Moving over to Google Affiliate Network is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I got an email a few days back telling me I needed link my Adsense account to my Google Affiliate Network account before some expiration date. To be honest I was unaware I even had a an account with them. It must be very old and something I never used. I assume it was with DoubleClick but I cannot remember ever actually using their services.

I figure it was wort investigating so I tracked down a new password and logged into the account for the first time today. the interface is smooth and at first glance there were lots of advertisers. I had a Commission Junction account that was actually deleted for lack of use. I had some old banners out there that were deadlinked and I figure what better time to clean up some old ads than now.

I’m moving over to the Google Affiliate Network for all my banner advertisements and and I’ll probably even test some ads out in new places on many of my sites. I have a few dozen sites which have little to no advertising on them and it’s about time I monetize them.

I also have a Linkshare account which brings in some pretty crappy returns. I made some money there a couple years back but my performance with their programs has been weak the last two years. I avoided dealing with it and considered much of it to be a result of economic slowdown and a general lack of ecommerce being driven by banners. I’ve never liked banner ads and the fact I rarely click on them seems to make me think no one else ever clicks on them either.

I’ll keep everyone posted on my transition to Google Affiliate Network from Linkshare and Commission Junction. I would love any advice you may have on how to achive best performance with their program and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Parking Domains with Google Adsense for Domains is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have a lot of domains and to be honest many of them have never been used. I used to think it was crap to buy a domain and not at least build a page on it so I had a lot of single page website pointing to some program or maybe just linking back to one of my primary sites.

These domains are nice premium keyword domains with long term value which I am just holding on to and not interested in building some big business under at the moment. I went through a phase there for a while where I was building some splogs or spammy style blogs and using content pulled from various rss feeds to populate articles in WordPress but those got old fast. I came out with a few DMCA notices and very little revenue from the large amounts of useless traffic generated.

Maybe I was using the wrong revenue programs or maybe I wasn’t building enough links but whatever the case splogs were not big money maker for me. Of the domains with no content I actually had a few dozen that were dead sites and pointed to either empty directories on the server because I never got around to building a site or even worse they still pointed at some silly template at the registrar because I never even updated the DNS after purchasing the domains. Some of these go back to 2004 when I bought a load of domains and never built them up.

Every once in awhile someone makes an offer to buy one of my domains and I’ll sell it but to be honest I was looking for an easy revenue program that required nothing on my part. Over the years I had heard about paid parking programs for domains but many of them required you to make a payment to join the program or you had to pay them some huge percentage of revenue that seemed ludicrous to me. I just did not agree that I should have to pay my own money in order to promote my domains with your program. The real value is in the keywords of my domains and if they are generating clicks with no content why should I pay you a portion of that?

I steered clear of paid parking programs and focused instead on content development and revenue programs related to the domain niche when possible. Recently I decided to boost my usage of Google Adsense after ripping the ads out of most of my sites two years ago. I felt the conversions on Google ads was weak and I tried some other niche specific programs but these required to much maintenance and the difference in revenue was negligible. I was making more money but it took me more effort which sucks when you’re lazy like me.

While creating ads for my sites I was reminded that Google offers their Adsense for Domains now and I figured it was time to start better using some of these domains. I moved over just over 100 domains that have been dad or unused in the last two years. None of these was developed or promoted beyond possibly a single page with one external banner and no more than a paragraph of static content that was as stale as any content you have seen. Many of them were still shtml pages designed before I got into PHP and database driven sites.

It was actually pretty simple to move them over and Google of course offers detailed instructions on how to transfer DNS and Hosts records settings based on your registrar so you can be up and running in under 24 hours. It’s Google so we have no issue with trust or payments and they take care of serving up the best ads based on keywords you use and of course the domain name.

In the last week my earnings from the domains has averaged just below $10 per day which covers the registration fees on one domain. If it maintains the same pace for a full year I’ll be able to pay off two years of registration for the whole lot of domains each year until I either sell them or have time to build a new site. It’s not making me huge bucks but it’s not costing me anything as some of those domains were.

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