In addition to my experiments with AdBrite and YPN, I have been running a trial of Text Link Ads. Text Link Ads is different than Adsense. Instead of showing ads based on the content of your site, Text Link Ads brokers text ads on your site for a flat monthly rate. They serve the ads on your site without redirects, so the advertiers can receive some search engine optimization (SEO) benefit from the pagerank of the your site.
After completing a brief application, my site was auto-approved by Text Link Ads. There are a few different ways to integrate the ad code onto your site. I chose to use the PHP method which required me to install an xml file on my server and include an xml parsing function in my code. Although posting the ads in more complicated than putting up Adsense, it only took me a few minutes to get everything up and running. The extra complexity is so that the ads can be shown without using redirects.

Once I had the ad code integrated into my site, I had to wait for an advertiser to purchase one of the four text link ads that I put up for sale. While waiting for an advertiser to show up, Text Link Ads shows a blank ad. It would have been nice for them to at least offer to place run of network CPC or CPA ads to help me monetize the traffic in the short term. Adbrite offers CPC run of network ads while you are waiting for an advertiser to pick up your inventory.

Three days later, I received an email from Text Link Ads letting me know that someone bought an ad on my site. After approving the ad, it started showing up on my site and I was making some money. Overall, I have been very happy with the Text Link Ads and it has been very easy to use. I have read many positive reviews of the service around the web, and it could be well worth trying out on your site.
I recently purchased some ads from Text Link Ads as an advertiers, and I will be posting the results in the future. I also think it is important to mention that they have a solid affiliate program. The program pays $25 for every publisher or advertiser that you refer. I will be doing some testing of the affiiliate program as well and posting my results here.

In my efforts to test a wide variety of advertising programs, I gave Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) a try. YPN is Yahoo’s answer to Google Adsense. YPN provides contextual ads based on the content of your website.

A few days after applying on the site, I was accepted to the program. Getting the code to place on your site is very easy, and the interface is similar to Google Adsense. One interesting wrinkle that distinguishes YPN from Adsense is that they also allow you to select ad categories for the ads to show on your website.

There are 20 high level categories that you can choose from (Apparel and Jewelry, Automotive, B2B, Books-Movies-Music-Tickets, Computing, Education and Career, Electronics and Appliances, Entertainment and Social Event Services, Financial Services, Flowers and Candy, Health and Beauty, Home and Garden, Mass Merchants, Professional Services, Real Estate, Reference, Sporting Goods, Telecommunications and Internet Service Providers, Toys and Hobbies, Travel) and each category has a few subcategories.

Once I set up the code, I inserted a few lines of javascript, and I was good to go. The first thing that struck me was that it took a few days for the contextual targeting to start. As I recall, Adsense was much quicker to show targeted ads. Once the targeted ads started to appear, I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps half of the ads were well targeted and the other half seemed like junk. I have been running the ads for a few weeks now, and while the targeting has improved slightly, it does not match the quality of Adsense’s targeting.

Unsatisfied with the contextual ads, I attempted to enter some content categories into the system to improve my site’s performance. None of the categories were a perfect match to my site, so I choose one that was the closest. While the category reduced my click through rate, my revenue per click nearly doubled. If your site is a good fit for one of the YPN content categories, I think that you could do very well with the program. I was also disappointed that YPN does not break out statistics by the ad category. Showing statistics by ad category and sub category would be a huge help in selecting the best categories for your site.

For one of my sites, the click through rate on my YPN ads was 68% lower than Adsense, and my CPM earnings were 42% lower than Adsense. Of course, your results may very. If you content fits one of the YPN content areas, I would spend some time testing the program to see if you can improve your earnings.

I have a three-step process for making changes to my sites. Although the process is very simple in theory, I have found that it helps to keep me focused.

1. Experiment. Even if you think that your site or blog is perfect, there are always new things that you can try. I have found that the short term hit in performance that you may see is more than worth it. For example, in the past few months I have tried running ads from Adsense, YPN, Adbrite, and Text Link Ads to see which perform the best. I learned something from each of these experiments. Some things you might want to experiment with are:

• Advertising Programs (contextual, pay per impression, affiliate, etc.)
• Ad placement and Size
• Related ebook sales
• Creative partnership or link exchanges

2. Track. Experimenting is great, but in order to know if you are headed in the right direction or aimlessly wandering, you need to be able to track your experiments. My method of tracking usually depends on the nature of the experiment. For my Adsense tests, I set up custom channels for each version of the ad that I would like to try, and then I will rotate the ads using PHP code. This can also be done with javacript.

To keep track of the days when I make the changes, I mark the days in my yahoo calendar. I learned to do this the hard way after being unable to remember when I started some of my experiments. To get a good idea of how the test is performing, I try to run each test for at least a week.

3. Optimize and Repeat. Once you have tracked your changes, you can alter your site based on your findings and repeat the process. Over time, a series of small changes can really add up into something big.
If you need some further inspiration, you can learn about how I used this process to boost my Adsense click through rate by 34%. Good luck with your experiments!

This is post is a part of the ProBlogger group writing project. I encourage you to check out all of the other great posts from around the web.

Jasmine, who used to work with at Kiwibox, recently launched Glamourite.com, a blog devoted to life in New York City. Along with 10 “Glamourites,” Jasmine chronicles nightlife in the big city. While I know very little about nightlife, I know about making money online. I recently gave Jasmine some suggestions to improve monetization on her site, and she graciously allowed me to post my ideas.
Monetization Ideas

• The adsense ads on the site have a gray border around them. I would alter the adsense code to make the border of the ads white, and therefore blend the ads into the site a lot more. From my experiences, this will significantly improve click through rates on the ads.
• To be more aggressive with the ads, I would use the adsense injection plugin for wordpress. It will randomly insert an Adsense box ad unit into one post on the page. Having ads this close to the content can generate some very good click through rates.
• I might also experiment with the adsense link unit ads that will show a search term instead of an actual ad. I have read that they can perform well. I would put them in place of the gevalia affiliate program on the right side bar.

Traffic Ideas

The site has a ton of interesting content, and I think it I think it would help to do more to expose visitors to additional content.

• I would using the related post plugin. After each post, the plugin will automatically provide links to related posts on the blog. It is a great way to get visitors deeper into the site.
• Post the 10 most popular posts up in the right or left sidebar to encourage visitors to explore the site.
• Generating traffic from other New York focused blogs would be great for Glamourite’s traffic. I would start a series of posts to highlight/review favorite nyc blogs or favorite posts in some of these blogs in order to drive some traffic their way and get their attention so that they eventually link to Glamourite.
• Setting up a myspace page and linking to it from the site would be a good idea. A lot of Glamourite’s target audience is probably on myspace, and it wouldn’t hurt to build up a friends list there.

Content/Partnership Ideas

• Every Thursday, I would have each of the glamourite ladies write a sentence or two about a weekend thing to do and then put it together in one post. This type of regularly scheduled content will help to build the audience and may help to garner linking attention from other sites.
• If the site becomes more events focused, I would syndicate RSS event listings from flavorpill, eventful, and upcoming and post them on the site. This would provide new fresh content with minimal work.
• For partnerships, I would start discussion with a club promotion site like clubplanet or velvetlist to work out a deal where one of the glamourites could attend one of their events per week and post about it and/or include it in the weekly things to do post mentioned above in exchange for some promotion.

The ideas above work on both the monetization and the traffic side of the site. These changes would boost key drives in the monetization framework that I have written about before, and should have a strong positive impact on the site.

I plan on doing more case studies in the future. If you would like your site to be reviewed, please email me at paul@monetizetraffic.com.

TechCrunch has a post that touches XuQa’s monetization strategy. The social networking site has developed a mini-economy centered on earning peanuts. One way that users can earn peanuts is to complete CPA offers.
While I was a part of Kiwibox, we made a big push to allow users to earn “KiwiPoints” by completing offers and surveys. I was amazed at how well targeted offers could perform. Another site with a great implementation of this strategy is NeoPets. They were one of the first big communities to do a great job monetizing users through CPA offers. I have heard from survey vendors that they can just unleash huge amounts of users to complete surveys in exchange for points.

From my time at Kiwibox, I have some experience launching programs to reward users for completing offers. If you are interested in getting some help with setting up a similar program on your site, you can contact me at paul@monetizetraffic.com.

I have been experimenting with tracking Adsense clicks in order to increase the earnings on my sites. After reading this post about tracking Adsense clicks via javascript, I decided to give it a try on one of my sites. I did a quick search on hotscripts to find a decent tracking script, and I have been pleasantly surprised with the results.

Two nights ago, I installed the Contextual Tracker script on my site. Setting up the script is very easy. Installation involves changing a few parameters in the configuration script, running a set of SQL commands to install some mySQL tables, and inserting a few lines of javascript into the header of your site. Once you have installed the script, you can log in to an admin section to see your stats in real time.
Benefits of Adsense Click Tracking

1. See the URL ads users have clicked on. This is HUGE. Knowing which ads visitors respond to allows you to better target the content of your site. For example, on my cliff notes site I thought that most of the Adsense clicks would be related to term papers. It turns out that most of the Adsense clicks I have seen so far are going to CampusI (an online bookstore), Blish.com, and Barronsmag.com. I am a bit confused about clicks going to Barron’s which is a financial publication, but I will continue to investigate this. AdBrite has this feature for their run of network ads, but I would kill for this feature to be built into Adsense and YPN.
2. Protect yourself against clickfraud. The program tracks the IP address of users who click on your ads. If you see a large volume of clicks from a particular IP address, it would be a good idea to contact Google and let them know about the problem. If you are not proactive about the situation, Google may think that you are trying to scam the system and ban your account.
3. Know exactly which pages users clicked on your Adsense ads. I found this very useful on my site with thousand of pages. I always assumed that most of my Adsense clicks came from the homepage of the site. However, most of the clicks appear to be coming from the search pages and pages devoted to individual books. With this data, I was able to quickly identify pages that accounted for most of my Adsense clicks.

I will continue to experiment with Adsense click tracking. In a later post, I will write about using Google Analytics to do more detailed tracking and analysis of Adsense clicks.

Sleepyblogger has a post up where she advocates use of affiliate programs over Adsense. While I have had some success with very targeted affiliate programs, I think that Adsense and YPN can be the best solution for many sites.

Drawbacks to Affiliate Programs:

1. Your audience may not match up well for making purchases online. For example, my friends who run Kiwibox.com, a site for teens, would not make much running affiliate programs where you get paid when a user purchases something. Yes, there are some affiliate programs that pay upon registration or other non-purchase activities, but these have become increasingly rare.
2. You are dependent upon the merchant and the effectiveness of their site. Even if you drive lots of traffic to a site, if a merchant’s site is not intuitive or slow, you will be the one to pay for it.
3. A click can be more accurately measured than a purchase. Although most affiliate programs use cookies to track returning visitors, you may not receive proper credit from a sale if the user returns to the site to make a purchase after the cookie’s expiration date. Or the visitor could make a purchase offline, and you would not be compensated.

I look forward to reading the rest of SleepyBlogger’s affiliate program series, and learning more from her success with affiliate programs.

In browsing through my favorite webmaster related forums, there are occassionally a few posts that stand out as hidden gem. This post on Niche Selection and Site Creation Process is one of those gems. I especially like the tips that people give on all of the tools they use to evaluate new opportunities. SEOBook’s keyword suggester and NicheBot were two of the best that I saw. Personally, I also have used Symbiotic which has a nice database of Adsense prices.

I will keep pointing out these hidden gems as I find them, and I plan to write a case study about the process of finding a niche and monetizing a new site.