Web publishers get paid every time a visitor clicks through an advertisement to see the products and services offered by the advertiser, and advertisers are paying for those click-through visitors. Google makes money by charging the advertiser more than the publisher is paid.

Chitika - New kid on the pay per click block:

Lucrative business opportunities like that don't usually stay exclusive for long, and this industry is no exception. Early in 2005, Chitika emerged (another PPC advertising system), and ClickBank (an affiliate system), which has been around for some time, has the ability to run context related ads too (see ClickBank section below).  Chitika competes directly with google, and their pay per click rate payout to publishers has so far been considerably higher than Google's. Their eMiniMall ads are different from Google AdSense text ads in a number of important ways:

 -they contain product pictures and can target specific products
 -visitors can search for competitive products without leaving the publisher's page
 -publishers have the option to control the context sensitive keywords
 -new pages with low click-thru rates (CTR) are not penalized like they are at Google
 -they have a Chitika affiliate program for publishers to recruit new members
 -publishers do not need to fetch code from the Chitika web site every time they want to place an ad on a page
 -publishers can copy Chitika script from page to page and tweak the channel & keyword targeting code to match the page

The ability to target a specific product with a Chitika eMiniMall Ad is a huge advantage over Google AdSense in certain cases, and usually brings a very high click through payout. We got very excited about the new Canon SX-50 LCoS home theater projector, and I could target that product specifically, over in my home theater dream system web site.

An excerpt from the Chitika manifesto, describes their system:

"eMiniMalls are the industry's first and only intelligent and interactive product merchandising service. eMiniMalls present Web publishers with a feature rich service that offers online product merchandising, a dynamic recommendation engine and robust comparative shopping information in one solution. They are a way to supplement your existing ad revenue while providing a completely new revenue stream through interactive merchandising."

ClickBank - A Real Alternative to AdSense and Chitika:

Google AdSense and Chitika are two top players in the PPC advertising field, but there is an interesting - and much more lucrative - alternative to these programs. Sometimes we were doing fairly well with Google and Chitika, but in some areas we couldn't get the precise targeting we wanted - so I signed up with ClickBank, a Pay Per Action (PPA) affiliate system. 

With ClickBank, you don't get paid by the click; it is an affiliate system (free to join) that pays when the shopper takes an action, such as joining a membership or buying an eBook download. Unlike other affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, the commissions are typically 50 to 75% of the purchase price. They also provide advertisers with merchant accounts to accommodate credit card processing for sales, and an army of affiliates (me included) to actively promote the products through a very efficient (and simple) linking system. It is this combination of features that makes it a formidable competitor to other online marketing structures.

ClickBank has over 40,000 products, and I have personally bought a number of them. They have all made money for us (and easily paid for themselves); the two best steps to get your own income started are to download the free ClickBank search program, then get Keywords Analyzer to optimize your pages, find niche markets and analyze the competition.

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