Monetizing our sites – trying out new affiliate programs

Some of you have probably noticed that I’ve been working on new ways to monetize my sites over the last few weeks.

I was lucky enough to have been invited into the Blogads program recently by a blogging friend. I’d been hankering to get into that program for some time so I’m quite pleased to have been included.

I’ve actually had quite a bit of luck with advertising companies lately. They’ve been seeking me out rather than the other way around. Perhaps they know something about my sites that I don’t know?

Emily from Kontera got in touch with me about a month ago inviting me to join the Kontera program. They worked with me to develop special codes for four of my domains. I’ve only just started adding them to some of my sites so I’ve yet to see how the program fairs against others like Adsense, but I can tell you that I’ve already made a bit of money and I’ve put the code only on the smaller less visited sites so far.

Lets see, what other companies contacted me directly?

Around the same time that Emily was writing to me from Kontera so was Jeff from Tumri. I finally got around to setting up my first Apod the other day. See the nice white box with various fashion products in it in the right sidebar? That’s a Tumri Apod. No one has clicked on an ad yet though. I’ll have to wait and see how Tumri does on my sites. I’ve only put the one Apod on this site. I’ll create new Apods that totally suit my other blogs topics and try them out on those blogs soon.

I was also invited to join the COPEAC program as well. Nina got me set up, but I still haven’t used any of their ads. COPEAC has ads from a variety of advertisers. You can pick and choose exactly which ads will go on your site. You can actually chose from a number of different advertisers or ads and then use the banner or optimized rotator code to show different ads when a page refreshes. It’s quite versatile. The link that I’ve added is an affiliate link. I’d appreciate it if you’d sign up through me if you are thinking of getting into COPEAC too.

NBCsearch also happened to contact me. I’ve signed up with their program, but have yet to try it out as well. I actually haven’t quite figured out what this is. I believe it allows you to add an xml feed to your site of the search results of your choosing. If anyone else is using this program maybe you can teach me something.

I signed up with BlogKits or OfferForge as it’s now called on my own. The ads from that site are in the middle of each sidebar to the left and right of this post. I’ve had a few clicks on those ads. No income yet. This is another one I’ll have to keep an eye on to see how it does.

There’s another site that invited me to partner with them using three of my blogs. I was introduced to them from my contact at The Glam Network. (Glam is another affiliation that’s been working out beautifully for me BTW). I’ll tell you more about that new partnership once we’re ready to set it up and introduce it on my sites. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about that deal within a week or so.

There’s also been some private advertisers that have contacted me as well. I’ve had requests from private advertisers for some time – for links but I don’t always take them up on their offers. Two recent offers caught my interest and I’m currently working with these two new advertisers with whom I’ve set up 6 month partnerships. I’ll tell you about each of them individually in future posts.

I’m pretty sure that I’ll be removing the Adbrite ads from all my sites. I only make a few cents each week with them. The only time I’ve made a significant amount of money was when one kind advertiser purchased an ad for a month. I think I’ve only made about $74 dollars in the year that I’ve worked with adbrite and I’ve yet to get an actual payment. I feel that I can do better with the other forms of advertising that I’ve already been using and the programs that I’ve just added.

I’ll keep you updated as to how these new programs are working out. Hopefully one or two if not all of them make me a little bit of extra money.