Leigh Burke's Blog – make money online

Whether you run a blog or a traditional business website, you may be looking for additional ways to monetize your website traffic using internet advertising services.

There are many companies that specialise in pairing advertisers with publishers and webmasters.  This blog post aims to help you sort through the chaff to find the best internet advertising service for your needs.

First things first

Firstly, you want to have a think about the type of advertising you want to engage in with your website.  What, you didn’t know there were different types?  Yes, indeed there are, and here are just a few of the different types:

• Paid reviews – you write a review for a specific product or service and post it on your website with a link.
• Text links – where you get paid for the number of impressions (visitors that come to your page with the link on it), or for the number of click-throughs (the number of people that actually visit your page then click on the link)
• Keyword targeted ads – where actual keywords within your website or blog become live links.  Again, you could be paid per impression or clicks.
• Affiliate ads – where you post a link or banner to a specific website, product or service.  You could choose to include your own review to help boost click through and conversion rates.
• Banner ads – similar to text links, but you display banners in various places throughout your website.

Sounds good, so how do I get started?

Okay, so you’re interested, but with so many different options out there how do you know which ones to choose?  Basically it’s based on reputation and performance.  The recommendations below are based on my own experiences with particular companies over the years as well as what I have read and heard from the industry.  In terms of reputation, you need to know that you can trust a company to pay you the money you are owed for referrals.  You also need to have peace of mind that the technology is stable enough to accurately track all the referrals you make so you get credit where it is due.  Okay so here are my top 7 internet advertising recommendations:

1. www.clickbank.com
2. This is a tried and true favourite for those starting out.  Almost like an old friend.  Everybody has an old story about their first ever sale on Clickbank, it can be a magical experience.  Clickbank vendors sell electronic products like ebooks, downloadable video courses, memberships to websites etc.  Making a referral is as easy as inserting your affiliate ID into a URL, then pasting the link on your site.  Some people recommend cloaking your affiliate link, or purchasing a cheap domain and re-directing it to your affiliate link, but that’s a whole other post.
3. www.reviewme.com
   This service allows you to register your website or blog so that advertisers can buy paid reviews from you.  When you register, you will enter specific keywords and categories so any reviews that are purchased for your website will be relevant to your industry.  When an advertiser purchases a review, you will be required to write the review about the relevant product or service before being paid.  Payment for reviews varies, and you are not obliged to accept any review that isn’t relevant to your website or that you don’t want to write about.
4. www.text-link-ads.com
   This service allows you to add text link ads in various places throughout your website.  You will be paid each time somebody clicks on one of the links.  Ads can be context sensitive, there’s no fees and you get paid on a monthly basis.  Installation is handled by a small script that is added to your website.
5. www.chitika.com
   Chitika serves over 3 billion monthly impressions across more than 100,000 websites.  Yes, this is one behemoth of an advertising network!  Chitika was founded by 2 ex Lycos Employees in 2003, and the name Chitika means “snap of the fingers” in a south American dialect.  Chitika ads are targeted, and you get paid monthly.  interestingly, Chitika is ciurrently only willing ot accept advertisers with a minimum monthly spend of $50,000.
6. www.cj.com
   Commission Junction is another stalwart of the affiliate advertising industry.  Commisison Junction advertisers pay affiliates for sales or leads.  Leads can be generated when a website visitor clicks on your affiliate link, is taken to a landing page and then takes a specific action such as filling in a survey or entering their email address.  If your website generates a certain amount of traffic, then you can apply to become a CJ performer affiliate and be assigned an account manager along with other additional benefits.
7. www.kontera.com
   Kontera is a context sensitive advertising platform that will add text links inside the content of your website or blog.  Effectively, words within the text of your website will become live links, and when they are clicked, you will get a referral commission.  You get 70% revenue share paid monthly.
8. www.payperpost.com
   Pay per post is similar to the ReviewME service where advertisers will pay you tio write a review about their product or service.  They will offer you a chance to write for them for a specific amount of money, and you have the chance to accept or decline.  The service has been around since 2006 and has a good reputation.

I hope this list has helped open your eyes to the way you can monetize your website.

To your success!

Leigh.

Did you find this post helpful? Please let me know in the comments what you’d like to read more of.