There are quite a few ad networks around nowadays. One of the most popular ad programs is Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense). Advertisers pay Google to advertise links to their site, these links are then featured on the sites of Google and their affiliates when certain keywords searches are brought forward, or relevant content displayed on the affiliates blog or web sites. Google then lets website/blog owners sign up for their Adsense program and provide these site owners with a code to place on their web site/blog. This code displays Google ads which rotate and are most relevant to the website/blogs current content. The Adsense code can be customized so that the ads match the blogs color scheme and you, the blog owner, can choose to display text ads or image banner ads of all shapes and sizes. Whenever a reader visits the link of one of the advertisers being shown on your blog you earn money.

There are many blogs that exist only to earn Google Adsense revenue. Quite a few are packed with Google ads in picture and text form with nearly no original content. I personally recommend against doing this since having a blog with too many ads and not enough original content can cause you to be penalized with the search engines. It will also prevent you from listing your blog in many quality blog directories and communities.

Another advertising program that lets you sell ad space on your blog is Adbrite(http://www.adbrite.com). The features are very similar to Google Adsense but the main difference is that they allow your blog to be listed in a Marketplace. This allows advertisers to browse sites and blogs in certain categories and buy ad space on a particular blog for the week, month, or on a daily basis. You can set your own rates or Adbrite will set the daily, weekly, and monthly rate based on your traffic stats and overall ranking.

I currently use Adbrite on all of my sites and prefer it to Adsense. My payout is usually higher with Adbrite since I am able to get paid per click or page impression revenue thanks to network wide cost per click campaigns some advertisers run. I am also able to sell advertisement space directly to advertisers that want to have a link on my site for a set amount of time. My favorite feature is that I am able to approve each advertiser myself. That means I can deny advertisers who have objectionable content or that are direct competitors. With Google Adsense you never know what link is gong to show up on your blog.

Adbrite and Adsense are the two advertisement programs that I have used the most but there are many others that have gotten great feedback and can be used to generate income for all types of blogs.

AdSonar: http://www.Quigo.com
Adgenta: http://adgenta.com
AVN Ads (adult ads): http://www.avnads.com
Black Label Ads (adult ads): http://www.blacklabelads.com
Clicksor: http://clicksor.com
Crisp Ads: http://www.crispads.com
Kontera: http://www.kontera.com
Kanoodle: http://www.Kanoodle.com/
IntelliTXT: http://www.intellitxt.com
Mirago: http://www.mirago.com/partnerships/contextualproducts.html
Miva MC: http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp
Nixxie: http://www.nixxie.com
Oxado: http://www.oxado.com
Revenue Pilot: http://www.revenuepilot.com
TargetPro: https://publisher.targetpoint.com/default.aspx
Text Ad Links: http://www.text-link-ads.com
Yahoo! Publisher Network: http://publisher.yahoo.com
Value Click: http://www.valueclickmedia.com/Publishers.shtml

The majority of these ad programs can be used together. Many blog owners use multiple ad revenue programs on their blogs in order to get more income from a wider variety of sources. While I primarily use Adbrite I have also used the Yahoo Publisher Network and Kanoodle to sell ad space. Some of these programs will pay you per impression which means you earn money by simply display the ads on your blog, regardless of whether a reader clicks an ad.

My personal favorite way to sell ad space on my blog is to sell it directly to the advertiser. I will occasionally make a post on my blog saying that I am accepting new advertisers or running a special on advertising rates to get email inquires. At other times I would create a small banner or button to place in my sidebar that was linked to my email address that read “Click Here to Advertise” or “Your Ad Here”. I usually charge anywhere from $20.00 to $50.00 per month for advertisers to have a small banner or text ad linking to their site for the entire month. I use a WordPress plugin called OIO publisher to manage the private ads from my advertisers.

• If you don’t have a Facebook account, create one.
• Log into Facebook.
• Go to: http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness/sign_up and click “Join the Network” to add the Visa Business Network application to your Facebook page.
• After you add the application, go and check your email account which you used to register your Facebook account. You will find an email from Facebook ads team with you $100 Facebook advertising coupon code and instructions on how to use it.

Putting up your ads on Facebook is easier than AdWords. There are 4 steps, illustrated as follows:

Step 1: enter the URL you are advertising, could be your blog URL or an affiliate link.

Step 2: Create your ad:

Step 3:Set demography and audience of your ads:

Step 4:Set daily budget and price per click:

Then enter your coupon code:

You will also be asked to provide your credit card detail, but it won’t be charged before the $100 credit is all used up.  Press “Place Order”, your ad will be submitted for approval. Once approved, you are ready to go.

Enjoy your free advertising on Facebook.

Here is a picture of a DP forum user selling signature link spot:

If you already have hundreds or thousands forum posts, you may sell your signature links on the DP forum at this thread(valid at time of writing) .

The idea is, you get a good bargain (around 50% off), the seller gets a sale (he is paying the same amount of commission anyway), I don’t seem to get anything as I pass all the commission to you, but if you can spread the word out for me, either Digg or StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us my blog, I’ll get a boost of traffic, that’s what I call a win-win-win deal.

It is not restricted to any single product, if you find any good product from ClickBank and you would like to get it for a bargain price, just send me the link, I’ll set up an affiliate link through my account. After you buy through my affiliate link, I’ll pass back to you all the commision I’m getting.

Some affiliate products I’ve already set up are as follows:

Affiliate Payload ($97, tried out, reasonably good. I mentioned their down sell tactic, but since you get all the commission back from me, there is not much difference I suppose)
6 Figure Blog ($57 not tried out)
MyGoogleTool($127 not tried out)
RegistryFix($37 + optional $9.95 on Extended Download service and optional $9.95 Active Updates service. Tried out this, there is improvement on speeding up my old PC, but not as good as 10 times faster as pitched.)
Water4Gas($97, not tried out, as I’m not a handyman)

One of the tools – Detecting Online Commercial Intention, is very useful in detecting customer intent to acquire information or to purchase products based on their search queries or recently visited URLs. For example, if a customer searches for “organic vegetable”, it is likely that they want to purchase some organic vegetables; therefore, the online commercial intent is strong, with a confidence level larger than 0.5, in this case 0.80218.

“This tool can also be used to find keywords that are commercial but have low ad coverage. From a SEM point of view, it is useful to find these keywords as they have low bid density (low price), but high commercial value. Similarly, for an advertising engine, this can help increase ad relevancy by displaying fewer ads if a keyword has low online commercial intent.  ”

Singapore – $708,800 (SGD 1 million)
Thanks to one of our readers for the information. See the comment.

Philippines – $340,909
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday raised the Olympic incentive to 15 million pesos (340,909 U.S. dollars) for any Filipino athlete who gets a gold medal in Beijing.

Malaysia – $307,000
Malaysia, which has never won an Olympic gold medal, is offering a bonus of one million ringgit (307,000 dollars) to any athlete who can bring home the top prize from this year’s Beijing Games.

Thailand – $300,000
Thai gold medallist at the Beijing Olympics will be rewarded of 10 million baht (about 300,000 U.S. dollars), runner-up will get a six million baht bonus and bronze medallist four million baht.

Greece – $290,000
and a lifetime civil service job

Iran – $290,000
Iran awards 200.000 euros for a gold,150000 for a silver.100000euro for bronze

UAE – $272,000
Also silver medal winners would be paid just over $200,000 while those winning bronze would get $136,000.

Kazakhstan – $250,000

Italy – $208,000
Italy awards 140.000 euros for a gold, 75.000 for a silver and 45.000 for a bronze

Uzbekistan – $200,000
Also $100,000 for silver medal and $50,000 for bronze medal

China – $131,000 ($51,000 (350,000 yuan) from government & $80,000 from other sources)
Central sports officials in China have not said how high the bonuses they give will be, but the Chinese-language Sports Weekly reported they are likely to hand gold medal winners 350,000 yuan ($51,000) each, plus big payments shared out from sponsors.

Hungary – $123,000 (20mil Ft)

Russia – $100,000
Russian gold medallists at the upcoming Beijing Olympics are to get a bonus of 100,000 dollars (63,700 euros), Russian Olympic supremo Leonid Tiagachov said.

Japan – $100,000

Bulgaria – $76,620 (100,000 leva)
Every Bulgarian athlete who wins a gold medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will receive a 100 000 leva bonus from the Bulgarian state.

Israel – $67,500 (NIS 240,000)
The IOC also announced on Monday that any sportsman who will set a new personal best at Beijing will receive a bonus of NIS 10,000. A winner of a gold medal will be awarded NIS 240,000.

Dominican Republic – $30,000
Winners could also get a car. It is the first time the Dominican government has made such an offer.

USA – $25,000
The USOC gives $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze

Australia – $20,000
AUSTRALIAN Olympians are expected to get a $20,000 government bonus for gold medals at Beijing – less than winners from the USA, Japan, Germany, Israel, Thailand, Malaysia, Greece and Russia.

Canada – $19,000

1. their affiliate program is very attractive: paying $10 for each new publisher or advertiser you refer. Plus, earn 5% recurring revenue on all advertiser ad buys … for life.

2. as a publisher you earn money or build credits that will drive free traffic to your own site. As you display exchange ads on your site, you earn credits to have your ad displayed on other sites.

3. as an advertiser you just have another reason to throw your ad dollar out…

By all means, sign up through my affiliate link please, here is the link (yet again)