Lets continue the Christmas theme from the last post on increasing Christmas earnings with Amazon with a quick look at four widget style ad networks and affiliate tools that are great to experiment with in the lead up to Christmas.
Remember – this is a time of year where those using the web are in a buying frame of mind and are more likely to click on product ads that they might see. Here are four options that present products visually:
1. Shopzilla Publisher Program
This program has been something I’ve experimented with more and more of late and it’s producing quite good results. It presents publishers with a variety of widget type ads with a large variety of options in terms of design, sizes and types of ads.
2. Chitika
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Chitika. It’s my second largest earner from blogs (2nd only to AdSense) and performs brilliantly on product related sites – particularly at this time of year.
As with all of these types of ad units it does best when you can make the ads show products that relate to what you’re writing about (using the ‘keywords’ feature that they’ve built in). Payment for these ads is on a CPC (cost per click) basis (although premium publishers also get an impression based bonus).
Chitika offer a variety of ad units including their eMiniMalls, Linxx (in text ads), Multiple Product Units (pictured below) and more.
<!–
ch_client = “livingroom”;
ch_type = “mpu”;
ch_width = 300;
ch_height = 250;
ch_color_border = “CFCFCF”;
ch_color_title = “233799”;
ch_non_contextual = 1;
ch_vertical =”simple”;
ch_default_category = “200001”;
var ch_queries = new Array( “ultra portable laptop” );
var ch_selected=Math.floor((Math.random()*ch_queries.length));
if ( ch_selected
Also check out their ‘premium ad unit’ that shows special ads only to those arriving on your blog from search engines. The ads that these premium ad units show are contextually relevant to the keywords that people are searching for in the search engine – they are doing very very well for me.
3. WidgetBucks
This is another CPC based widget ad unit that many publishers have found to convert well. You again get a good range of options when it comes to design and sizes. Here’s how they look (I chose a Christmas theme).
The only downside of WidgetBucks is that not everyone will be able to see the ads – if your readers are not within geographic areas that they serve ads to they’ll get impression based ads instead.
4. Amazon Associates Widgets
The Amazon associates program has quite a few widget type ad units that will help drive people into their store and increase the chances of earning you an affiliate commission. Of course these differ from other ads featured in this list in that you only earn something if people make a purchase.
Some of the ad units include:
Deals Widget
Amazon.com Widgets
Search Widget
Amazon.com Widgets
My Favorites Widget
Amazon.com Widgets
Carousel Widget
Amazon.com Widgets
There are plenty of other types of widgets to choose from also.
When These Widget Ads Work Best
The above options won’t work equally for everyone. While this time of year increases your chances of earnings with all of them – they all work best when there is relevancy between what you’re blogging about and what is displaying in the ads.
Blogs with a product related focus (or posts with a specific product being featured) will always out perform putting these ads on a general focused blog.
How to Optimize Widget Ad Units on Your Blog
Stay tuned to our RSS feed because later today I’ll post 5 tips to keep in mind as you test and experiment with the ad units mentioned above in this post.
