Shopzilla is an ad network (currently in beta) that pays per click (CPC). I have been using it since last month and it has done really well on my product related site – DigitGeek.

I have tried many ad networks on DigitGeek like AdSense, Kontera, Amazon, TTZ Media, Chitika and WidgetBucks and none have done as good as Shopzilla. It has to be because Shopzilla has clickable images on their ads which gets it more clicks.

Both Chitika eMinimalls and TTZ Media used to have clickable images, but stopped it later. They even made their ads display only for some countries. I hope Shopzilla wont do this in the future as it can reduce the Click Thru Rate a lot.

As long as they don’t do it, Shopzilla will be a good alternative to programs like Chitika’s eMiniMalls, TTZ Media and WidgetBucks.

They offer different content types like ‘Top Search Results’, ‘Custom Text Links’, ‘Search Boxes’, “Banners’, ‘Product Pods’, and ‘Text links’.

Shopzilla has a similar feature to the AdSense channels called Placement IDs which are helpful to find out which ads are performing the best.

Screenshots

‘Top Search Results’ ad: 336×280

Banner: 468×60

Watch this video:

You can watch the above video in higher quality here.

Here’s how you can get Shopzilla to display ads related to the posts on WordPress blogs (thanks Tim):

For WordPress users, you can automatically use the Page Title as the keyword (or “Search For” as they call it) for Shopzilla ads. These are for the ‘Top Search Results’ ad type. Create the Top Search Results asset using just the letter “a” in the “Search For” field as the keyword. Pick the banner size, set your colors, etc, and then get the HTML code. Look in the HTML code for the following:
/keyword-a/
Replace that with this:
/keyword-<?php echo(urlencode(strtolower(single_post_title(”,FALSE)))); ?>/
That code should take the title of the WordPress post and use it as the keyword for the ad unit.

Shopzilla will perform best on product related sites, so if you own one make sure to register for Shopzilla.

They currently do not accept everyone, but you can register and see if they accept you. DigitGeek was accepted in a few hours.

Register for Shopzilla.

I currently have the Video units at DigitGeek below posts on single pages and find both the YouTube videos and the AdSense ads are related to the content. I am not sure how well they perform though.

Hove you tried the AdSense Video units? Did they do well for you?

Chitika RPU was earlier available only to select number of publishers for testing purposes but is now open to all.

I tried it on my hardware blog and it more than doubled my earnings! If you own a product related blog, make sure to try it out. Also remember that it works best when placed right at the end of your blog post.

To get the RPU code, just login if you are a Chitika publisher and you will see a “RPU Code” tab. Here you can choose your RPU unit size, colors, product category and set channel tracking.

Here’s an example of how it looks like:

If you are not a Chitika publisher, you can apply here.

I also contacted Kontera to know if its ok to use this code and they replied:

We do not recommend using single underlines for Kontera ContentLinks.  Users viewing a web page will not know which link is a Ad and which is a real link to an article.  We do not want to confuse your viewers.

I haven’t made my Kontera links single underline yet, but if you would like to try it here’s the code that you should add to your Kontera code:

var dc_single_line = 'yes';

Making your Kontera links single underline may help you get more clicks on your Kontera ads but will also confuse your site visitors, so try it at your own risk.

It also helps to increase the clicks on the affiliate links as visitors won’t be able to type the URL on their browser without your affiliate code and therefor will help you make more money with affiliate programs.

Another advantage is that you will only need to change your affiliate codes at one place if they ever change (Text link Ads changed their codes two times).

Here’s an example (from John Chow) that you can use to hide your Text Link Ads affiliate link (replace my affiliate link with yours)

<html>
<head>
<title>Signup for Text Link Ads</title>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
<script>window.location="http://tinyurl.com/2ud2zl";</script>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url=http://tinyurl.com/2ud2zl">
</head>
<body>
<p align="center">You are being taken to the correct page.
<br>If the page does not load after 5 seconds,
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/2ud2zl">click here</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

Save the above code to a text file and rename it as tla.php (or anything you like). You may also want to place it in a separate folder. Now all you have to do is to replace all the affiliate links on your blog with the redirects.

Example: For eMiniMalls, I now link to http://www.johntp.com/recommended/eminimalls.php instead of the real affiliate link https://chitika.com/mm_overview.php?refid=johnpthomas278

If you have used lots of affiliate links on your blog, use the method I mentioned here to replace them in a few seconds.

For Chitika eMiniMalls

1. sign in to your Chitika account, click the eMiniMalls tab, and generate your eMiniMalls code

2. open your theme’s search file (mostly search.php) and find the following line

<h2>Search Results</h2>

3. paste your eMiniMalls code underneath the line

4. change the following lines in your eMiniMalls code

var ch_queries = new Array( );
var ch_selected=Math.floor((Math.random()*ch_queries.length));
if ( ch_selected < ch_queries.length ) {
ch_query = ch_queries[ch_selected];
}

to this

var ch_queries = new Array("<?php echo wp_specialchars($s); ?>");

Your search results will now have an eMiniMall targeted to the search query at the top of the page.

For TTZ Media

Generate your TTZ Media code and paste it where you want it on your theme’s search file.

Now just change the following line

var keyword= "digital camera, gps, ipod, mp3 players, plasma tv, camcorders, dvd players";

to this

var keyword= "<?php echo wp_specialchars($s); ?>";

For ShoppingAds

Generate your ShoppingAds code and paste it where you want it on your theme’s search file.

Now just change the following line

shoppingads_ad_kw = "most popular";

to this

shoppingads_ad_kw = "<?php echo wp_specialchars($s); ?>";

See it in action

You can see how I have targeted eMiniMalls and TTZ Media on my hardware review blog. Just do a search for something. Example – ‘ipod’

found via ProBlogger.net

Trying these ad programs would also help me to review them here and let you know if they were good or bad

THR had almost 500 unique traffic the day it was announced here and has currently around 200 daily unique traffic.

This is what I have done to gain traffic to my hardware review blog and monetize it.

Chitika eMiniMalls  Vs TTZ Media

THR was first monetized with Chitika eMiniMalls but I replaced them a few days back with John Chow’s TTZ Media ads as they look a lot better, are more clickable and hopefully will perform better too.

My complaint with eMiniMalls is that they aren’t very clickable and they display the best deals in a separate tab. How many visitors would click the Best Deals tab on eMiniMalls?

And on an eMiniMalls MPU (Multi-Product unit), a visitor has to click each product image to get their description and best deals where as on TTZ media ads a visitor can see straight away what they need (description is shown only on single product units).

Check these ads from eMiniMalls and TTZ Media to get a better idea 

TTZ Media also provide square ads with ratings that I simply love

But TTZ Media’s report system sucks. It doesn’t show the ad impressions, CTR and the daily earnings. All it shows are the clicks and the monthly earnings! But this problem seems to be only for me as I saw a few screenshots on other sites where they had CTR and ad impressions. 

Current CPC (Cost Per Click) rate of TTZ Media

Up to 1000 clicks – 0.15
1000~2000 clicks – 0.18
2000~4000 clicks – 0.22
4000 clicks and more – 0.25

Unlike TTZ Media, CPC rates of eMiniMalls are not fixed. Last month, I got average CPC rates as high as $0.60 and as low as $0.11

Earning Comparison

Last month Chitika eMiniMalls earned me $11.21 from 47 clicks

This month so far TTZ Media earned me $3.45 from 23 clicks

Experimenting with other Ad Programs

Besides Chitika eMiniMalls and TTZ Media, I also tried out Chitika Linx, Chitika ShopLincs and WidgetBucks. Linx used to work well in the beginning but then stopped working for some strange reason and so I had to opt for Kontera’s ContentLink.

ShopLincs is great but it isn’t performing as well as it used to do for me in the beginning.

WidgetBucks ads look great but only their blog sidebar format seems to work for me. Also I haven’t earned anything from it until now.

The other ad programs I plan to try out once THR starts getting good traffic are TribalFusion, AdSense, BlogAds, Amazon associates, Vizu Polls and FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN).

Getting Traffic and Links to the blog

As you probably already know, regularly updated good quality content is not just enough for the blog’s growth and to earn well from it. You will have to promote it and let people know about the blog and try to get links from related sites.

I have promoted my hardware review blog here many times and also got many stumbles and reviews on StumbleUpon which brought in some traffic for a few days but has now started to fade a bit.

I also had decided to advertise the blog using Google AdWords but since it does not accept PayPal, I had to use StumbleUpon Advertising.

Though advertising through SU brought in some traffic, it did not get the blog any links from any site. Also as I expected, not many StumbleUpon visitors clicked ads. Its usually visitors from Search Engines that click ads.

As the blog is new it doesn’t rank well for much keywords and I will therefore need to get it links from other sites, especially from related ones. For this I have asked some of the THR writers to write Digg worthy posts. A story that hits Digg’s frontpage will get a site not only good traffic but also many links from other sites. 

Very soon I will be working on another blog too and I have a plan on another one too in the future.

Blogging Tips

1. Simple tip to increase your Comment Feeds Subscribers
2. Create A Robots.txt File And Increase Your Search Engine Rankings
3. How To Increase Alexa Rank
4. Add Sitemaps Autodiscovery in Robots.txt File
5. Make Your WordPress Blog Search Engine Friendly
6. How To Get More Comments On Your Blog
7. Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments
8. More WordPress Plugins To Increase Comments On Your Blog
9. Sell Reviews from your Blog using WordPress BankRoll Plugin
10. Clean your Blog’s sidebars
11. The importance of an About me page
12. Top 10 WordPress Plugins To Improve Readers Experience
13. Permalinks Migration WordPress Plugin
14. Things I Do Before Writing A Post
15. Optimize Your WordPress Blog With All In One SEO Pack
16. Use Photos In Your Blog Posts
17. How To Separate Comments and Trackbacks On A WordPress Blog
18. Choosing A Domain Name For Your Blog
19. 5 Ways To Increase The Loading Speed Of A WordPress Blog
20. Improve Your Typing Speed With TypeFaster
21. Get New Readers For Your Blog By Guest Blogging
22. Write A To-Post List For Your Blog
23. Increase Your Blog’s Subscribers By Offering Email Subscription
24. Use Images To Get Your Best Posts Noticed By Your Visitors
25. Another Way To Draw Attention To Your Best Posts
26. Use Images From Flickr For Your Blog
27. 12 Reasons Why I Like Windows Live Writer
28. 16 Things To Do After Starting A New WordPress Blog
29. Use A Desktop Blog Editor To Save Your Blog Post Ideas
30. How To Quickly Find Your Reader Emails
31. Write Posts In Advance
32. Increase Web Traffic using StumbleUpon

Online Money Making Tips

1. Guide For New Bloggers To Make Money Online
2. Making Money from A Blog
3. How Bloggers Make Money Online
4. How To Display Relevant AdSense Ads
5. Make More Money With Less AdSense Ads
6. How To Make Use Of AdSense Alternate Ads Feature
7. Text Link Ads Review
8. How To Make Money Online With Text Link Ads
9. Make Money Online With Post Level Text Link Ads
10. How To Improve Your Affiliate Earnings
11. Make Money Online With Kontera
12. Make Money Online With AuctionAds
13. The Best In-Text Ad Networks
14. Give All Your Advertisers Even Exposure
15. Instant Messaging through Google AdSense Ads
16. How To Automate Bold Text Exclusion In ContentLink
17. WordPress Plugins To Hide Ads From Regular Readers
18. How To Remove Ads On Posts In Certain Categories

I have been using Kontera on this blog for many months now and it has been performing quite well. I also recently started experimenting with Chitika Linx on my new hardware review blog and hope it does better than Kontera.

I have not tried the Amazon Context Links yet but it may perform well this time of the year as people are in the ‘buying mode’ now with Christmas nearing. Also remember that Amazon only pays you a commission on any thing that is sold unlike Chitika and Kontera that pay you per click.

Chitika Linx and Amazon’s Context Links will perform better for product based sites, for other sites you can try Kontera or Intellitxt (if you can get accepted). Recently TribalFusion launched their own In-Text Ad program called EchoTopic (I haven’t tried it yet).

Before you try out any In-Text Advertisements, let me tell you that they increase page load time and your regular readers may find them annoying. So you may want to avoid showing it on your latest posts. I have removed Kontera and AdSense on posts that are in the Blogging, Making Money Online and WordPress categories using the method I mentioned here.

Do you use In-Text Advertisements? If so, which?

Here are the screenshots I took

The first ad scrolls ads vertically and the second one horizontally. These type of ads don’t always show as Google seems to be testing them out. AdSense has been performing badly on this blog for a month now, and I hope this new rotating ads will improve performance.

But do you think visitors will click the arrow buttons to see more ads? How has AdSense performing for you these days?