Adsense Alternatives: Are They Worth It?

In a previous post I mentioned the noticeable drop in revenue I’ve been experiencing from Adsense on my pages. There has also been some discussion in IM circles about this and the alternatives to Adsense. Of course, like many discussions traveling around the IM community, there is usually a product lurking in the wings to solve the problem at hand.

This is no exception.

Let’s just say that I have looked at some of the contextual advertising alternatives and I’ve also not bothered to check out others. This is due to a combination of both my ingrained laziness and my suspicion that they probably aren’t worth the effort expended to check them out in the first place.

With regards to the latter category, I’ve not bothered with Chitika Mini Malls or Kontera. Kontera links are just a huge turn off to me and when I see sites or blogs that have them I usually just keep on going. I’ve also heard the stories about how the final earnings totals get shaved right before they issue payments.

Screw that!

Chitika Mini Malls on the other hand scream out “ignore me!” and as such, I’ve not bothered with them either. I also can’t say that I’ve heard any smashing success stories with them either, but who knows, maybe someone does well with them.

OK, now to the short list of Adsense alternatives that I actually have bothered to try out:

*WidgetBucks — initially, I thought WB had some potential. The widget itself is kinda neat, though I’m not a big fan of anything that happens to move on a Web page unless I explicitly direct it to become animated. Though WB is not all that annoying. My problem with WB was getting clicks.

Any kind at all.

I really didn’t give it a fair shake, but the CPC I did see was pretty weak for the clicks that I did get. I also didn’t like the delay for the widget to be displayed. I heard that it was worse before the upgrade.

Hmm, would hate to see how bad that was.

But perhaps more frustrating is the stories of how some publishers have had payments denied right as they were coming up on the $50 payout threshold. I personally know someone who this recently happened to. To be frank, I’m not going to bother with WB any further.

*AuctionAds — I briefly dabbled in AA on a few pages, but got maybe less than 10 clicks in total. I also had difficulty getting relevant eBay auction listings to show on my pages. And since I’m an eBay affiliate, why the heck should I settle for a small cut of the eBay commission when I can get the whole enchilada without too much extra effort?

If you’re interested, and you’re an eBay affiliate, then check out my experiment with LiLBiddyAds.com. These ads are completely self-hosted and you get to keep the full eBay commission that you’re entitled to.

*Yahoo! Publisher Network — YPN is very similar in look and feel as Adsense. In fact, at first glance, they are almost indistinguishable on the page. I have done some split testing with both Adsense and YPN for the same sites and found some interesting things.  I’ve noticed that depending on the niche and available ads, that YPN in some instances, has a higher CPC than Adsense. The opposite is also true for other niches. This is a case where if Adsense isn’t paying a decent CPC, then it’s worth testing with YPN.

Oh, I almost forgot. You have to be in the US to be accepted into YPN. And they are picky about the traffic you send them. US traffic preferred.  But at this point, YPN is the only other contextual advertising program that I will even consider outside of Adsense.

That’s it. I warned you it was a short list.

So at this point, even though my Adsense revenue continues to shrink at an alarming rate, I feel that for my purposes, it’s still the best game in town.

Oh, there is something you can do to maximize your Adsense revenue in the form of fighting back against what I call
“CPC Thieves”.