Time to Diversify Your Earning Sources

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Time to Diversify Your Earning Sources

There was a time when I used to have most of my earnings (90%+) from only one advertising network, and that was Google Adsense. But slowly I realized that I need to diversify my earnings to other sources as well.

Why do I need to diversify and what are the options available in the market? Well, that is the question I am going to take in this post of mine.

Why do I need to diversify my earning sources?
Many people can have many different reasons for diversifying their earnings. Here are the two most important reasons:

Keeping all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. If you loose that basket, you loose all your eggs.
By diversifying, you can earn more. How? I am just going to discuss that.

Keeping all your eggs in one basket?
If you are using only one advertising network, lets say, Google Adsense, and some day for some reason, it closes your account, where do you go? These days there are many cases of competitors doing a lot of harm to people. For example: Click bombing your site and then sending an email to Google saying:
“My friend asked me to click on his site at xyz.com, I just did that, but just wanted to confirm that its not illegal.”
So be careful and spread your earnings through various networks.

Diversifying your earning sources
Diversigying your earning sources (by various advertising networks) can surely increase your advertising revenue from the same site. I will explain you by some examples. Lets say, currently you are running only adsense on your website and using their (standard) 3 “Adsense Ad Units” and 1 “Adsense Link Unit” on your website. Do you think you are earning the maximum from your website? Do you think you cannot earn more than this from the same website?

Try these steps below, experiment and see whether it makes you more money. I am sure it gonna increase your earnings:

Replace the 3 “Adsense Ad Units” on your site with just one 300×250 Adsense Ad Unit in the top section of the content on the page. This will not reduce your earnings much as they will mostly serve you only higher paying ads.
Use advertising network like Casale Media, FastClick or ValueClickMedia to fill those two empty spaces on your website.
Add Kontera to your website. The best part of Kontera is that it does not need any extra space on your pages, it just gets itself in the content only. Also, my own experience shows that adding kontera does not reduces your Google Adsense earnings. A good content site can surely make you good amount of extra money.
Use text-link-ads.com to sell ads on your individual pages. I know you must be thinking that Google does not like it. Right? Well, you sell only one text link ad and that also somewhere in the content and not in the header, footer or sidebar. Don’t sell sitewide links and don’t sell more than one (or at the max two) text links on a page through text-link-ads.
Add one or two CJ or ClickBank based programs. Use text links only.

What are my options?
Here are the list of networks I use:

Adsense - Well, this is the first choice for most of the people
Yahoo Publisher Network - If you are using Adsense, you cannot use it on the same page. But if you are not using Adsense (or banned) and live in USA then YPN is your next best choice.
Kontera - Kontera is my third best contextual choice because it does not need any space on website and makes good amount of money for the amount of space they take.
Casale Media - Casale media is my first choice for traditional banner advertising in CPM/CPC space.
Value Click Media - Value Click Media (or FastClick as known previously) is also into traditional banner advertising and one of the best tradition CPM/CPC network.
BurstMedia - BurstMedia falls in the league of Casale Media and FastClick and is a good CPM/CPC advertising network.
Adbrite - Not a great earner but useful CPM/CPC network to fill your banner space at the bottom of your page.
Commission Junction - One of the oldest and best program for serious sales and leads. My suggestion, use their text links instead of banners. They convert well and don’t take much space.
NeverBlueAds - NeverBlueAds is one of the best and upcoming affiliate network. They have many exclusive offers and pays quite well. Recommended.
ClickBank - Another CPA/Sale based program selling digital products. If you are in right niche, it can produce good results.
Widget Bucks - Quite new program with some good CPC. Though people have different views about their running.
Text-Link-Ads - Oldest and best text link selling program which pays based on number of text links sold for your site per month.

There are many other programs as well which can work best based on your website and its niche. There are too many to mention here.

Last but not the least, try selling your own advertising on your website. Just create and advertising page on your website and mention your CPM/CPC/Monthly rates there. There is no harm in doing that. It can bring you the top money for your advertising space as there is nobody in between to take any commission.

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Jim Karter on November 25th 2007 in Advertising Networks, Earning Money, Internet Marketing

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32 Responses to “Time to Diversify Your Earning Sources”

GettyCash responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 8:21 am #

Thanks for the tips

I love this post.
Frank responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 11:22 am #

Thanks, useful as usual :-).

But in my knowledge adsense doesn’t allow any other advertisers?

Correct me if i am wrong(hopefully)

Frank
Nick responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 12:38 pm #

Frank, I think adsense just doesnt allow any other contextual advertisers that are similar to them. For example Yahoo Publishers network.

Good post jim. I have been trying to diversify, I guess I need to work on traffic now…How about a post on that
Matthew responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 12:43 pm #

Just realized your contest ends today, im excited for the results
martina responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 1:12 pm #

Wow Jim, its like you read in my mind! I was thinking to ask you an article like that, because my adsense earnong are going sooo low and I dont really know why because I have the same visits, well actually I have more, because I have more websites now. So I was looking for a pay per lead program, and for my italian website I use sprintrade which is very good and the team is fantastic, and for my english website I was trying jumboaffiliate, but is just a week that I try them. Then I find Azoogle, but they ask me for tax things(even if I dont live in USA) that I dont really know how to do!
I also tryed textlinkads in a pr4 website, but I didnt sell nothing at all, same stuff for adbrite!!! weird…
Hey if you want send me your cj referal link, because I would like to try it, and if you have more pay per lead just send them to me so I can let you earn something too!
Thank you like always
jimkarter responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 2:02 pm #

Thanks people for your comments.
About using adsense with other advertisers, you can use all the mentioned about with adsense except yahoo publisher network.

Google has problem only with those advertise those look like google and are contextual in nature.
Rolo responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 3:43 pm #

Hi Jim,
I know you don’t want to share your sites in public but could you share with us how much traffic do you get in total?
dunn responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 3:49 pm #

Good post, Jim. Will link this post to my site.
HiFi Guy responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 3:58 pm #

Thanks for this informative post Jim.

Do you use amazon ? If yes what’s your feedback with them ?
jimkarter responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 6:34 pm #

I use amazon on very specific site of mine where I sell some “the biggest loser” related books and videos. To be frank, I don’t like them. I don’t like their payment plan which has cookie limit of only that session.

So, my suggestion on them? If you have very specific product for your niche, you can use them, but don’t expect much.
Hiro responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 10:30 pm #

Can i change the 300×250 to 336×280?

In some post i read you answering someone that you put adsense only in older posts. Why you do this?
Munchies responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 10:45 pm #

How about advertising my site using yahoo search marketing? Will Google ban my adsense account if i use yahoo PPC to get the traffic to my sites? I know this question sounds silly, but just want to clear my doubts..TQ
Randy Brown responded on 26 Nov 2007 at 12:15 am #

This post is right on the mark jim, and i’ve been saying the same thing for a long time.. The only thing i disagree with is yahoo publisher network.. they are so messed-up right now that they don’t even know how to deliver a targeted ad 2x in a row..
i diversify with Adsense, Kontera, Premium Subscriptions and affiliate sales.. now even when i have a bad “adsense day”, it’s ok because overall earnings make up for it..
Varun responded on 26 Nov 2007 at 4:24 am #

Its a very good idea to increase your ad inventory .

But an usual problem is that you end up putting more ads and increase loading time and drive away users.

I would suggest that you have a count of the page size when adding ads. Kontera/ Intellitxt are awesome
jimkarter responded on 26 Nov 2007 at 7:13 am #

@ Hiro
I put the adsens on old posts because I monetize my new posts with some other methods.

@Munchies
No google cannot ban your site just because you get traffic from yahoo ppc.

@Randy Brown
Yes Randy, I agree with you that Yahoo publishers network is all messed up. But for people who are banned from adsense, that seems to be one option. Though Kontera is becoming more and more of my favourite.

@Varun
The idea here is not to increase the number of ads. See my example above. I am not asking you to increase the number of ads, but diversify those ads.
Varun responded on 27 Nov 2007 at 12:41 am #

Ok got it .. but is there any problem using kontera alongside adsense ?
jimkarter responded on 27 Nov 2007 at 6:54 am #

No Varun, you can use Kontera with adsense without any problem. In fact that works out to be the best combination.:)
Dean Saliba responded on 05 Dec 2007 at 8:43 am #

Good post.

One thing I would suggest is maybe pointing out that networks like Burst and Fast Click have a minimum traffic amount which will rule out small sites.
Doron K responded on 06 Dec 2007 at 1:38 am #

Anyone have any advice for my blog? http://doronkutash.com
Bernard responded on 06 Dec 2007 at 5:40 am #

Why not testing Chitika minimalls?
November Earnings : $45,000 responded on 08 Dec 2007 at 7:10 am #

[…] Last month, I also decided to diversify my earnings little more so that the percentage of my earnings from Adsense should reduce. This month I was able to reduce my Adsense earnings to around 55% of total by diversifying. […]
April responded on 14 Dec 2007 at 1:05 pm #

Jim, I came across your blog today and it is very inspirational.
Another advertiser you could use to diversify is projectwornderful.com. They seem to be more for the average advertiser like myself and make me more money than google. Instead of pay per click, they are pay per day. Currently most of the users are webcomics, but if it breaks mainstream I think the earning potental for average advertisers will go up substantually.
Mandy responded on 22 Dec 2007 at 9:30 pm #

Thanks jimkarter for your lovely suggestions. I hope that your suggestion will benefit me as well.
January Earnings: $47,750 | Make Money Online responded on 04 Feb 2008 at 12:13 am #

[…] Failing my earning diversification efforts, again Adsense took 65% of my earning pie at around $30,555.95 Second biggest earner remained Kontera at $6,645.43 […]
Armaan Bhati responded on 23 Feb 2008 at 11:49 am #

Thanks man..
I am using adsense but not earning anything.
will try now others things too
Making Money with Affiliate Marketing | Make Money Online responded on 23 Feb 2008 at 10:28 pm #

[…] I think its time that I give one hour to each of my site and see if my competitor is using any affiliate programs. Can I use it too? If they are using it, there are chances that it is more profitable than adsense, and can bring more profits to me as well. It will also help me in one of my long-term my goal of diversifying my earnings and bringing Adsense earnings below 50% level of my total earnings (which is still at 65% for January 2008). […]
bhavesh responded on 27 Feb 2008 at 7:18 am #

Thanks for this great article, I only used adsense, but i was not aware that i can earn more using other network ads,

what do you think about Komli? Its right to put some ads from Komli?

Which is the best ad network you prefer after Adsense??

Can i use PubMatic as a rotating ads??
Ralph responded on 27 Feb 2008 at 7:01 pm #

brilliant idea and very inspiring. thank you.
Jim Karter February 2008 Earnings: $55,123 | Make Money Online responded on 03 Mar 2008 at 12:32 am #

[…] $31,611 (57.3% of total earnings). Last month it was 65% of the total earnings. I am happy that my diverficaton efforts are reaching […]
Questions Answered: Set 2 | Make Money Online responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 1:51 am #

[…] submission, article submission etc.) to double to the traffic. Also, don’t forget to diversiy your earning sources. Some advertising networks like kontera does not reduce your adsense earnings, […]
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