There are different types of PPC programs; traditional affiliate programs and contextual advertising. While both types will pay you for clicks delivered, they have a few differences important to consider before choosing program.



Contextual advertising – where the publisher (you) place some sort of script on your pages, and other webmasters bid for the traffic derived from your – and other publishers – link. You get paid for every visitor sent, mostly as a percentage of the winning bid. While you do get paid for every click, it is hard, not to say impossible, to estimate how much you’ll get, it can very from a few cents to dollars.

Contextual advertising offers a very simple solution, making it a very viable option for webmasters with to little time to focus on monetizing their sites. All you need to do is place the script on your pages, and the ads show. If your pages, and the text on them, have a clear message, you will mostly see highly relevant ads. You need to understand that the very nature of this automated process is reliant on the spider’s ability to understand what the text is really about. If it fails, you will be left with a bunch of ads of low relevance. With a few exceptions, this will be certain to significantly lower the click thru rate, making you loose much of your revenue.

If you are using contextual advertising, it’s a good idea to check your pages to see what ads are showing. If you notice pages with strange ads, you can easily either edit the text or – if the program allows – specify what part of your page the ads should be based on. Making these changes is very important to maximize the return of your efforts.

With contextual advertising, you never need to worry about meeting conversion requirements; all you need to do is send the traffic their way. After that, it’s up to the highest bidder to make use of the newly bought visitor. If webmasters buying contextual ads don’t make money for a specific keyword, they will stop buying those visitors, thus lowering the price. When the price is low enough, it is once again possible to make a profit, the competition – and bidding – for the keywords hardens, thus making the prices go up again. Back and forth, so it goes.

Most programs offer various ways of traffic your performance, often with the ability to customize the statistics to meet your needs. I suggest you try to be as specific as possible at first, trying to pin point where the clicks are coming from. What ads never seem to attract people, and on what pages they can be found. If you have a few pages – with an equal amount of visitors – that don’t work well with the contextual ads, sort them out and add affiliate links to those pages instead.

As soon as you know your site’s behavior, it’s easier to maximize your revenue, whether it’s by use of contextual advertising, or traditional affiliate programs.