What is best - Affiliate Schemes or PPC?

Firstly a quick explanation making money via affiliates is where a visitor to your website or blog follows one of your links and makes a purchase. You then get a percentage of this purchase. Examples of affiliates are the merchants found in affiliate networks such as Click Bank and Commission junction.PPC (pay per click) is where you get paid for a visitor to your website or blog clicking on one of the ads – there is no sale required. Examples of this are Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher network.


Benefits of Affiliate Schemes
Higher Commission Firstly the commission is usually greater than from PPC ads this can run up to big 3 figure sums per sale depending on the product.Recurring Commission Some affiliate schemes have recurring commission an example of this is a membership site that pays a percentage of the monthly membership fee to the affiliate every month the customer remains a member. This can bring in a steady stream of income.Multiple tiers Some affiliate schemes have multiple tiers. Not only do you get a commission on people you refer but you get a commission on people they refer too.Downside of Affiliate schemes. Loss of commission through time lag of purchase
Most affiliate schemes have a time limit from when the referred visitor arrives and when the product is purchased. If time limit this is exceeded then no commission is paid. People usually take their time to purchase something so if this time limit is low there is a high risk of losing some commissions.Commission theft. As more and more people are becoming internet and affiliate savvy they are realising that instead of paying for a product they can make a saving by joining the affiliate scheme and earning the commission back on their purchase. You lose all the commission even though it was your hard work that created the lead.Relationship management. If you are part of several affiliate schemes it can take time and effort to manage the relationship with these different schemes. Things such as managing usernames, passwords plus tracking what is and what isn’t working for each scheme take time. Time that is increased with each new affiliate scheme you join.
Benefits of PPC
No Sale required With PPC schemes like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network you only require a click to get commission. You don’t require a sale. Once the surfer has clicked on the ad the money is yours and there’s no way you can lose it.The PPC network sells the advertising space on your site for you. The network does all the hard work of getting 1000s of advertisers signed up. Using content targeting-technology they then display advertisers relevant to your web page. This means they do all the hard work – all you need to do is provide the content and the traffic. This saves you a hell of a lot of time and effort.Downside of PPC schemesPayment for click can be low.
Payment on ads can pay as little as 1 cent so it would obviously take many clicks to earn major money with this. You can however earn around $2 a click (in some cases more) it all depends the subject of your web page and how much competition there is from advertisers for it.Being banned from the scheme
To protect its advertisers PPC providers such as Google are very strict on click fraud (where publishers click on their own ads to make themselves money). If they find any of their publishers clicking on their own ads they will quite rightly ban that publisher from the scheme for life.However there have been some instances where innocent publishers have been banned either by malicious attacks or mistakes. In these instances the publisher can lose a major revenue stream.Conclusion
On average I think that the PPC model is the best way to earn money from your visitors. It saves you time on managing multiple schemes and means you can concentrate more on content creation and marketing. You also don’t stand to lose commission via theft.However if your website is in an area that only attracts small sums for the PPC ads it’s definitely worth looking at what affiliate schemes out there compliment your site.What I do is have a split of around 90% of my pages serving PPC ads and the remaining 10% promoting carefully selected affiliate schemes.

How to Avoid Being Banned From AdSense

If you trawl through the AdSense message board you can’t help but come across tales of woe from AdSense publishers that have had their account banned by Google.Below is a list of ways people have been banned from AdSense and information on how to avoid it happening to you.


Don’t click on your own adsThe obvious one but still people do it. Google has the IP address of the computer/s that you’ve used to create and check your AdSense account. If it sees that this IP address clicks one of your ads you’re in trouble. Don’t do it. It’s theft not from Google but from the AdWords advertisers. If you want to go to a site advertised by one of your ads don’t click on it look at the URL of the advertising site at the bottom of the ad and type it into your browser. If you click on one accidentally (which does happen) you’re probably be ok but it’s worth dropping a quick email to Google with an explanation and apology
Don’t log in to AdSense from a shared computer.As I said above Google keeps a record of every machine IP address used to look at your account. If you check your stats on a machine then someone else clicks on your ads from the same machine Google sees this as click fraud. Worth bearing in mind when thinking of checking your stats from somewhere like an Internet Café.Don’t log in to AdSense from work.Apart from getting in trouble with the company that employs you there’s also a further real risk. Most companies use a proxy server to access the Internet. A proxy server with ONE IP ADDRESS. Therefore you checking your ads from work means this proxy IP address being recorded by Google as one that you use. Problem is if there are 1000 people in your company it is the same IP address for them too. Google can’t differentiate between you and the other 999 employees in your company. If one of these 999 clicks on one of your ads it’s ban time.Don’t get into a ‘I’ll click your ads if you click mine’ agreement with another Webmaster.As above Google will have your IP address and that of every AdSense publisher. If they see these IP addresses consistently clicking on each other ads it’s goodbye for both of you.Don’t tell friends and family.Telling friends and family about your money making websites can lead to problems. Even if you tell them not to click on your ads there’s always the chance that Auntie Maud will think it’s a good idea to make some extra money for her favourite nephew. 100 clicks later from the same visitor and your account is screaming ‘Click Fraud’.Receiving clicks from Illegal trafficCheck the AdSense TOS for sources of traffic that aren’t allowed by Google. These include methods like Traffic exchange, PTC advertising, Auto surf etc.Do monitor your visitor and AdSense figures Check your account at least once a day. If you see a massive spike coupled with a massive increase in Page CTR investigate using your visitor stats website. If you see it’s all come from the same IP address you could have been the victim of a malicious attack – inform Google via email and offer them access to your logs.

How You can Have an AdSense Business

When AdSense first appeared on the scene a few years ago. Many webmasters who already had websites saw it as a opportunity to make money from their website/s. Of the many who made great money from their hobby websites few ever thought of making an AdSense business. As far as they were concerned they had a great way of making money from their hobby. They couldn’t believe their luck!


It wasn’t long though before entrepreneurs caught onto this great way of making money and started building 10s even 100s of AdSense websites. Many of these made thousands a month and some became Internet millionaires just through their AdSense business. With the advent of tools that make it easy for anyone to set up an AdSense website thousands continue join the AdSense gravy train every month. Over the past year legendary online marketer John Reese has been publishing a ‘secret’ monthly publication (electronic newsletter and companion CD-Rom) that has both demonstrated and taught hundreds of little-known money-making strategies. John has opened up the monthly resource and has now gone public.
I’m delighted to be able to offer one of John’s monthly publications for free as a special offer to the readers of MakingOnlineMoney.com
In it you’ll learn:- How To Build A Virtual Real Estate EmpireThe simple techniques and methods you can use to start building an online empire made up of lots of tiny content sites. This is the model that John has used to cash AdSense checks worth over $72,000 for a single month.Special Methods That Grow ANY Online Business AutomaticallyLearn how to easily structure your websites so the site traffic grows by itself - without you doing any additional work or paying a single penny for advertising. This works for AdSense sites, affiliate program sites, infoproduct sites, and more.Get An "Inside Look" At Valuable Testing ResultsWhat if you could take a peek at the testing results from other web sites? Now you can. This is some amazing stuff contained and I’m eternally grateful for John for letting my readers have this amazing opportunity for FREE. I subscribe to John’s monthly publication and can safely say it’s the main reason for me going from earning a little extra cash online a month to a owning a thriving online business.

Why in AdSense Less is More - (how many ads should you have?)

If you’re familiar with AdSense you’ll be aware that you can have 3 ad units and 1 link unit per page. Many webmasters make the mistake of using the full allocation thinking the more ads there are the more likely a visitor is going to click them and therefore the more money they will make.This doesn’t work in my experience (and the experience of other webmasters I have spoken too) and here is the reason why.


What ever you web page subject there will be AdSense ads of varying value. Google will always display the most valuable ads because they want like you to make the most money. Now if you have all three ad units in play on the page not only will you have the most valuable ads but also you will have the ads from companies who paid considerably less. Obviously if people click on one of these less paying ads you may only be getting a few cents. Therefore my advice to you is to have a maximum of one ad unit and one link unit per page. That way when you get clicks from your visitors they are more likely to be of a higher value.Having fewer ads on your pages also has the benefit of making your page look more professional. There’s nothing worse than coming to a page which is swamped with AdSense ads it’ll have the majority of your visitors hitting the back button long before they read the ads let alone click on them. If you don’t believe me choose a page with reasonable traffic and test it for a couple of weeks. If you’re not earning as much as before you can always change it back. I’m willing to bet though after you see the improved 'Click Through Rate' (CTR), page 'Effective CPM' (eCPM), and ultimately earnings for the page you’ll be changing the rest of your site to the same format.