What makes a web site qualify for Google Adsense? It's simply content, that is articles, commentary, reviews, editorials and stories. If you don't write, it's not hopeless. There are additional sources of web content.
Recently I wrote an article about Google Adsense contextual advertising innovation that was introduced by the popular search engine to allow "Content" web sites to profit from advertising. Suddenly it has become possible for those who have an intense interest in nearly any focused subject to gather information, resources and commentary to publish a profitable web site.

How? Well, that's the new buzz. Just what is content and what will Google approve for the Adsense program? I can't speak for Google, but after my recent article on the popular new Adsense program ran in several high traffic web venues, I've received a string of notes from webmasters who have been turned down by Google for pariticipation in contextual advertising programs.

I'm curious, what constitutes unacceptable content for Adsense? So I visited dozens of domains owned by those that had sent me those emails to see if I could tell, A) Why Google turned away a site that believed they qualified and, B) Whether I agreed with Google's assessment.

Without fail I found that those sites that had been turned down by Google for participation in Adsense simply had no content! Since the key to contextual advertising is having content within which to place advertising in context, what constitutes content?

Here's the http://www.Dictionary.com definition of "Content" "Subject matter of a written work, as a book or magazine."

That definition puts web site content in context for me. If you see your web site as an online written work that's like a print magazine or book, then you have a content web site. Emphasis on the first syllable. CONtent.

Again and again I looked at those sites that Google had turned down for Adsense and see either sites entirely self focused and promoting their own products, services and subscriptions, or sites that were entirely outwardly focused and promoting and linking to other sites without writing anything or having anything to say about those sites.

First a word about self focused sites. Those sites that exist for sales of their own product or service absolutely SHOULD NOT participate in Adsense contextual advertising because their site content will always show Adsense advertising for competitors!

While Google has a filtering method that allows those showing Adsense ads to keep direct competitors advertisements from appearing on their site, that method would filter most of those advertisements and leave those sites with no ads at all! When all of your content is about what you sell, you should probably keep your attention focused on those sales and off of contextual ads.

Who should participate in Google Adsense then? Content sites - that is those that see themselves as sort of online magazine that discusses, analyzes, comments, reviews or editorializes. Those who have extensive CONtent, not those who are conTENT.

A client contacted me recently after hearing of the Google Adsense program. He has about three articles on his web site that discuss and analyze issues of interest to those who might buy his products. He'd done his homework by reviewing his site visitor statistics and had discovered that those articles were responsible for the majority of referrals to his site from the search engines. I basked in the warm glow of his praise as he excitedly told me how these pages (that I had recommended he add to his site) were drawing fully a third of his web site traffic!

It always pleases me when clients see the positive results of implementing strategies that I've recommended to them. These pages increased traffic and sales of his products.

This client then leapt to the conclusion that if those articles were drawing most of his search engine traffic, then we should place the Google Adsense code on those pages and capitalize on that traffic with contextual advertising! I had to let him down easily, explaining that three articles don't constitute significant content. When he asked me what WOULD constitute substantial enough content to qualify for the Adsense program, it made me stop and think.

My answer to him is likely to dismay many web site owners who believe their site might qualify for contextual advertising. After a brief pause, I responded that I thought it would take about fifty articles of 500 words or more to qualify for Adsense advertising.

As he silently digested that admittedly daunting number, it was suddenly crystal clear to me why so many web site owners that don't write, don't qualify for Google Adsense. Web site owners that do write their own articles, opinions and analysis on subject matter that is important to them will have that much content on their site already. My client had struggled for weeks to research, distill and edit his thoughts into those three articles on his site.

During that pregnant pause, I digested the ramifications of my own words, my client gave up immediately and said simply, "I can never write that many articles, so I'll never qualify for contextual advertising on my web site.

Oh, you may not write, but you are wrong about qualifying for contextual advertising-if you really want to. And, by the way, your search engine ranking will go through the roof if you reproduce 50 articles on that topic on your web site. On top of that, your web site traffic will increase dramatically, your sales will go up and you will qualify easily for Google Adsense.

He paused as if I had spoken to him in a foreign language and said, "If I don't write those articles to put on my site, who will?"

I immediately responded with my favorite sources for free web content, one of which I've operated myself for nearly four years.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-content/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwrite-publish-announce/

There are also literally hundreds of web sites that collect and distribute articles. Their policies and practices vary widely so I'll leave it to you to find those appropriate to your site subject matter, but here a few that immediately come to mind.

http://www.goarticles.com http://www.makingprofit.com http://www.amazines.com/ http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Web publishers and authors regularly join these lists to exchange content on popular topics. Writers make their articles available to ezine, newsletter and web site publishers in exchange for that publisher running a small bio at the end of their article with a link to the authors web site. This exchange offers value to both parties. The publisher gains content, the writer gains a web link and that link increases her visibility and her web site search engine ranking goes up due to link popularity.

The content is out there, you simply need to gather it, publish it and then apply to Google Adsense for contextual advertising. You are benefitting those authors by linking to them, your search engine ranking by increasing your own site content and relevance, and finally your bankbook by qualifying for contextual advertising and making all of that content pay.

Don't be conTENT, have CONtent! Then apply for Google Adsense.

by Mike Valentine

In chess, promotion occurs when a pawn reaches the eighth square. At that point, your opponent is challenged because this simple pawn takes on all the powers of a Queen—the deadliest piece on the board. Of course, the pawn may be promoted to bishop, rook, or any other piece but why? This only clues the other player in to your secret plans. That being said, however, promotions to knight can often be strategically useful depending on the situation.

What the beelzebub am I talking about? Let's not get too lost in metaphor. Suffice to say, the circuitous game of promoting one's blog in the blogosphere (without the proper armament) can often seem as difficult and unrewarding as a day-long chess match that ends in a draw. If you play your game right, however, that pawn can hit the big time. Ideally, the simple act of blogging in and of itself would attract enough traffic to please the author but there are cases in which more is better. Whether you are participating in AdSense for Bloggers and would like to see a spike in your profits, or you just want more comments on your posts, increasing hit-count is beneficial.

Toward that end, I spent my Labor Day snooping around the blogosphere. While I should have been eating potato salad and lounging by someone's pool, I was slaving over my laptop pulling together a bevy of accepted methods for growing the readership base of your blog. I hope you'll find them useful. In practice, the procedures fall into three basic categories involving settings, techniques, and actual marketing tricks. Some are very obvious and others, more subtle. It appears that many bloggers have found success with these solutions—I've tried a few and found that they do in fact increase traffic.

Blogger Application Settings
Blogger itself has an array of settings, many of which work to your advantage in this endeavor. This first grouping is quite simple and just requires that you sign in to your Blogger account and flip a few switches.

Set your blog to ping weblogs.com. Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes. When this setting is activated, Blogger will notify weblogs.com that you have updated your blog. That means your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Activate Your Navbar. I did this and watched my traffic go up on the very first day (and continue to climb). The Blogger Navbar replaced mandatory ads a few weeks ago. One of the features on the Navbar is a button called NextBlog—click it to visit the next Navbar-enabled blog. It turns out this couch-potato like way of flipping through blogs is very appealing. As a result, the next blog button gets a lot of attention. So turn your Navbar on and catch some of that wave.

Install Email This Post. News sites like The New York Times Online have had a feature like this for years, it allows people to simply forward an article to a friend via email. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This may not have an immediate impact on your site stats but it enables others to publicize your blog for you. That's good stuff.

Turn on Post Pages. If you're still only archiving by day, week, or month you are living in the past man. You've got to make sure you are publishing every post as its very own web page with Post Pages. That makes your entries way more link-able and more attractive to search engines. Links to your blog means traffic to your blog. This is an easy setting in Blogger.

Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, it means they are definitely going to read your post. The folks who subscribe to site feeds are the type of people Malcolm Gladwell calls "mavens" in his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Long story short: these people will help you get more traffic so turn on your site feed.

Add your blog to Blogger's listings. This is a really obvious one but at some point during the blog creation process there's a chance many of you initially thought "Oh, I'm not sure I want to be public just yet. I'll mark that as 'no.'" Go back in there and mark it "yes." When you add your blog to our listings then it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to traffic. Do it.

Blogging Technique Suggestions
This part of the traffic-grabbing techniques is a little more persnickety and not as readily activated. The basic gist of this section of methods is "If you build it well they will come." You'll need to incorporate the other aspects of self-promotion, but it's true that writing a great blog goes a long way towards repeat visitors and word of mouth blog.

Write quality content and do it well. Jen Garrett demands that you use proper punctuation, capitalize letters when appropriate, and don't overuse the ellipsis. She's being a bit of a grammar bitch, but she has a point. If your "style" is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd. But the idea here is to get a big crowd so fix yourself up a bit, pull it together man, have some respect for your readers, and discover a style that shines brightly through good blogging.

Publish regular updates. Danah Boyd once told me that she intentionally wanted to lower the traffic to her blog and she found the easiest way to do it was to stop posting so frequently. (Danah is an odd one, that's why we love her.) The reverse of her experiment is also true: the more you blog, the more traffic you will get. You've got to think about it like watering a plant—do it every day and the plant will grow. Hopefully your blog is not like the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors. That would be bad.

Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to cultivate one. When you keep your audience in mind, you are focusing your writing. This helps you develop a stronger voice and is instrumental in creating the brand that is you as put forth through your blog. Again, this is more of an overarching, long-term technique for building traffic and won't have immediate results. Nevertheless, focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

Keep search engines in mind. Note that sometimes your "audience" is whoever stumbles into your site from a web search. Search is a great way to bring in new visitors and there are a few things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly. Use post titles and blog page title tags along with your post page archiving. This will automatically give each of your post pages an intelligent name based on the title of your post. Also, try to be descriptive when you blog. A well crafted post about something very specific can end up very near the top results of a search. For example, a Google search for "Book Cover Design" features this blog post by the illustrious Jason Kottke complete with reader comments.

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Note the brevity of the aforementioned Kottke post. People will come back daily to read your fresh new work but spare them the one thousand word diatribes. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on. Think of you blog as a cumulative effect. This doesn't mean you should never practice some long form writing now and then, it's just something to keep in mind.

Marketing Action Items
The third and final group of promotional techniques are simple actions you can take to publicize your blog. This category is theoretically unlimited. You could build your own blimp and spell out your blogspot subdomain in twinkly holiday lights across the side, that sort of thing. Instead, I've limited these suggestions to more obvious, grounded tactics. (If you do got the blimp route, please: use helium, not hydrogen.)

Put your blog URL in your email signature. Whenever I see a blog url in an email signature, I always click on it to see who I'm dealing with. Especially if it's someone I've never met. Email gets forwarded all the time so even if you only send out a five notes a day to friends, the potential number of people clicking over to your blog is in the thousands. (That is of course completely theoretical, but you get my drift—it's worth it.) I can't give you specific instructions on how to edit your email client's signature because I don't know which one you use, but poke around. It's somewhere in the settings.

Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog's url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, and any other site of that ilk you come across. With the exception of Technorati, many of these sites are hobby or graduate student projects but they continue to gain visitors looking for interesting blogs to read, bookmark, and revisit. Not all of them have the power to crawl ever blog in existence so you can help them help you by dropping your url in the appropriate field.

Participate in meme games. A meme is an idea transmitted from person to person like a virus. If the flu was a blog, it would get crazy traffic. With all the sickness and disease analogies, blog induced memes are actually fun and can win you some extra traffic. How do they work? Basically a blogger will propose an idea like "Hey, let's post the first sentence of our favorite book!" and it will catch on like crazy with people linking to each other's submissions obsessively until the game dies down. A favorite meme for years was the Friday Five, if you're looking for something new, try The Daily Meme.

Advertise. If keyword advertising were affordable enough, I'd say go for it. For now, free is a good way to go. BlogSnob is a network of free, text-based blog advertisers that you can join right now. Host ads, place ads, it's all traffic. BlogSnob ads blend right into your site and are fully customizable. Bloggers who join the network can place free ads, while sometime in the near future real advertisers will have to dish out to get noticed. It pays to be a blogger.

Link to other blogs. This is a great way to get traffic. Here's what happens when you link to another blogger: she sees you in her referral logs, checks out your blog, and then very likely links back to you or at the very least makes a mental note to do so. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking. Don't be shy folks, it's not actually cash. Not yet anyway—who knows what bloggers will come up with.

Install a blogroll. This is similar to linking. Well actually, it's the same but different. Blog posts eventually drop off the front page and get archived. A blogroll is more of personal statement: these are the bloggers I like. Or, this is the crowd I'd like to be associated with. It's a very simple yet effective social networking scheme and it has the same result as a simple link if not stronger: traffic! So if you don't have one yet, sign up for a blogroll and get that link-list going.

Be an active commenter. Try to leave comments on the blogs you read every day. This is in the same vein as linking. Leaving a comment on someone's post can make their day. Nothing beats getting those email notifications that whisper tacitly out at you from the screen, "You're thoughts have struck me dead in my tracks. I simply must acknowledge you and your greatness." (Or something to that effect.) Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.

Pitch your posts via email to other bloggers. This is a touchy technique and should be approached with caution. Blogger Eugene Volokh has published a short treatise on how best to pitch one's blog via email and it's filled with great tips and advice. Assuming your blog is actually worth pitching (of course it is), here are some tips from Volokh.

Pitch the post, not the blog.
Include the full text and your URL.
Submit only your best posts.
Don't only pitch to high traffic blogs.
Print your blog URL on cards, stickers, etc. Basically, if you plan to have anything printed up, put your blog on it. These days, more and more business cards have blog addresses listed on them along with email and phone number. I wouldn't be surprised if I started seeing bumper stickers with blogspot addresses on them soon. There's a lot of traffic on the 101, that bumper in front of me is prime advertising real estate.

Speaking of the 101, maybe you've spotted the giant orange SUV with the license plate that says BLOGGER while driving south towards San Jose? No, that's not Evan Williams as you would suspect. It is, however, a nice piece of creative publicity. If there's one thing we've learned from my Labor Day investigation of blog promotion it's this: Don't be that guy with the BLOGGER license plate but think like him. That's the kind of take-charge technique you should open your game with. That's how you can turn your pawn into royalty.

By Biz Stone

Inspired by chocolate bar tycoon Milton Hershey, Harry Reese set out to make his own fortune in the candy industry. He came up with a few duds including the forgettable molasses "Johnny Bar" and that big loser, the "Coconut Lizzie" before inspiration struck like a sack of sugar to the head. Peanut butter and chocolate, a divine combination. In 1923, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were created and a candy empire was born.

Inspiration, Without The Calories
You'll be happy to know that we at Blogger have recently had a similar epiphany. One that does not involve butter of any sort. This may shock you at first so steel yourself for the idea. Ready? We are going to start paying bloggers. Soon you will be blogging for dollars. That's right people, chocolate is to peanut butter like AdSense is to blogs. Or is it the other way around? Either way, we've got something big here folks.

You may have noticed that we recently removed our ads from Blogger powered blogs. We were making money from those ads but you weren't getting any of it. Now, we're inviting you to set up your own Bloggerized AdSense account so that you make the money. What's the catch? We're going to take some of the action. Based on what we have learned from AdSense so far, this will work out very nicely for both of us. Please note that this program is optional and that it is not required for you to have a Blogger powered blog—all bloggers are invited.

Understanding "BlogSense"
Google AdSense is a content-targeted advertising program. This means that you do not select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies. In fact, when you blog about something specific, there's a good chance you'll earn more, as Matthew Haughey discovered when he put ads on PVRblog. Haughey wrote about his experience in an essay called Blogging for Dollars in which he included four of his own hints.

Haughey's Hints for AdSense Bloggers

Focus, and be as specific as you can.
Write content related to real products.
Don't start a blog just for money.
Use a professionally designed template.
See also: Learn by Doing
See also: Google AdSense FAQ
Haughey was also careful to point out that AdSense for blogs is not a get-rich-quick scheme. "Don't just slap ads on your blog and expect to get rich the next day. It takes time to build an audience and gain links from people that find your content useful." Wise words from a long-time blogger. Still, there is money to be made and if you're interested here's how to get started.

Putting AdSense on Your Blog
Putting ads on your blog is pretty much the same routine as adding a hit counter, a quiz, a guestbook or any other blog add-on. All you need to do once you've signed up for an AdSense account is customize your ads, copy some HTML code, and paste that code into your template. You might want to think about where on your blog the ads would work best or take a little time matching the colors and that sort of thing but overall, it's not such a big deal. Later, you can sign in to your AdSense account and see how much money you're making. It's like checking your stats except its money instead of hits. It's pretty fun.

See: How do I put AdSense on my blog?
Welcome To Our _ool
Notice there's no "P" in it. Have you ever seen those signs people post near swimming pools to prevent a few misbehaving kids from messing up everyone's fun? Yeah, well we're putting up a sign too: "Welcome To BlogSense, Please Behave." Okay, so it's not as "clever." Nevertheless, the point is made. We want everyone to have a fair shot at blogging for dollars but there's a few things we don't allow.

Things Not To Do

Don't come up with sneaky ways to click on your own ads or get your friends to help you. This is a sure way to get your account terminated for good.
Don't draw unnecessary attention to your ads. Even posting text that says "please click on these ads" is against the policy.
Don't share how much you've earned. That's going to be hard for lots of bloggers but it is against the terms and conditions and will get you kicked out.
Don't fiddle around with the AdSense code. You've got to leave it the way it is if you want to get paid.
If you want to participate in AdSense for bloggers, play nice. Just pick your ad colors, paste the code into your template, then keep on blogging. If you play by the rules, Google will mail you checks. For more details, check out the Google AdSense Program Policies.

The Revolution Is Being Bloggerized
Once you get into it, AdSense is pretty cool. There is a WYSIWYG editor to customize your colors. You can choose between image ads or text ads. There are a variety of different shapes and sizes for your ad format. Best of all, you can sign in to see how much money you're making and keep track of your progress. So that's our bold new vision. We're going to pay you for blogging. We're pretty excited about this and hope you are too. Feel free to sign up now. Here's to your first Adsense dollar!

Biz Stone works at Google on Blogger and writes books about blogging.

Phillip E. Pascuzzo is a designer and illustrator living in New York.

The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered the growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search engine algorithm changes, along with the search engine's clear distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in the use of software programs that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered the affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be considered.

A Healthy Alternative or Supplement
Google's Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Google's pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Google's spider parses the adserving website and serves ads that relate to the website's content. While the Google's Adsense program still has some issues, they are making efforts to improve it.

The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert javascript into the webpage or website template. The javascript calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks one of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for the referral.

The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes to resemble the website's color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of the creative ads webmasters are accustom to.

The example below reflects how the color scheme can be modified to match the look of the website, but the ads physically don't fit well into the overall website design.

sample modified to match sites color scheme:
http://www.hospital-software.com (scroll to the bottom)

Google determines the content of the ads that are shown/ Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest to the website visitors.

sample of poorly targeted ads:
http://www.real-estate-supply.com

Adwords can be a great addition to a website, and when well matched to the content the revenue stream from Google is consistent and effortless.

sample of effective Adsense program:
http://www.police-supplies.com (scroll to the bottom)
http://www.small-business-software.net (scroll to the bottom)

Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its problems.as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has not implemented any way to track multiple sites that serve ads; they simply show the number of ads served, the percentage of clicks received, and the revenue earned each day. Google does not disclose the amount of the revenue they share, what percentage of the revenue they earn and what someone can expect to receive for each click. Webmasters with multiple sites will have difficulty determining which websites are producing the money in the Adsense program.

With affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser launch with each click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor from the website and there is not currently an option to launch the visitor into another browser.

Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed webmasters to prevent a specific domain's ads from being served on the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent their competitors ads from being dynamically served on their website.

Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites where affiliate programs are either not performing or when affiliate programs don't exist that target the sites content.

Give it a Try
Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a content site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider supplementing content and see what happens.

by S. Housley

When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain questions have been burning in people's mind like: what's going to happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google's Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?

Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages and disadvantages of using Google's Adsense vs Associate Programs and which Associate Programs will prevail.

In case you are not familiar with Google's Adsense, Adsense is a new service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return, you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.

How Does Adsense's Advantages Compare To Associate Programs

Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs. Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced marketer.

Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy of the program will depend on the one you select.

Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don't have inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition. No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of worrying about advertising your indirect competition.

How Does Adsense's Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs

One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really tell you what percentage you will receive. I don't know about you, but wouldn't it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.

Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.

Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Eventually, I'm sure Google will improve the way it does it's content targeting and start rotating their advertisements. By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can't do that, you have your hands tied behind your back.

Adsense's stats are terrible, they don't tell you which advertisements your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved. Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.

You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs, you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving you full control, without damaging your credibility.

Which Associate Programs Will Prevail

Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it's a wake up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program, that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving your Associate Program.

As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google's Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or higher, and be a breeze to promote.

In the end, Google's Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete. Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.

Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes occur.

by Rich Hamilton, Jr