Want to make money while directing more traffic to your website? You might consider pay per click advertising streams. They can direct Internet users who might want to pay for your information or products to your site at the same time you offer advertising space to sites your users might be interested in. Before you sign up with the first pay per click or affiliate program you see, do your homework.



Google AdSense is the most popular pay per click program out there today. It has the benefits of being in the game for a long time and offering a great deal of research and development into their keyword matching. But what if you have been removed from Google AdSense or just want to branch out and try other services as well? There are other options out there.

Yahoo! also has a pay per click program, theirs is called Yahoo! Publisher Network. It works similarly to Google's AdSense program but has only recently come onto the scene. Users of both AdSense and Publisher Network have found that, though Google is quicker to remove an advertiser, they are still the most valuable. The Yahoo! service is likely not far behind, though.

Chitika and AdBrite are just two of the other pay per click advertising streams currently online. They offer a marketing service and affiliate program. Here's how it works:

- You create your website to sell your goods or information

- You sign up for Chitika or AdBrite or a similar marketing program

- Other companies who sell goods or information that compliments yours also join the marketing program

- The program matches your goods/information and the complimenting companies

- You advertise their site and they advertise yours, through a variety of marketing formats that feed directly to your sites

There are four basic benefits of using a streaming advertising service:

- Intelligent, targeted recommendations bring product and information links related to your site content to the visitor

- Database that handles your ads continually "learns" which ads work best for your site and changes the ads as needed, in addition to regular ad rotation

- You get paid when your visitors click through the ads on your site

- You can usually bid on the cost of your ad appearing on other sites (at least with Google and Yahoo! programs), allowing you to easily manage your online marketing costs

Affiliate programs offer similar, but not the same, website advertising. There are large affiliate programs out there that only permit businesses with mid to high level traffic. There are small affiliate programs that swap a one-for-one link and let anyone take part. New businesses should look for something in the middle.

The best banner ads are those that are not rich with graphics. Textual link ads are the quickest to load so they are the most effective. The cost of affiliate programs range from tenths of pennies per click to monthly fees of $5 or more.

Regardless of the affiliate or pay per click program you use, it is good business practice to run reports frequently and change the ad streams if you aren't making money from the ads on your site or aren't receiving much traffic from your ads on other sites. It is also important to change the information on your site often or offer freebies to encourage visitors to return again and again.