Adsense Alternative

Adsense is a great way of making some money from your webpages. But it's not the only one. Almost alll of the Adsense alternatives listed below can be used in conjunction with Adsense rather than just simply replacing it (although you can do that too).

So here are my Top 10 Adsense Alternatives:

1. Chitika: Now famous for their eMiniMalls. Ads come in a variety of sizes (including Adsense sizes) and display a random product with product information. Products are retrieved from a list of categories you supply (as keywords). eMiniMalls are not contextual by default which menas they can be used freely with Adsense on the same page. They do have a contextual mode but if you use this, then you can't use Adsense on the same page (it's against Google's Terms of Service).

   Chitika also provide Shoplinc, a price comparison engine that you can direct your visitors to. While anyone can sign up for their eMiniMalls, you have to apply to get a Shoplinc and so have to meet certain criteria before they'll give you one.

2. Kontera: Turns selected words in the text of your page into links. Such words or phrases are doubly-underlined and when you move your mouse over one of these links, a ballon with an ad pops up. You get paid if the reader clicks on the ad. Earnings are much lower than Adsense but it's still free money.

3. Text Link Ads: Potentially quite luctrative. Basically they sell ad space (text links) on your website to third parties. Your website has to meet certain criteria before they'll accept it into their directory. From my own experience, you seem to need a site with a Google PR rating of at least 4 and an Alexa ranking of under 1, 000, 000. The higher your site ranking, the more you'll get paid per ad. Sites must be able to run scripts (e.g. PHP, Perl, ASP). They won't accept simple HTML sites.

   Text Link Ads give you 50% of the price paid for an ad placed on your site. For PR4 sites, each ad placed will get you a few dollars per month. PR6 sites will earn about $40 per ad. The topic of your website probably influences ad prices too.

   I suggest letting Text Link Ads setting ad prices for you as they know the going prices. You can have up to 12 ads on each website. Third-parties have to buy the ads on your site (you don't select what ads to display) so there's no guaranteeing that all your available slot will be filled. But the higher your site's PR, the more likely it is that you'll sell all spots.

4. ModernClick: A Cost Per Action network. You don't get paid for clicks, but only if someone signs up for the advertised offer or buys the product advertised). Payments per action are higher than Adsense (typically starting at about $1 and and go up to $40-50). Potentially quite lucrative. You do need to keep an eye on offers your advertising as offers can go out-of-date, so you'll need to pull or replace them when that happens.

5. Peak Clicks: A Cost-Per-Click network. They provide a number of ads related to a keyword you provide. Ads are in text format but don't come in specific ad sizes. You can put the ads in a table if you want to make them fit into a particluar size. The company is based in Austria and payements are in Euro (so independent of fluctuations in the Dollar). They have a good reutation and click fees tend to be higher than Adsense.

6. Affiliate Fuel: Another Cost-Per-Action network. Not as classy looking as ModernClick but I've had much better results from Affiliate Fuel. Like ModernClick, they provide a number of (ever-changing) offers that you can show using a variety of ad formats. You only get paid when someone signs up for a program or buys the advertised product. You do need to keep an eye on offers your advertising as offers can go out-of-date, so you'll need to pull or replace them when that happens.

7. AdBrite: Provides ad blocks in Adsense sizes that you can use in conjuction with or as an alternative to Google. Not contextually driven so ads may have no relevance to the topic of your site or page. They also offer an in-text option which highlights links like Kontera. Kontera use blue links, AdBrite uses green.

8. Auction Ads: We all know that eBay is booming. Auction Ads allows you to get in on the act. What they do is display ads linking to live eBay actions on your pages. The ads are keyword-driven (so you have to supply them).

9. Affiliate Power Ads: Advertises various products and programs, mostly from the Internet Marketing arena. Products are randomly selected for display. While it might not fit in with the topic of your site, it's potentially very lucrative. Many of the products listed are from Clickbank which averages 50% payouts per sale. Products on Clickbank range in price from about $10 to about $200.

10. Amazon Context Links: Like Kontera and AdBrite, Amazon are currently Beta testing putting dynamic links into webpages. Their engine determines the words to underline that link back to products on Amazon. But you only get paid if someone buys the product, not if they just click on the ad (as is the case with Kontera and AdBrite).

So what do I use on my own pages? A combination of Adsense, Chitika, Kontera and Amazon InText links at the very least. Any site accepted into Text Link Ads will show their ads on its menu bar. Some sites also use Peak Clicks. I only use ModernClick, Affilate Fuel and Affiliate Power Ads on my internet marketing related websites. Auction Ads and AdBrite I'm still testing.

So here's my personal list of Adsense Alternatives in decreasing order of earning power:

1. Adsense

2. Text Link Ads

3. Kontera

4. Chitika

5. Peak Clicks

6. Affiliate Fuel

7. Affiliate Power Ads

8. Amazon Context Links

9. AdBrite

10. ModernClick

11. Auction Ads