A couple weeks ago, I noticed that this site and Life of Brian were serving up nothing but Big Brother and Big Sister ads. This happened more or less at the same time that I experimented with putting some Adfly links around the site.

It turns out the problem wasn’t some kind of AdSense / AdFly rivalry at all. It was me, making a few changes to other advertising. I had been using ContextWeb (previously AdsDaq) to serve up some ads on these two websites.

The way the service worked, you got paid per impression. You set a PPM price (a bid, basically), and if there was an advertiser willing to pay it then the AdsDaq / ContextWeb ad showed. Otherwise, it defaulted to a “backup ad” – in this case, AdSense.

Well, these weren’t performing very well, so I turned them off. Apparently, when I paused the ads in the ContextWeb dashboard, that killed the script altogether. Instead of defaulting to the backup ads (AdSense), it just showed those public service ads. Doh…

I went back and put the AdSense ad scripts into the theme directly, and regular AdSense ads starting showing up again. It’s nice to know there’s no problem; it’s a bit annoying that it took me two weeks to figure out I was the problem.

Seemed simple enough. Shorten a URL, send people to it, make some cash on impressions.

This site and my other old blog both have a little bit of residual traffic that comes to them, despite the fact that I don’t really update them in any meaningful way. I figured if I added a few links to the end of each post (think related posts, with adfly links going to outside sources), I might be able to make a few bucks off those readers.

So I wrote up a short script, inserted it into both themes, and forgot about it for a few days. Today, I came back to look at something on the site and I noticed that all of my Adsense ads had changed to public service announcements (Big Brothers and Big Sisters, to be exact). The same thing had happened on both this domain and life-of-brian.com.

My other blog, the one that I still update and hadn’t put any Adfly links on, was still serving up regular Adsense ads. They’re all on the same Adsense account, too.

My guess, then, is that the crawler noticed the Adfly links and that flagged something in the system. Maybe there’s something in the Adsense ToS that I should have read before I tried this, oops. But keep in mind that if you try posting Adfly links on your legitimate Google AdSense website, you may jeopardize AdSense as a source of revenue. So you’d better make more money from those Adfly links than from the AdSense…

The solution, it turns out, is very simple.

Why Randomize Ads?

There are a few reasons you might want to do this.

If you’re looking into changing the theme of your AdSense ad, you may want to test the two themes against each other. By giving each theme approximately 50% of the impressions for a given time period, you can make some direct comparisons between their performance.

Or maybe you and a friend both run a website, so you want to split the advertising time between two AdSense publisher ids. That can be done too.

How the AdSense Code Works

Before we randomize it, let’s take a look at how the AdSense code works.

Here’s the snippet of code that creates the skyscraper on the left side of this page.

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2399151883698113";
/* Web Cash Tall Skyscraper */
google_ad_slot = "8702750734";
google_ad_width = 160;
google_ad_height = 600;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

You’ll notice two major pieces to this code. The first piece – in the first <script> element – defines the ad unit’s properties. It sets google_ad_client (your publisher id), google_ad_slot (the saved ad unit’s id with color info), google_ad_width, and google_ad_height.

The second section – the script element with src “show_ads.js” – actually displays the ad based on the variables that were set previously.

In order to vary the type of ad shown, we need to come up with a conditional statement to vary the google_ad_client/slot/width/height settings.

The Javascript Code…

And here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the Javascript code to randomize which ad is shown.

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (Math.random() > 0.5) {
  google_ad_client = "pub-2399151883698113";
  google_ad_slot = "5396010225";
  google_ad_width = 250;
  google_ad_height = 250;
} else {
  google_ad_client = "pub-2399151883698113";
  google_ad_slot = "3900536874";
  google_ad_width = 250;
  google_ad_height = 250;
}
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

You’ll notice that there’s an if/else statement, and each branch of the conditional statement defines a different ad to display. The results of that conditional statement rely on the outcome of Math.random().

Previously, we built a function to get a useful random number out of Math.random(). This is actually a situation where we can use the value from Math.random() just the way it is.

Math.random() generates a random value between 0 and 1. In other words, it gives you a probability. By checking that Math.random() is greater than 0.5, the statement should evaluate to true approximately 50% of the time.

We could also make the rotation more lop-sided. For example (Math.random() > 0.70) would be true 30% of the time. Therefore the first ad would be displayed 30% of the time, while the second ad would be displayed 70% of the time.

I hope you weren’t looking for something more complicated because, well, it isn’t. It’s just that simple.

After trying them out though, I found one aspect of their network – the CPM ads for foreign visitors – to be entirely disappointing.

What’s Good About Widget Bucks?

At first glance, Widget Bucks seems great. The normal ads they serve – targeted product placement widgets – look terrific. In my opinion they are light-years beyond the typical, ugly, AdSense text ad.

While these ads are only displayed to US and Canadian visitors, word is that the eCPM for the ads can be quite high. If your site can successfully integrate the Widget Bucks ads – and most of your visitors are from North America – the ad network can be great.

The Problem For Foreign Visitors

I recently realized that this site has a large base of foreign visitors. Roughly 1/3 of the visits come from North America – the rest are spread throughout the world, mainly Europe and Asia. When I saw that Widget Bucks was advertising a fixed CPM rate for foreign visits, I thought it would be great.

They geo-target the ads for specific countries. I thought this meant there would be targeted ads – for example, French ads for French visitors. I also thought there would be a decent CPM – at the very least $1-2.

If that was the case, I’d gladly swap out the sub-par AdSense banner in my header for a banner Widget.

If It’s Too Good To Be True…

After testing out one of the Widget Bucks widgets and researching the topic a bit more, it turns out that for sites with a non-US visitors, Widget Bucks is a horrible service.

I was searching for some estimates on the CPM of these ads, when I came across this description of the type of ads shown to non-US visitors.

It turns out that Widget Bucks hasn’t got a real advertiser base for these visitors – so they’re serving up crappy ads like, “You’re the 999,999th visitor to this site!” You know, the hideous ads that should have become extinct long ago.

One strike for Widget Bucks.

The author of that article also reported that he’d earned a whopping $0.01 for the impressions that he’d shown the Widget. This prompted me to check my own earnings, and with 500 impressions yesterday, I’ve earned a whopping $0.01 as well. Bleh.

Check Back In a Few Months

I still like the idea of Widget Bucks, and I may check back in a few months. Supposedly they’re working on building up a bigger base of advertisers, and it’s conceivable that this will improve both the type of ads and the payment for those ads.

At the moment, though, steer away from this service if you have a base of non-US visitors. The regular Widgets look awesome, but you’ll be wasting your time displaying the CPM ads for mere pennies.

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I was looking into using TNX as a text link ad network. This is basically a way to make money off of your sites link popularity and pagerank – regardless of click-through rates and traffic.

After some more research, I think I’ve got a better idea of the potential of TNX – and I’m liking it more. Let’s take a look at potential earnings on the site.

What Are TNX Points?

When you sell ads on TNX, you aren’t paid directly in cash. You’re paid in TNX points. These are the same points that the advertisers use (after buying in) to purchase ads.

Purchasing these points can cost about $1.50 to $0.75 per 1,000 – depending on the bulk in which you buy them. This also gives you an idea of what you can sell them for if you have a potential buyer.

If you don’t want to market the points to other companies yourself, you can arrange to have TNX buy them out. The current rate is $0.74 per 1,000 points, although you can get $0.78 per 1,000 points if you meet certain requirements in link placement.

The bottom line is – as you earn points, you’ll be able to cash them in for about $0.75 per 1,000 points.

The Real Question: How Many Points Do I Get?

In order to figure out how much you can earn, the real question is – how many points can I generate with my site?

To begin answering that question, we need to look at how TNX sets up its link pricing structure – which determines how many points you’ll get for those links. TNX uses two different methods to rate your site – Google Page Rank and Yahoo Backlinks.

If you have signed up for TNX, you can go to the “Create a Campaign” option to see the following information. Your site is ranked in one of five Yahoo Backlinks categories – 0 – 500, 500 – 5,000, 5,000 to 50,000, 50,000 to 250,000, and 250,000 and up. Your site is also ranked by Pagerank – 0 to 7.

When you look at the Pagerank chart, TNX advertises the “lowest” price of a link for one of those sites. At a Pagerank 0 site, a link will cost a base of 1 point. They also state that the price of an actual link can cost up to 20 times more than that base price. This extra cost comes from two places – the site’s category and the site’s Yahoo Backlinks.

Based on my own experience, I can do a little estimation of what a link is worth.

When I first signed up, my site was Pagerank 0 and in the 0 – 500 Yahoo Backlinks Category. My site’s topic category is “Web Development,” which has a price ranking of two dollar signs (out of a max of three dollar signs). At this point, my links were selling for 3 points.

Now, my site has jumped into the next Yahoo Backlinks category. The links now sell for 6 points.

This leads me to believe that TNX has a basic pricing structure set up like this:

Actual Point Price =
  Basic Price (Page Rank) * Category Price Modifier * Yahoo Backlinks Modifier

For a PR 0 site, the base price is 1. My site was selling links for 3 points, so I would assume that the “Category Price Modifier” for a two-dollar-sign category is 3 points. The Yahoo Backlinks Modifier seems to be just 1 – 5 – based on which category you’re in. Therefore the highest earning potential for my site – while it’s still Pagerank 0 – is 18 points per link.

What does that work out to? With 200 pages of content and one link per page, that’s about 3600 points per month… or $3.00. Doh.

Climbing the Pagerank Mountain

For a Pagerank 0 site, the earning potential seems pretty slim. Of course, this should be expected – since TNX is basically selling Pagerank.

As your Pagerank climbs, your potential earnings jump dramatically. A Pagerank 1 page has a base price of 50. That’s 50 times the base price of a Pagerank 0 site. That boosts your maximum potential earnings to $150.00 per month for a PR 1 site with 200 links.

A Pagerank 2 site has a base price of 100 points, and a Pagerank 3 site has a base price of 200 points. These are pretty reasonable Pageranks for a site that’s been operating for a few months. At that point, you’ve got some decent revenue potential with TNX.

A Reasonable Estimate for PR2 and 2,500 Backlinks

Let’s say you’ve built a new site. It went up a few months ago and Google finally did a Pagerank update. Your site has a Pagerank of 2 and a little over 2,500 Yahoo Backlinks. If you’ve been diligently adding content to your site, you should also have at least 300 pages (including category, index, and tag pages) to post links on.

Based on my estimates, the price for a link for this site would be 100 (Base) * 3 (Category) * 2 (Yahoo Backlinks) = 600. Let’s assume we place two links on each page – 2 (Links) * 300 (Pages) * 600 (Price) = 360,000 points. 360 * $0.75 (Cost per 1,000 point) = $270 per month.

This could be increased by adding up to 4 links per page, upping the Yahoo Backlinks to 5,000, or adding more content. Remember that this is just some conjecture and estimation – if you’re using TNX I’d be interested to hear about the link prices for your site so I can get some more accurate calculations.

I’d say that’s not bad for a couple of links on a page. Add that to a successful AdSense or other Ad Campaign, and you’re site should have a decent revenue stream.

There are some reputable CPM programs out there (ValueClick seems to be among the best), but there are surely plenty of scams out there. I just read about one program – RevenueResponse – that seems like a site you should avoid using.

What is RevenueResponse?

I first read about RevenueResponse in a post on DigitalPoint. Someone politely spammed the forum with his referral link while telling us about this great new CPM program.

Up front, the program seems fantastic. They advertise a CPM rate of $5. However, you read the fine print and it tells you you’ll earn up to $5 per thousand impressions. There is also a click-through requirement – if you don’t meet a certain rate for a two week period, your account could get canned.

This is reasonable, though. A guaranteed $5 CPM is fairly unrealistic, and any reputable advertising network will want to make sure the ads are displayed in a visible and click-able location. But does the network pay?

Proof of Payment from RevenueResponse?

After a little searching on Google, I haven’t been able to find any instance of someone posting a proof of payment from RevenueResponse. One person claimed they “always paid on time” – but his entire article was basically an ad spot for RevenueResponse.

If he’s trying to get you to click on his referral link, he’ll obviously claim that they make payment on time.

In the DigitalPoint discussion, someone posted a link to one claim that RevenueResponse is a scam. This fellow claims he is owed $400+, that RevenueResponse kept delaying payment, and that he still hasn’t been paid.

I’m often skeptical of these scam stories. People have posted stories about how PayPal cheated them out of money – but I’ve never had a bad experience with them. However, without any confirmation of payment from another source I’m prepared to believe this guy and not waste my time with the Ad Network.

Beware the Adware and Spyware

Something else to beware of is that RevenueResponse (and other disreputable ad companies) may use your site to launch adware and spyware on your users’ computers.

One user on DigitalPoint that signed up – but apparently didn’t earn enough to get payment – claims that the ad code launched some adware. I don’t feel like signing up myself to verify this claim, but it’s another negative point for RevenueResponse.

Bottom line, this place doesn’t seem worth it. They advertise ridiculously high rates – which means they either fall short or use underhanded means (like not paying publishers or installing adware on the users’ computers) to make good. If you’re looking for a CPM ad network, go with a reputable one. Avoid this junk heap.

One method is to sell text link ads. A major ad group on this front is Text-Link-Ads. However, while I’m building up my pagerank, I decided to test out a different provider – TNX.

The site works a little differently from Text-Link-Ads. Instead of selling a block of ads, you get to select from a list of pre-approved links and add them to your site.

The way I have it set up, a cached list of links is generated on my server. A snippet of PHP then accesses the cache and inserts the individual links where I want them to go.

I can add up to four links on each individual page. They can be bunched up in a list or spread out a bit. It doesn’t seem to effect the payment where the links are placed – as long as they aren’t obfuscated and hidden (which is a violation of ToS).

How much can you make? Well, that waits to be seen.

TNX uses a points trading system. An advertiser offers to pay for a certain type of site – based on # of links and pagerank – and offers to pay a certain number of points. When you accept that publisher, you’re paid the points for one month. You can then either spend those points on your own advertisements or trade them in for cash.

Currently, the points are worth about $0.75 per 1000 points. When you look at your list of pages, it tells you how many points a link is worth. For my new site, which is still officially pagerank 0 and has about 350 Yahoo backlinks, the going rate is 3 points. Not a whole lot.

With about 120 pages of content, I could place approximately 1400 links on my site (at four links per page). That would yield about $1.00-$1.25 per month. Hmm… not a lot.

Of course, I realize my site’s page rank and stats haven’t climbed to the point that it will attract real advertising revenue. I added links to a few pages, just to check out the system, but I plan on waiting and seeing how the price changes as my backlinks increase.

In general, text link ads are a great way to add a steady stream of revenue. They’re more stable and predictable than AdSense – and they can be a boon if your site typically has a low click-through rate. I’ve seen people with successful sites earn $500+ per month with a block of text links.

I’ll post again in a few weeks to report on any changes with TNX. At the moment, I’m not terribly impressed with the potential – but it may improve drastically with pagerank and backlinks. Who knows.

If you operate a website (like this blog), Google Adsense is probably one of your main streams of revenue. Although you may eventually outgrow Adsense, chances are you’ll have used it at some point.

While looking through my Adsense stats, I noticed an odd trend. This trend suggested a few things about monetizing a site through Adsense – questions that I don’t have an answer for yet, but that I will be looking for.

On this and my other site (Babel), I use a few main types of ads – a horizontal image banner, a skyscraper with text and images, and square boxes with text and images.

It’s natural to wonder, “Which ad is the most efficient and most effective?”

Both of these sites are relatively new, so I don’t have a lot of data to work with. From the data that I do have, though, I’ve noticed a few key trends.

• The tall vertical skyscraper and the square blocks seem to have the best click-through rate
• The horizontal image banner (like the one in the header) seems to have a low click-through rate
• The tall vertical skyscraper and the square blocks seem to have lower pay-per-click values
• The horizontal image banner seems to have a much higher payout than the other two options

Like I said, I don’t have a whole lot of data to support these trends at the moment. Over the next month or two, I plan on watching these trends and testing them out (using random tests of text verse image ads).

It’s something to keep in mind, though. The horizontal image banner seems to be the most effective – the high payout makes up for the low click-through rate. Although I wouldn’t get rid of the other ads, it’s a good justification for making sure you have at least one horizontal image banner on your site.

Notice any trends in your own Adsense reports? I’d be interested to hear what other people have come up.