Theres a big misconception about contextualized advertising. Too many people feel that its a hands-off way to make piles of cash. All they have to do is build their site, optimize their ads, set up their traffic streams and... head off to the beach. Maybe theyll have to update the content every now and then but as far as theyre concerned, a month later, a year later or even five years later, those dollars will still be pouring in and theyll still be spending their days soaking up the sun. If only. Were probably working in the most dynamic environment in the world. Nothing changes faster than the Internet. A revenue system you set up today could easily be overtaken by something new tomorrow. If you arent keeping up with the latest developments, the only time youd know about those changes is when your income suddenly starts to fall and youre left staring at your stats, scratching your head and wondering whats going on. A few weeks ago, I talked about Kontera. Theyve got a system that looks pretty impressive to me. Im still testing them out on some of my sites and think theyve got a system to watch. But they arent the only ones Im watching. Ive also got my eye on Chitika... and so should you. Theyve got some of the smartest looking ads Ive seen. You get a picture of the product, a list of places and prices to buy, and (heres the best bit)... tabs that give more information about the product when the user mouses over. Without leaving the page, the user can get a summary of the product, user reviews and a search box to look for similar products. Thats a heap of information packed into one ad. And users love the fact that they can interact with it. These MiniMall ads are contextualized (and Chitika also offers traditional contextualized ads too) but you can turn off the contextualization and pick your own ads so you can combine them with AdSense or YPN. Thats a huge bonus. Again, I dont know yet if Chitika can bring me higher revenues than AdSense but Im certainly not going to ignore it! Ive already started playing around with Chitika and looking at ways to use their ads to maximize revenues. After all, if they do turn out to be the next big thing, I wouldnt want to be left behind. Ill let you know how I get on. To apply with Chitika, visit http://www.adsense-secrets.com/chitika.html |
