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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.