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The accepted answer to this question states that Adsense functions rather poorly. What is the alternative then?

My site has about 400 daily visitors, 1.5 pages/visit - so I'm too small to manually approach any sponsor for an personal ad deal. What AdSense would work best?

By 'best' I mostly mean "make the most money", although usability is also a factor.

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  • Can you give us the topic of your site? We'll be able to make better suggestions. As @Kinopiko said, Amazon links work well if integrated properly. There's also some text link alternatives.
    – Tim Post
    Jul 17, 2010 at 11:06
  • I answered the question but still it isn't a well-formed question, when you say "work" you mean "make money"? You want to make money off your visitors even though you haven't got many visitors? Regarding that answer to the question about "Adsense functions rather poorly", I have no idea why that answer was upvoted as it was and then accepted as if it was some kind of definitive answer rather than one rather random experience.
    – delete
    Jul 18, 2010 at 11:16
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    @Tim - Here is my site: draw3cards.com. It's a Stack Exchange 1.0 site about Magic: The Gathering (a card game).
    – ripper234
    Aug 25, 2010 at 23:25
  • AdSense can do well with a few hundred uniques per day. CJ.com is the largest affiliate network. Google Affilate Network is also good. Amazon as mentioned you could be putting up books videos and cards related to Magic and earn commissions on sales. Are there any conventions or tournaments each year which would buy ad space? What about a market place to let users buy, sell and trade their cards and you can earn a tiny % per transaction?
    – Anagio
    Feb 29, 2012 at 8:57
  • @Anagio - Thanks for the reply. I don't want to turn this into a discussion on how to specifically monetize a Magic website. BTW, I was later approached by a 3rd party sponsor, and replaced adsense with his ads. "I'm to small to approach" is probably not correct - you can do some market research, compile a list of possible websites that would like to advertise, and approach them ... no harm in that, and you can strike gold.
    – ripper234
    Feb 29, 2012 at 9:09

7 Answers 7

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There are many alternatives. The best way to find an advertiser is to look at a competitor's website and see who places ads with them. Find out if they use an ad network that is positioned to the same market as yours.

Also, you don't have to get a big name advertiser to place ads with you. Do a quick search on Google and see who is advertising there.

Chances are if they advertise on Google they may place ads with you too. You can really pitch something like that; as long as your content is much more focused on a niche. Give them a call, you have nothing to lose.

Finally, if your posting about a product you might be able to find an affiliate program for it. Do some research and see if you can find any good deals. Amazon if a good place to start.

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Project Wonderful is a nice marketplace.

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The contextual ads are on topic enough, but not exactly interesting:

Persecutor, Joraga, Omnath> Magic the Gathering Cards Check out our HUGE MTG Inventory Super Low Prices and Fast Shipping

Magic 2011 M11 Singles M11 2011 Core Set single from $0.24 Lowest Shipping to worldwide

Cheap Worldwake Singles Pre-Order WWK singles today, boxes, Abyssal Persecutor, Joraga, OmnathPersecutor, Joraga, Omnath

The problem with contextual ads (this goes beyond just Google) is that they look like someone cut out a bunch of classifieds and taped them on your monitor. People going to your site are looking for answers to questions, some of them might be enticed to cash in on a good deal if they actually noticed it.

I would recommend Amazon / E-bay image links with the least amount of clutter as well as a mix of other affiliates. You might consider running your own ad server, such as OpenX to track and tweak your campaigns.

Additionally, in my experience, ads that interrupt the content that the user came to see get far less attention than the non-irritating 200x200 square to the right. Did you try using image only ads in that location?

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  • I haven't tried image-only ads. Actually, I just now setup my analytics integration and am finally statring to see graphs (thanks to webmasters.se - webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/…). Where subscribe as a publisher at Amazon/E-bay?
    – ripper234
    Sep 13, 2010 at 23:38
  • BTW, Google optimize between their text-ads and images, so the type of ads that yield the most $$$ should be displayed more. If this is true, why should I restrict adsense to image-only?
    – ripper234
    Sep 13, 2010 at 23:39
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Affiliate advertising either by going directly to websites that sell affiliate products or by going to ClickBank outperforms Adsense for a lot of websites.

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Fusion Ads is pretty good. You can only place one ad per page on the site but they really look pretty good for ads.

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Adbrite is one of the best best alternative of adsense. You can also use bedvertiser. I used adbrite in my site but the pay rate was not higher than adsense.

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  • How is AdBrite one of the best alternatives if the pay rate is lower?
    – DisgruntledGoat
    Oct 14, 2011 at 11:54
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There are lots of alternatives, e.g. Amazon affiliates.

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