Thursday, May 15, 2008

Top AdSense Alternatives

TEXT LINK ADS

Text Link Ads is a company with two sides - the advertiser program and the publisher program. As an advertiser, you buy static text link ads on the site of your choice, and pay a set monthly fee. As a publisher, you allow Text Link Ads to sell a set number of links on your site, and you receive 50% of the cost of each purchased link. TLA keeps the other 50%. The price charged per link varies based on how many pages you show the links on, the size/popularity of your site, and where the links appear on your site. Above the fold links tend to garner more attention, and more money, when compared to below the fold links.

LINKWORTH

Linkworth is a competitor of Text Link Ads. They basically operate the same way, there are some advantages and some disadvantages. Your website is accepted more easily into Linkworth which is a big advantage, however Text Link Ads seem to have a better team to sell your space and buy links for the advertisers. Unlike Text Link Ads 50/50 commission spread, Linkworth offers 70/30. Linkworth also has many other options to sell your space, not just links, but their program is a little bit more sophisticated and it can take you some time to figure it all out. I would however recommend Linkworth instead of text-link-ads because of their rather ridiculous customer support.

WIDGETBUCKS

WidgetBucks is a shopping widget that you can place on your website or blog. You earn money every time someone clicks on it. You can choose a lot of different size and colors for your ads and make it more suitable for your site. When you sign up for WidgetBucks, your account will be credited with free $25. Withdrawal limit is set to $50. So that means when you make another $25, you will be able to withdraw your first payment.

How do they pay?

They pay-per-click (PPC), just like Google AdSense! They are claiming an amazing $3-$6 CPM on widgets, about three times that of traditional ad networks. You can also earn money by referring people to WidgetBucks. Affiliates can earn a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Both check and Paypal are supported withdrawal options.

BIDVERTISER

If for some reason you can not use Google AdSense, there are still some options for you if you want to use publisher programs that look very similar to AdSense. Bidvertiser is a contextual advertising service that allows you to display your advertisement only on relevant web pages and pay per click search engines. The main advantage over AdSense is its lower payout. Big publishers wouldn't care about this but for many small blogs that are still waiting to hit that magic $100 Google payout level, getting pay at a lower level is quite attractive.

ADBRITE

Adbrite Provides Text, Image, intext, popup, popunder, full page ads. Their model is CPC and CPM. Pays through Check and Wire Transfer. It needs to be mentioned that non-English sites are difficult to benefit from it, but it is so with almost every company. Adbrite, bidvertiser and adtoll are the best CPC AdSense alternatives, however depending on what your website is about one can be superior to another. The best is to try them all out and see which pays most for you.
Urban is an expert in fraud investigation, SEO, online marketing and business. This article is just an excerpt of AdSense Alternative Methods. Check out the link to see if there is a new kid in town of AdSense alternatives!

What is AdSense and How Do I Make The Most of It?

What Is It?

It is a program in which website owners can use programs within Google and Yahoo to enable text, video ads, and banners on their sites.

Google or Yahoo receive revenue by impression basis pay per clicks or cost per action based services.

AdSense is a good advertising platform for smaller sites with relatively little resources for sales programs but should not be overlooked by others.

How Does AdSense Work?

The webmaster inserts Java Script code into a web page. This is used to place ads onto the page.
When a page with an AdSense tag is visited Java Script creates an iframe and sets its "src" attribute to the pages' URL.

For advertisements that are contextual in manners Google servers use a cache of the page. Then they determine a set of high value keywords. If these keywords have already been cached the advertisement that is used for the keywords, is based upon the AdWords bidding system.

For site targeted ad sites the advertiser chooses which pages or pages, to display advertisements on. They pay per impression or per what the advertisers choose to pay.

For search ads they are added to the list of results after a user searches the site within the search box. Revenue made is shared between Google and the website owner. The advertisement must be clicked on.

Mobile Content is a way for the publisher to generate earnings from their mobile WebPages using targeted Google ads. Google matches ads to the content of your mobile website.

However this was just recently posted several places and should be read in its entirety:

XHTML Compatibility

HTML code for the AdSense search box does not validate as XHTML, and does not follow modern principles of website design:

• non-standard closing tags such as and

• the boolean (minimized) attribute checked rather than checked="checked"

• presentational attributes other than id, class, or style, such as bgcolor and align

• a table structure used for purely presentational (non-tabular) purposes

• the font tag

There has been found a way around this by creating a normal html site containing only the AdSense ads units and then importing then into the xhtml document with an object tag.

For referrals Google will add money to an advertisers account when a visitor downloads a referred service or product.

According to the Google AdSense Articles found at: http://google.com/AdSense,
You should follow the steps bellow to generate more revenue:

Visit the AdSense Setup tab and choosing Referrals as the product.

Tips for successful referrals for non-Google products:

• Choose sub-categories for better targeting. When using non-Google referrals, you can more narrowly control the ads that display on your site by selecting sub-categories. For example, if you have a website about car loans, simply select the sub-category "Auto Financing" to receive ads related to that topic. Selecting sub-categories improves your ad targeting and can also increase your referrals earnings.

• Designate back-up ads for your ad slots. Even if you know which ad you'd like to display on your site, it's always best to have other ads to display if that specific ad becomes unavailable. By adding categories or keywords to your ad shopping cart, you can be sure that relevant ads will always show on your site, though Google will always display your specific ad choice when available.

• Try displaying only image-based ads. With our revamped referral units, you can opt to show only image ads. For some publishers, image ads match the look and feel of their sites better than text ads. Choosing to show just image-based ads does limit your available ad inventory, but you may prefer its aesthetic appeal on your pages.

Reporting

New to Google AdSense's is a report to track the link URL's separately from other AdSense, for content units. These statistics show click throughs and per link CTR.

• To view these report go the the Reports Tab.

• Select AdSense for Content

• Choose URL's

The Combined Report will look like what you have been use to seeing (is you already use AdSense), as far as content reports.

Choose Add Reports of Link Units for more clarity into reports.

Google is not the only one with AdSense. Yahoo also does.

Development

Development begins with content that is of value thus attracting AdSense ads which in turn payout the most when clicked upon.

Using traffic techniques that generate many different responses that are not just limited to advertising online is all part of development.

Remember to use sponsored links and advertisement phrases on the website to encourage the visitor to click on the advertisements.

To Maximize Your Profits

Always begin by:

• Writing proficiently

• Keep on topic

• Show Your Knowledge on the subject

In positioning the ad:

When users are focusing on a particular article they are reading it is better to place the ad at the bottom of the page.

You must think about the content and how the reader will react to a particular page. In some instances, an advertisement above the fold is better and in turn receives more hits. These are those that are near rich context and navigational aids.

Keep in mind that dark orange overall gives the strongest performance while light yellow gives the weakest performance. You need to blend your colors though with the background of your article or blog, with the ad. Use bold borders around the advertisement.

Take your advertisement and customize it to resemble your website. This brings a flow between your ads and your website.

Many top marketers have found that the large rectangle format for ads get more clicks.

Last, but certainly not least, put your keywords in your title of your blog.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Hindustan Times iGoogle News Gadget

Here it goes...

Tracking - Hindustan-Times-Gadget-GA.xml - /widget/igooglegadget.html

Add Hindustan Times's News To Your iGoogle Homepage

Add Hindustan Times's News To Your iGoogle Homepage

HTML Output -

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&num=24&url=http://www.hindustantimes.com/gadget/gadget.xml&output=html


JS Output -