Advertising Alternatives for Blogs and Niche Sites
Are you looking for a list of ways to monetize your blog, website, feed, email, or niche site. Well look no further. I think I have covered darn near every program that is out there. I did a bit of research and found the if you are looking for an alternative to Google’s Adsense you are going to have a hard time finding a similar payout. YPN is rumored to pay more and if you have the right impulse buying traffic chitika can make you some good money. In my findings I also found a few sites that let you monetize your email so for instance all those email lists you might keep to make people return to your site can make you money.
I have listed 40 programs below and a brief description. Please feel free to comment and ad if you wish. In searching through all the ads posts and ads search results I found that a lot of the ad services previously mentioned have been bought out by companies such as marketbanker by adbrite. Wonder if Google will buy out Chitika. I know there’s rumor of it. Anyway, I hope this list helps you out.
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. Darren at problogger.net switched back to AdSense on his blog but kept it on other sites. This tells me it seems to be site specific, try it out and leave your feedback.
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. I found one blogger using peakclick on her niche sites, check out her post about PeakClick and for updates on earnings
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
Comments
Pingback from Advertising Alternatives for Your Blog ยป Blog Tips for Part-time Bloggers
Time: May 26, 2006, 11:02 am
[...] 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. [...]
Comment from janelle foster
Time: May 29, 2007, 2:08 pm
Hi I was wondering if you had a list of similar companies like BrightAds/Kanoodle that pay me the Website owner to have them advertise on my site? I tried to find sites similar from a Google search, but came up short. Any suggestions?
Comment from Erik
Time: September 28, 2007, 11:12 pm
Janelle-
Not sure what you mean but I think this list is pretty comprehensive for you.
Hope it helps. Let me know if you need any other help.
Erik
Comment from Emily
Time: January 31, 2008, 4:06 pm
What can compare to Google Adsense for real estate and apartment rental sites? I’m trying Chitika, so I’ll see how it goes.
Pingback from Henry Phish » They sold me (on) advertising
Time: September 8, 2008, 6:03 am
[...] more alternatives to Google AdSense, check out: Advertising Alternatives for Blogs and Niche Sites [...]
Comment from ??????????
Time: February 7, 2010, 3:33 am
Thank you so much for that great post.
Comment from Marc
Time: May 4, 2006, 9:51 am
Revenue Science is one i’ve used (www.revenuescience.com.) They serve Overture ads and use behavioral targeting across numerous sites. Didn’t get great results but my users don’t click on anything.