Website Advertisement

Google AdSense
The best one I ever use. The ad matches your content (most of the time). The money is sweet. However, there is a big drawback! If google think you click on the ads yourself or there is any abnormal click, you are done with them! They don’t give you any warning or chance to explain. They don’t reveal how they judge either. I am accused of abnormal clicks on my website. So, they terminate the contract with me. Any non-withdrew money will be canceled and return to the advertisers.

I think I am lucky because when google cancel my adsense account, I have only $30 in it. When I google (Yes, I am still a big fan of them) other people who receive the same treatment, I found that some of them got canceled with around $90; just right before the withdraw minimum.

Google Adsense is easy to use. I still recommend this tool when the website starts. Meanwhile, I am thinking that my competitors can easily cut this revenue source by clicking the ads on my website. All they have to do is clicking again and again so that google would consider there are abnormal clicks on my website. I wonder if they have any solution for it.


Adbrite
They calculate both number of impressions and clicks, but they don’t pay a lot. For the first week, I got $0.11 for 2000 impressions and 3 clicks. This doesn’t work well or me.



OpenX Market
It starts to work after I set the mode from CPM to CPC. Somehow, I found the ad doesn’t match me content. For example, can you image casino ads on education website? Therefore, even though it MAY maximize my revenue through the bidding mechanism, I probably won’t use it, especially when we are establishing the website image.



Commission Junction
This is a CPA (cost-per-action) advertisement agent. Every advertiser on this site set some sort of requirement before they pay you. Most of them require users complete a transaction on their website. For me, it didn’t really work for me. I guess the reasons are that
1. My number of page view is not big enough
2. People may link to the advertiser through my website, but they may not complete the transaction this time. In other words, if users close the browser and purchase the product in another browser or buy it next time, you won’t get the credits; even though you are the one bring consumers to the advertiser at first place.

So, this kind of affiliate marketing may suit to some sort of blogers. If you are an expert on specific topics, you can write an article about specific products and put the ads right next to your article. That will increase purchasing possibility a lot. I heard a lot of people making money with this approach.