Fuck school *n-word,* I'mma be a dope dealer. -Wise words from Ice Cube -photo from bbb.org
Some of the things I've noticed with AdSense that I really didn't like:
1. You have to make $100.00 before they will pay you out.
2. A LOT of reports have been filtering in lately that Google has been banning people for no reason just when they finally hit that $100.00 mark--and those people never see that money.
3. Their reports of your pageviews are wildly inconsistent with every other program's (like 60% lower or more) which is just super suspicious to me.
I've started using Chitika, which is similar to AdSense but has a payout level of only $10.00 and seems to be a more reputable and recommended ad company, especially for smaller blogs. It's very simple to get their code and it's a very basic pay-per-click ad system. They don't have any funky requirements (like some places that require a banner ad under the title or some god-awful thing like that).
More reports will come in after I've used it for a while and can tell you how successful it was (or wasn't).
Can't be much worse than last week on AdSense. That 27 cents is the total.
There are also a few more AdSense alternatives that I have heard are good:
-Bidvertiser (another pay per click ad site with a $10 payout, although I've heard it buzzing around that you don't earn quite as much with this one as some of the others).
-InfoLinks is another popular choice for small bloggers, partly because they have several different types of advertising (margin ads, in-text ads, etc). But don't do in-text ads because they're annoying. I don't know about you guys but as soon as I see a site with those I immediately don't trust them. If a word is highlighted it had better be a relevant link, in my opinion!
-Amazon ads. I've heard that you can make some money from these, but not as much as from product-specific links.
*Note* If you're looking for a way to make money with your blog but don't want to do ads, I highly recommend Amazon Affiliates, especially if you already recommend or link to products you love anyway (there are also other companies with affiliate programs if you don't like Amazon, Ebay included). What I do is when I write a review for something I liked, I link to it on Amazon, and because I'm a member of the Affiliate program I earn a percentage of each purchase made through clicking on my link. I don't link to things I give a negative review to though, because I feel that would be quite unethical.
Any other recommendations? What do you use?