I’ve been doing some research on this topic, and now I think it’s time to share my findings. It seems like Google Ad Sense is the default income source for many publishers and bloggers. Keep in mind there is nothing wrong with Ad Sense, and I think it can be extremely profitable. But, to maximize your earnings it’s wise to diversify which ads you’re running, and to explore other networks.

What if Google bans you? This doesn’t necessary mean you did anything wrong..sometimes the Google gods just react and sites get banned. If this is your only cash flow..things could turn out a little rough.

Another good reason is perception. If I run across a site that has Ad Sense plastered all over it, I automatically get a little skeptical…”their just trying to make a quick buck; probably useless information.”

We’ve all heard the phrase, “don’t put your eggs in one basket,” well…consider the following so you don’t have to. Here are some networks I would keep in mind while trying to ween off of Ad Sense:

#1 – Chitika: A great ad network recommended by top bloggers and publishers alike. Chitika works with Ad Sense, while giving you the ability to capitilize on your search traffic.

#2 – Advertising.com: They offer a ton of options for large and small scale publishers. Mostly CPA Offers.

#3 – Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN): A direct competitor to Ad Sense. YPN is known to pay a slightly higher CPC vs. Ad Sense. I would recommend experimenting with both and see which pays better.

#4 – Ad Brite: In my former life I used Ad Brite alot. As their inventory has grown, they’ve become more respected around the industry. You have the option of choosing flat rate, CPC or CPM payouts.

#5 – Burst Media: This network has been around since 1995, and is still on the short list for top publishers and bloggers.

#6 – Value Click: With a reach of over 83% of the internet, Value Click offers a wide range of income options, including affiliate and CPM based streams.

#7 – Link Share: The Link Share affiliate program and publisher network are pioneers of the online marketing industry. I would give them a look.

#8 – Video Egg: Concentrating solely on video ads, Video Egg provides a new medium of displaying ads. Based on a CPE rate (Cost Per Engagement) this opens up an entire field of marketing.

#9 – Adtegrity: Known for their prompt customer service, Adtegrity is becoming a major player in the online advertising industry.

#10 – Brightroll: Just like Video Egg, they are both unique in their inception of video media.

#11 – Tribal Fusion: Tribal Fusion is another network I have experience with. Known for their solid pay outs..they represent thousands of sites in a variety of categories.

#12 – Casale Media: I’ve also used Casale Media from the advertiser side..and in doing this, I know they stick up for their publishers, going to extreme measures not to compromise the integrity of the network.

#13 – Morning Falls: With a low traffic requirement and solid customer service..this CPM based network is great for new publishers.

#14 – CPX Interactive: Being a new player to the online marketing game, they offer a relatively new network to it’s publishers..however they are kinda strict so keep that in mind.

#15 – Ad Dynamix: With minimal requirements for publishers, this is a good network for newbies. I’ve never used them but some say they have poor customer service. This is one of those you can experiment with.

#16 – AdsDaq: With CPM ads to selected countries, this would make for good testing ground for your sites.

#17 – Click Booth: Another company I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Rated #1 network in the world by Website Magazine, they offer plenty of options for affiliate marketing and network publisher solutions.
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Even though there were hundreds of networks I had to filter through to come up with these ones, I feel like you’ll get the best deal for your dollar with the companies I mentioned above. If one doesn’t work for you, then keep trying and nail down the high performers.

As always, let me know how it goes

If you look at the Internet a few years back, you’ll see that advertising was done in a way that was very similar to other types of media like television, or actually, more like what you see in a newspaper. You’d enter a site, and in some location you’d get to see a banner (often these were quite numerous and very large), which would present and ad for whatever company was paying for adds on your space. But there was one problem with this kind of advertising. It really wasn’t exploiting the fact that the adds weren’t in some newspaper, but were instead presented over the Internet.

You’ve probably noticed a lot of things like this over the pages you’ve browsed. You’re looking at an on-line shop, looking for a watch but you get a banner that advertises a car. While you might, at some later point want to buy a car, right now you’re looking for a watch and it would have surely been nice if the banner were advertising a watch, because then you would have probably clicked it. Well that’s also what the folks at Google thought of, so they came up with a killer idea. This is knows as Google AdSense, and it’s known as a targeted advertising program

What you do (as a web designer / website owner) is, instead of jumping through hoops to get some banner on your site that your visitors won’t even care about, is you just allocate some region of the screen. You then sign up for the Google AdSense program, you insert a small snippet of code in your webpage and Google ensures that in the location you specify, a banner will appear, presenting adds relevant to the contents of your site. It’s very easy for Google to do this because Google is a search engine company. It looks for the key words in your page, searches a database of websites to find the ones related to whatever is on your page and presto: a targeted ad.

You (the webmaster) get a fee for each visitor that clicks on an adsense banner on your site. Now that’s bound to happen more often then with a traditional banner because people are actually interested in what’s in that banner (otherwise, they wouldn’t be on your page would they?). But, this also does wonders for the people who want to advertise. And it’s because of the same reason. The greatest thing about Google AdSense is that all the content in a banner is relevant. This relevancy is the key to the programs success, and also the reason why everyone remains happy. The advertiser has a relevantly placed advert, the publisher earns money from their content and Google take their cut.

Of course, as always, Google has set some high standards for its AdSense program, in terms of looks and functionality. You can’t have more than two such banners on your website and Google only inserts text in these banners. So an extra benefit is that AdSense advertising is a lot less obtrusive then regular advertising. But this also means you should position the banner better because it’s possible that visitors might miss it altogether. So in the end, Google AdSense is an advertising program that is unique because the ads are relevant to the content on the site. Anyone that wants to advertise pays Google for it. Anyone who wants to place ads on their site does this through AdSense, getting paid by Google in the process.

All transactions are run through Google, and the advertisers and publishers get access to statistics which help them to understand and moderate the effectiveness of their campaign. The whole process is elegant, simple and effective from anyone in the chain, from site visitors to advertisers, and it’s one of the reasons Google are known for their innovation and new thinking.