking the ads down because they don't work out very well. You want to be able to make changes from more central locations throughout your website.
Again, it's okay to experiment, but don't lose all your valuable time and potential earnings doing it!
1 Comments:
Thanks for the great tips Alice :-)
I've just recently started testing out Chitika MiniMalls on a few of my content sites that have had just AdSense on them to date.
It's quite interesting to see how different markets respond to the different styles of ads. On one site the AdSense gets a very high CTR and next to none on the Chitika MiniMalls yet on a different site the AdSense suffers and Chitika gets all the clicks. Both sites are pretty much identical in terms of layout, look and ad positioning.. both sites receive plenty of relevant ads from both AdSense and Chitika.. the only difference is obviously content and the subject matter.
This seems to show that markets behave differently to the various ad types so be sure to try out new ad revenue systems on a few different markets before discarding it after one failure.
I'd be interested to hear others stories with regards to Chitika MiniMalls.
Kind regards,
Mike G
Post a Comment
<< Home