BLOG$ FROM BLOGS

Beyond Adsense - Part 1 of 2

Copyright 2008 by Jane Chin, All Rights Reserved.

Up Front Disclosure: I’m using referral links to discuss the products in this entry, since I have personal experience using each of them and can therefore speak intelligently to the pros and cons. If you want to sign up for any of these products, I appreciate you using the referral link, and I may get credit for it

I love Adsense because it’s contextual, which means Google tailors the served as based on your blog content. It’s as simple as “copying and pasting”.

But let’s face it - Adsense does not perform for everybody, and over time you may get “Adsense Poop Out”, as I’ve seen on my blogs. What I mean by “Adsense Poop Out” is that your Adsense earnings begin to wane over time. Maybe my readers have gotten used to the ads and have become blind to them. Maybe Google’s ever-changing algorithms have made it more difficult for blogs to earn at the same level as before. Maybe my websites aren’t as optimally configured to earn as they should be.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been looking at other ways to monetize my websites beyond Google Adsense. In this two-part article series, I’ll share with you ways I’ve found useful to additionally monetize blogs and you may find that these can work well for you.

Text Link Ads (TLA)
TLA has worked well for me, and can be a good source of text-link based income for you - provided that your blog / website gets accepted. It automatically calculates the rate of advertising based on your blog’s popularity, and splits the ad fee 50/50 with you. If someone buys a $20 link on your website, you get $10 and TLA gets $10.

Pros Minimal administration, passive, multiple blogs per account.

Cons Maybe tough to get site approved if your site is too new or does not have enough content.

ReviewMe (RM) (No Referral Link; Donate to Jane’s Tip Jar)
I admit, when RM first came out, I thought it was a great way to earn extra revenue by doing something I was already doing anyway (blogging). I learned of RM through TLA - the two companies are probably related - signed up immediately, and added my maximum allowable limit of 6 blogs/account. I was quite active for the first couple of months, and earned almost $500… then I realized how much work writing reviews was. Of course, you can just do the 200 word “minimum”, but I spend time visiting the websites, composing my review, and aim to write constructively and objectively. Translation: lots of time spent for a small return than the value of my time was worth. RM, like TLA splits revenue with you 50/50.

Pros Minimal administration, paid review, multiple blogs per account, set your own pricing.

Cons Maybe tough to get site approved, 6 site maximum/account, more work than I intended to earn a couple of hundred bucks a month, have to wait for review opportunity otherwise sign up for cheapo $5 review opportunities (not worth the time in my opinion).

AdBrite
AdBrite is a bit like Google Adsense in that you sign up for an account, create “ad zones” for your websites, and insert the code into your web pages. You can even set your own pricing and use their smart revenue tool to insert Google Adsense instead of Adbrite if the Adsense ad paid more. However, I haven’t really seen good performance from Adbrite as I’ve seen from Adsense, and creating and updating those ad zones are a pain in the butt.

Pros Multiple blogs per account, set your pricing, set payment threshold (unlike Google you don’t need to earn over a certain $ to get paid).

Cons Ad zones a pain to set up and update, earning performance less stellar than Adsense (at least in my case).

If you’ve used these services, please let me know your experiences.

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