Adsense Alternative-Using Affiliate Links Instead of Adsense

Adsense is a great way to monetize your Website or blog.

However, it isn't always that great.

This blog has never done very well with Adsense. I find the ads are related to the subject on many posts but not quite right on. The few clicks that I do get on Adsense ads are usually not very high-paying ads. 

On my photography website, I find that the Adsense payout is often much less than I would think it should be. Often, just a few cents on a subject that should be dealing with products worth hundreds of dollars. 

So I began looking for an alternative to Adsense.

The obvious alternative would be affiliate ads. Either for physical products or information products. This usually means banners when you first think about it. However, I do not find that banners are a very effective method. I think the saying about "banner blindness" is very true. Without even being scientific about it, is very easy to see that a text link will get clicked on much more often than a banner. 

Probably the most highly clicks links are those that are placed within the text of your content. 

I think there are several programs that automatically assigned a link to keywords within the text. I've seen a few ways that do this that are actually annoying because the ads open up automatically when the mouse hovers over them. Others just put an obvious hyperlink to the keyworded text. This is something that I may look into, but I was really looking for something to take the place of Adsense ads. 

So, I started to search the Internet for an Adsense alternative.

What makes Adsense so convenient is that just adding the same code will get ads that correspond fairly well to the content. The trouble is that you do not always have control over exactly what ads are being shown. I wanted a method that would let me serve multiple ads from affiliates that I choose without having to spend a half-hour creating hyperlinks for each article or post. 

I also wanted to take advantage of the typical text link ad look.

Internet surfers are conditioned to click on Google ads and other text links that resemble them. Nearly everyone knows that clicking a link will take them somewhere. A short description included in the ad gives them an idea what to expect when they click on the link. 

Also, while there is an implied endorsement by the website of any ad on the page, there is some separation of that endorsement in a formal ad. There are instances were offering a product that you do not necessarily fully support is still good for your reader and for you. 

On my photography site, I frequently give my endorsement to Canon cameras. This is because I'm familiar with Canon cameras and can easily talk about their features. I also realize that many of my readers will be just as well off if they buy a Nikon camera. It serves both me and my viewer to have a link where they can purchase a Nikon camera on my site, even though I talk about Canon cameras. 

So I was looking for a product that would let me make my own text ads styled like Google ads.

I wanted to be able to add affiliate links for whatever products or services I thought would work for the site. I wanted to be able to serve those ads quickly without me having to hardcode every link. Affiliate programs can change and I may need to drop an advertiser or switch to a different offer. This can be a lot of trouble with the blog where you need to go through it each post and edit it manually. 

I had trouble finding such a product.

There are a few products that will make a text ad automatically from Clickbank products. These products do not let you actually choose the products that will be shown. Some do not choose very good descriptions of the product, eating choosing descriptions that are meant to attract affiliates and not a buyer. Many of the products are also very expensive or require a monthly subscription. 

I found one product that would let me do everything I wanted.

But there was one problem with it. It used HTML tables for the ad. I could choose the products I wanted for my own affiliates. I could design a text ad that resembled Google Adsense. It even allowed me to choose different styles and colors. 

From an SEO standpoint it would have been a nightmare.

I can only imagine what inserting a complicated HTML table into a post would do. It would add tons of code that has nothing to do with the content. Not only that but the text for the ad itself would be added to the content. If you repeated the same ad on several pages there is the potential for a dupe penalty with all that extra text and code on each page. 

One solution that I have been using for the past few weeks is the ads from $7 Offers .

These are made up of products that are made using the $7 Secret scripts. The author of the scripts, Jonathan Leger has created a store that features hundreds of products.

$7 Offers works good for this site because many of the products are Internet marketing related. It serves up ads from the best-selling products in the chosen category. However, this will not work for my other sites where there are not enough products in a related category yet. On the other hand, to low-cost products should make for high conversions. 

One thing I did find at $7 Offers, were two products that were nearly what I was looking for. Clickbank Ad Box Pro automatically makes text ads from Clickbank products. PaDotCom Ad Box Pro automatically makes text ads from PayDotCom products. Both of these products are very inexpensive and do not require a subscription. They're worth taking a look at.

 I think I have finally found exactly what I'm looking for.

I found a program that is reasonably priced. It lets me choose the affiliates and products I want. I can categorize the ads to choose ads that work for a particular post or article. The ads are in one central database so an ad can be removed from an entire site in seconds. 

However, you'll have to wait before I can tell you where to get this product.