Archive for May, 2006

A while back over at Erik’s Blog there was a list of advertising alternatives. Blogging on Empty has relisted that here which some of our readers might find interesting and useful.

Google is of course the mother of all advertising revenue available for bloggers today but some the lesser known below may be able to make your some extra dollars off the content you work so hard to publish. This is the original post on Advertising Alternatives.

Google AdSense – the mother of all advertising, if you get in, tread carefully and try your hardest not to upset them. Through all my research I haven’t found anyone who said any other ad program was better than this.

YPN – Yahoo Publisher Network is Yahoo’s alternative to AdSense. I have seen mixed reviews on payout and haven’t experienced much luck with well targeted ads on the sites I use it for.

Chitika – their e-minimalls advertising is also another competitor for Google AdSense. The claim here is that they work on impulse buying. My feeling is that since it is such a large ad and only one product you need to have your content well suited for the ad type.

MSN Adcenter – a Beta version of MSN’s answer to AdSense has been launched. I’ve only heard of very few people being offered a spot in the beta test but I’ll keep you posted if I hear of earnings reports from fellow bloggers

BlogAds – this advertising company is for those that have a lot of traffic. Steve Pavlina recently joined up with blog ads and is offering a pretty top spot on his site, and MSN bought out a ton of ads last year from blog ads making a pretty big splash in the blog world.

PeakClick – this ad program is another text and banner type ad service based in Austria offering payment in EURO’s.

DoubleClick – this is another advertising company that is used by the heavy hitters like MTV.com, myspace.com, friendster.com, and SI.com. DoubleClick is used for higher traffic sites as you can see but something to shoot for!

Intellitext – this ad service is a very interesting alternative to AdSense. They offer advertisement that is hidden within your content, when a user scrolls over your text an link to an appropriate ad pops up

TextAds Dot Biz – ads look like Google AdSense ads and YPN but I don’t believe you can customize the colors. If I get more sites I may try this one out, I like the way they look.

Kanoodle – their claim to fame is BrightAds that are used to grab the users attention, which are very similar to AdSense, even down to the Ads by Kanoodle in the bottom right. They also have pop-ups that land the user on a new page when they click, definitely something AdSense should do to allow your site to still be loaded. Again their payout isn’t quite what Google can provide.

AdBrite – text based ads that pay via check, you can also advertise on some pretty big sites like friendster.com, and ebaumsworld.com which a 1 week spot will cost you $2,360.00 for a text link

AdGenta – another text link ad service focused on blogs, they allow you advertise on your RSS feed as well. I believe this service is powered by Miva

AVNads – this alternative allows you to set the price for ads on your site and they give you 75% of the sale price. You control the look of the ads that are on your site and you have the right to reject ads as well.

CrispAds – has both text and graphical banner ads, with three methods to make money. 1. you can submit your site so crispads shops you around to find specific advertisers, 2. earn $0.20 per click from your choice of keywords based on ads 3. earn 70% of revenue per click using your choice of keywords

IndustryBrains – allows you to charge a premium to advertisers and offer ads through searches, text, or graphical banner ads

OneMonkey – sell text based ads on your sites, tracking conversion rates and they claim you have control over your ad revenue unlike AdSense

Pheedo – provides payment every 30 days via paypal and allows users to show text ads earning them 65% of revenue generated per click

Text Link Ads – this program uses humans to review your site and sells space on your site for a flat monthly rate that you see 50% of.

TargetPoint – has 4 ways to earn money, adpoint – exitpoint – imagepoint – underpoint, these are kind of self explanatory but offer you interesting alternatives. They also offer better conversion rates for higher traffic sites

ValueClick – has several programs for publishers (that’s you) and advertisers. Commission Junction is one that I believe is used by EBay for their affiliate program. CJ has lots of affiliate programs that you can sign up for like EBay and could really keep you busy trying to monetize your site.

Clicksor – content based text ads, banners, popups, XML feed, and a search box. They also offer a 10% commission on referrals with a $5.00 sign-up bonus per referral. Payments are bi-weekly by paypal or check and payout is 70% using their ads with the option to earn 85% if you provide your own ad programs.

BidVertiser – claim to target the highest bidders to your site for your content, $10 payout through paypal, block unwanted ads, customize ad layout, make money from clicks.

AdKnowledge – graphical ads for your website, as well as for your email list. This is a great way to monetize that email list you use to bring visitors back to your site!

RevenuePilot – earn 60% of clickthrough revenue, and a 10% referral bonus for life! Text based ads with search results

SearchFeed – a search based site ad-on, earn money when people search and click through, or on referrals of advertisers or publishers

FastClick – similar banner and text ads with the option of pop-ups and the potential to earn up to 65% of click revenue, you need at least 3,000 page views per month, and your site has to be legitimate, claim no more than 2 previous banner ads should be on your page

YesAdvertising – accept and pay advertising from all over the world, guaranteed payout, bi-weekly payment via check or paypal, 5 level referral and text and banner ads

BidClix – they say you can use this with Google AdSense and allow you to choose your price for you ads spots and your advertisers after they choose you

AdHearUs – pay per click, 18 ad formats, content driven, multiple ads per site

AllFeeds – text ads, banners, pop-aways, that use your content and underline the words related to their ads that users can click on

AffiliateSensor – use clickbanks ads and get keyword based text ads

CBprosense – like affiliate sensor

Quigo AdSonar – basic text ads, let you specify defaults, unsure about payouts

Nixxie – they partner with Kanoodle, Miva, and Overture so I would imagine their payment isn’t that high because there are more people that the money has to go through before it reaches you.

Mirago – offering search and contextual based ads for your site

Miva – neat thing about them is that they allow you to put contextual and search ads on your 404 error page. This would be good for those of you who know how you can customize your 404 page, they also offer suggestions on how to do this.

BannerBoxes – 70% payout, you approve ads, and become a member of all the affiliate programs they have access to

contextWeb – customize ads, they claim a higher revenue stream but that seems par for the course with all these alternatives to Google AdSense

ExpoActive – choose the ads you like based on your content and change the ads so they match your layout

CoverClicks – yet another website offering an ad program, check out their site though it has a futuristic terminator feel and sound, gotta turn on the sound Â

A great way to get the word out about your blogging skills is to write a post at another blog. You can network easily and get another link for your blog. If you have an interest in the subject of this blog feel free to write a post you think our readers would enjoy and then send it over to us.

Send an email to evossman@gmail.com with the following:

Subject: Here’s a post for Blogging on Empty

Your email
Your URL
A Title for your post

Then copy and paste your text into the email.

That easy. Feel free to use the Contact Form if you want more information or want to submit your posting that way. Also if you want to become a permanent blogger for Blogging on Empty.

DON”T SPAM!!!

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about driving traffic to your blog with commenting.

For those of you who don’t know commenting is what allows blogs to become interactive. Comments give readers a voice, an opinion, a sounding board. When you visit your favorite blogs you may notice the leave a comment or comment# section. If you haven’t clicked it, go ahead, it’ll link you to all the wonderful feedback people leave. Some good, some bad.

People leave comments for all types of reasons. To be heard, to refute what was written in the post, and also to promote themselves the their blogs (or sites). If you leave a comment on most blogs they’ll allow you to put your URL which will most likely enable your name as a link from your comment to that specific URL.

Presto, you have instant traffic from some top name blogs. Just a few clicks later and you might have a regular reader.

Commenting takes times so it’s not a quick fix to your traffic needs but it is a good way to promote yourself on some top notch blogs.

Some words to go by though:

1. Don’t comment just for the link, add something useful to the conversation or banter caused by the post or start a new conversation. I’m sure there are people who just sit and wait for a new post on big name blogs just to be the first in the list of comments, a prime spot for click-throughs.

2. Try not to link back to your blog in your comment. Unless you have a super useful post on your blog linking in your comment is a sure sign that you just want visitors and you may get blacklisted from a decent blog where you could have otherwise benefited later on when you do have something useful to say.

3. If you want to increase readership find blogs that are of similar content to yours and comment the most on those. A reader at a political blog isn’t likely to care what’s going on in the world of Death Metal.

4. Check for responses, if you post a comment and expect it to garner a response, check back from time to time and see what’s up. Readers are more likely to click if there was open dialog that was useful rather then stopped mid exchange.

Give it a try and check your stats. You’ll need to keep it up if you want to get big results but every little bit can help when you’re just starting out.