Web Advertising Options for Bloggers & Independent Publishers

Can a blogger or independent publisher expect to cover the costs of managing their website through advertising? With shared hosting costing generally from $3 to $6 per month, and innumerable free blog sites available, unless your site is in the Technorati Top 100 blogs or frequently featured on the front page of Digg, the basic costs of site management should be minimal. Nevertheless, despite the “adSense Empire” stories that circulate on the web, and undeniable success stories of popular sites earning from PPC advertising, most blogs likely earn less than $10 per month in adSense revenue on average. This is a safe call, considering that the New York Times has reported that 95% of all the blogs on the web are abandoned.

While it may be easy to earn enough in PPC advertising to cover the costs of hosting the blog, most people will never even begin to approach earning enough through this method so that it actually covers the cost of their time put into blogging or developing the site’s theme. Nevertheless, there are a lot of advertising options available for independent publishers and bloggers that could make their site more interesting to browsers who have become accustomed to seeing the same adSense ads on every blog and every page of the web. While there is really no reason to abandon adSense in your pages, it could be beneficial to mix up the advertising copy by pulling in ads from other sources across the web.

The following list includes some of the best web advertising opportunities for independent publishers & bloggers. All of these solutions will scale with your site, and are suitable for both small single-user blogs, forums, & wikis, as well as large multi-user social networks and communities.

1) Google adSense: https://www.google.com/adsense
“Maximize revenue from your online content”

“Display targeted Google ads on your website’s content pages and earn from valid clicks or impressions. AdSense gives you access to Google’s vast network of advertisers, so you can show ads that are suited to your audience’s interests.”

2) Commission Junction – http://www.cj.com/
+ “a global leader in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, and Search Engine Marketing”

“Drive quality results and extend your reach by partnering with affiliate marketing’s most productive network of publishers. Further increase sales by complementing your customized affiliate marketing program with a fully-managed and integrated, comprehensive search engine marketing solution.”

3) PepperJam Network – http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/
+ “Join the Affiliate Marketing Revolution!”

“Pepperjam is one of the true pioneers of affiliate marketing having started out as an affiliate and then successfully building one of the largest, most respected and recognizable full-service internet marketing agencies in the United States. Pepperjam has been managing and consulting with affiliates and merchants on how to build successful and sustainable affiliate marketing businesses for nearly a decade.”

4) Text-Link-Ads.com – http://text-link-ads.com/
+ “Make more money by selling text based ads”

“Join over 40,000 publishers monetizing their sites. Connect with our large and growing client base Maintain editorial control over ads placed on your site Get paid instantly on the 1st of each month with no fees. Search our massive publisher base to: -Generate targeted traffic to your website -Improve your natural search engine rankings Only advertisements from Text Link Ads can do both!”

5) OpenX - http://www.openx.org/
+ “Take control of your advertising.”

“OpenX Market is a powerful and independent monetization platform. It helps publishers maximize the price of their ad inventory and helps advertisers gain access to highly targeted, premium inventory. OpenX’s unique technology platform provides you with a complete foundation for building your online advertising business. Use OpenX Ad Server to power your advertising in highly innovative and flexible ways.”

6) Yahoo Publisher Network – http://publisher.yahoo.com/
+ “Build the Power & Innovation of Yahoo! into Your Web Site”

“EARN REVENUE FROM YOUR WEB SITE. Simply display ads that are relevant to the content of your site and earn money from qualified clicks. No investment is required and setup is quick and easy. If your site generates between two and 20 million page views monthly, you may be eligible for a customized program and dedicated account management.”

7) Amazon Affiliates / AmaSense Ads – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
+ “The web’s most popular and successful Affiliate Program”

“Link to Amazon or Endless products, your favorite destinations, search results, or any other page on Amazon. Want something that stands out and provides rich content and an interactive experience to people visiting your web page? Feature any Amazon products in a self-contained online store embedded directly within your web page.”

8) Microsoft Live Search Advertising – Microsoft pubCenter Beta Program – http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher
+ “Web Site Owners: Earn Money with Microsoft Ads on Your Web Site”

“The Microsoft pubCenterBeta offers you the chance to include advertising from one of the leading online advertising networks on your web site. With the pubCenterBeta you can: Place ads on your web site—realizing revenue potential with relevant ads targeted to your audience, Customize ads to the look and feel of your web site, Gain access to one of the largest advertising networks, delivering high-quality ads, Monitor performance with a variety of tracking features. As a beta user, you’ll also have the opportunity to earn money and influence the direction of this new advertising marketplace.”

9) Miva – http://www.miva.com/
+ “Recently acquired by Adknowledge – leading performance advertising networks”

“A pioneer in performance marketing, MIVA launched pay-per-click advertising in 1999 and currently delivers performance-based solutions to thousands of advertisers and publishers. MIVA helps advertisers find highly targeted customers, where they pay only for the quality leads that MIVA delivers. MIVA helps distribution partners monetize their page views with relevant performance advertisements.”

10) Bidvertiser – http://www.bidvertiser.com/
+ “Pay Per Click Advertising On Sites Of Your Choice”

“Display the BidVertiser text ads on your website or blog, get paid for every click and have the payments sent directly to your PayPal account… Make money with affiliate program that pays you for every click. You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10.”

11) Adbrite – http://www.adbrite.com/
+ “The Internet’s Ad Marketplace”

“Get ads from thousands of advertisers, including top brands. AdBrite can help you monetize your site with advertising that fits the content and user base of your site. Our base of advertisers includes top brands like Live Nation, GM, AT&T and Verizon—at the same time, AdBrite serves ads on nearly 1 billion pages daily, providing massive scale opportunities.”

12) AffiliatesGarage – http://www.affiliatesgarage.com
+ displays ClickBank & PayDotCom Text Ads on a Website.

“Promoting high-paying affiliate products that are relevant to your websites’ content is a great way to monetize your websites or blog. However, this process involves setting up a product list and constantly changing the list to match your content. It can also get quite expensive… Luckily, AffiliatesGarage.com makes this process effortless.”

13) Chitka – http://chitika.com
+ “Turning Page Views into Profits” – Search Targeted Advertising

“Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 2 billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue.”

14) Kontera – http://kontera.com
+ “Delivering Relevant In-Text Results”

“Kontera’s advanced In-Text Pay Per Click Advertising solutions guarantee the highest degree of relevancy between content, keywords and ads. Unduplicated Reach, Strong Relevancy and ROI, & Higher Click-Through Rates – Kontera´s Contextual Advertising is based on sophisticated technology which enables real- time analysis of static or dynamic content.”

15) Quigo – http://quigo.com
+ “Targeted Ads – Your Way”

“Quigo® Technologies, Inc. is a wholly-owned division of AOL® and a Platform-A company. Quigo Sponsored Listings, Quigo’s content-targeted text links, are distributed to the AdSonar network. The AdSonar network includes many of the web’s most recognized sites including AOL Money & Finance, TMZ.com, Engadget, CNNMoney.com, TIME.com, People.com, ESPN.com and many more. Quigo Sponsored Listings offer advertisers multiple targeting options for their campaigns; including national and local targeting by vertical category, site, individual page, section, topic, and/or keyword.”

Increasing Profits by using Marketing Tactics

Giving Your Visitors What They Want

Too many times a web master will create a site that has meaningless information about their business. The problem is, web traffic cares less about your business and more about the what they want. Don’t appeal to their interests, and you’ve lost them.

So how do you appeal to these visitors?  The easy answer, “Give them what they want.” The more important question you should ask is, “What do my visitors want?” To answer this question, you need to research three imperatives

1. Who are your visitors?
2. What attracted them to your site originally?
3. What do they want when they come to your site? Once you know who your visitors are, what attracted them and what they are interested in, it becomes very simple to attract and retain them.

The next question, “How do I find this out about my visitors?” There are plenty of tools you can use to do this. First, ask them. Open up a dialogue with your visitor and find out more about them point blank.  A second way way to learn more about your customers is by using traffic analysis software such as Google Analytics. Not only will this software track the number of customers and the number of pages accessed, but it will also show pinpoint locations where your visitors reside, how long visitors spend on your site, how often they return to your site, as well as the amount of visitors who come to your page and immediately exit it.  With this valuable information it becomes much easier to provide unique and quality content that your customers will love.

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