Where I'm Making Income

Wow, it's been a while since I made a post.

Anyway, given the passage of time, it's become clear to me that I make most of my online income in the following areas:

1) Text links.
2) Adsense.
3) Share-a-sale.
4) Kontera.

Yes, those are in order. Across a variety of web sites with varying popularities I have been able to consistently earn three digit revenues from static links on a monthly basis.

Adsense is generally providing a mid two digit revenue -- and I greatly wish I could increase that without violating my own sense of ethics.

I haven't been doing so well with Share-a-sale or other affiliate programs. Many people are doing well with Clickbank and other programs -- but, again, this isn't an area that my ethics will let me excel at.

Kontera brings in single digit revenues. I don't work very hard at it and think it is just supplementary -- allowing me to continue pursuing other revenue sources at the same time. I did try Adbrite, but they were absolutely useless for my properties.

The great thing is that I have a full time job and associated income, while my web properties are pretty much on auto-pilot right now.

Q: Can I Use Craigslist For Traffic?

No.

Everyone hates spam.

Don't be such a selfish jerk.

There are ways to advertise your site that are appropriate. There are also ways to get traffic without advertising that don't degrade the quality of other people's work.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about - some lowlife style people spam Craigslist in an attempt to get traffic to their MFA style web sites.

You'd think people would have a little more self-respect than that.

A New Revenue Sharing Model

It's called open revenue sharing and it's deceptively simple.

A publisher simply allows anyone to add their Adsense ID to a link. So simple it's ridiculous.

However, the issues solved, and created, are potentially enormous. Good work Grokodile!

How Does Adsense Revenue Sharing Work?

Very well.

Okay, okay, I guess you'd like a little more information than that! Each person who signs up with Adsense is given an ID number. When an ad is displayed on a page it is associated with one particular ID.

On an Adsense revenue sharing site the site owner defines a set of conditions under which publisher ID numbers are used other than his or her own. A common example might be to show the ID of the author of an article. Alternately, on a forum, the person who started a thread might have their ID used when the thread is viewed.

Generally the publisher will swap out their own ID only a percentage of the time. A common number is 50%, but it could be anything.

Why Do People Share Revenue?
Well, sometimes when you aren't greedy, it ends up paying off. In this case, when a publisher is able to entice other authors to participate, both of them may end up more profitable.

Often the publisher will have more public awareness and more traffic than the author. At the same time the publisher may find the generation of fresh new content on a variety of subjects to be time consuming or expensive. So, by exchanging traffic for content, both parties may end up winning.

Is This Allowed By Google
Yes. However, you do have to make sure the content published meets the standards put forth by Google. Adsense cannot be displayed on pages containing certain types of content or on pages that break Google's terms of service.

What Are The Dangers
There shouldn't be any dangers, other than violating Google's terms of service, but there is a potential surprise. You have to be sure that you do not click your own ads while viewing a revenue sharing site. Generally, the publisher will be able to not use your publisher ID while you view their site, but of course you will have to be logged in for that to work.

Once you are in a revenue sharing relationship with a site, never view that site without being logged in. Also, check carefully with the publisher to ensure that they do employ this level of protection. It's also quite possible that some smaller revenue sharing sites have tried to implement this but failed to do so due to buggy programming (even if it is quite a simple idea).

Can I Make Money This Way?
Sure, it all depends on keywords and traffic. For example, over at Digital Point, which is a revenue sharing forum, I have a click today that is worth $3.39 on a single page view. Of course, it generally takes months for me to notice a click on Digital Point, but this was a pleasant surprise. Too bad I don't know which thread or post the click originated from -- as I'd be very happy to create content on that particular topic.