Time to Diversify Your Earning Sources

I found this article is a must read for those who seriously want to make some cash over the internet. It's written by Jim Karter. Enjoy.


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 BurstMedia 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.
• FastClick - FastClick 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.
• 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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