Contextual Advertising

With the growing advertising market on the web, one sector that seems to have great growth potential, and thus a decent potential for personal income is contextual advertising. There are several available with Yahoo and Google providing 'ads' that change depending on your web page content. One I have recently joined seems to be pretty good.

Chitika

Chitika is a fairly new site that offers several different types of advertising.

Chitika - Premium - this behavioually targets your search engine traffic. Ot provides a 'search' engine and lists some sponsored results.

eMiniMalls - highlights products and allows for a search of products.

Multiple Product Unit (MPU)- lists multiple products

Linx - my personal favorite and the one I use. It searches your text and highlights words, linking them to other websites. (Move your mouse over the highlighted words in this blog).

While I am new to this program it does seem pretty good - I'll update as I go.

To join click here.

Hints and Tips

I use blogger.com and had a lot of trouble 'installing' Linx. I use a template, and while the Linx instructions state that you simply paste the Javascript code at the end of the HTML just before '/body' this doesn't work in all cases. If you have any 'widgets' on your blog, then these seem to get added to the HTML in this position and therefore the code doesn't work.

Therefore, to ensure the code works - add a Javascript widget and ensure it is the last widget - this did the trick for me!


According to the site it does work with AdSense, and I've noticed it seems to work OK! However, it's worth checking out the AdSense TOS to ensure this is a valid 'partner' site.

Word of Caution

As Linx is a 'beta' release, it does seem to provide some non-contextual links - I assume as they build their database, the referral sites will become more contextual - it remains to be seen if this is a hindrance to my own personal website - leave me a comment!

Revenues

I tend to get about 1000 clicks to my blog a month - as the blog is fairly new there's not a lot of content - however I am still earning a couple of dollars through Adsense - hopefully with the 'Linx' I will increase this revenue.

The good thing about this type of 'revenue generation' is that once it has been setup on your blog, there is no maintenance. The 'ad' company does all the work for you. So it's almost money for nothing!!!

Final Note

Initially when I started creating blogs I filled them up with icons, banners and referral links. I had a nifty 'Amazon' widget. However, what I have found is that the more there is the less revenue I get. It seems that people get turned off by 'clutter' and sites that are obviously out to get referrals and don't actually provide useful information.

Therefore I removed the clutter - added information that doesn't earn me money (see my Epinions reference) and tried to provide a lot more information. So far it seems to be working better.

Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Ebay and various other sites all have some type of referral program - used correctly these can earn you a nice little bit of revenue - however it seems the key that you make these secondary to your website and not primary!

Good luck!