I'd like to mix it up so that I don't have to rely on google too much. Have you any good experiences with other PPC content networks?
http://www.admarketplace.com/
Not personally tried them but they seemed helpful when I spoke to them
We been playing with the following with cpc deal:
pricerunner - good prices, adaptable, only shopping stuff, quality must be decent converting traffic ( visitors 15000 pcm)
pricegrabber - good prices, adaptable, only shopping stuff, quality must be decent to converting traffic ( visitors 15000 pcm)
shopzilla - ok prices, very adaptable, only shopping stuff, quality must be ok to converting traffic ( visitors 15000 pcm)
yahoo - poor prices, very adaptable, lots of stuff, quality must be ok ( visitors 15000 pcm)
kelkoo - poor prices, hopeless to deal with, only shopping stuff, we gave up dealing with them
The other two that we have found that we do on a affiliate basis but converts so good that we look at them as a cpc model now:
amazon - ok prices, very adaptable, only shopping stuff ( over 3000 sales per month is when the comission deals get interesting)
ebay - ok prices, very adaptable, only shopping stuff
Amazon and Ebay make almost as much as pricerunner and pricegrabber on a cpc basis, but they have a huge extra reach
Issue with lots of these are obviously you need to cut good rev share deals but also have enough traffic for them to be interested. Traffic levels I have added above.
Doug
The conundrum is that with the number of advertisers Google has their payouts will always on the face of it seem higher, even if, as a percentage of the revenue generated it seems smaller.
Also, with so many of the alternative providers being Google approved networks you might find you are serving up Adsense anyway, but someone else (i.e. the network/exchange) has siphoned off a little bit for themselves.
Alternatives that do OK for people include :
Chitika
Kontera
There are others, but I am not that familiar with them.
I think Clickbooth has a new CPC option. It creates an ad block with 3 or 4 ads in it. Never used it but for the right kinds of sites it could work well.
Chitika was ok in the past for product based stuff. However, they changed their format, code, setup, etc. numerous times making it a pita to deal with. The type of sites I used them on were set and forget.
Nice method of playing with amazon
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cheap-amazon-loopholes#uncover
Doug