One of the oldest and most popular ways to make money online is with pay-per-click affiliate programs. Commonly called PPC affiliate programs, these networks pay affiliates a set share of the revenue received from the advertiser for every visitor who clicks on an advertisement.
The pay per click affiliate program is so popular because it allows websites to earn money from their traffic without having to refer sales on products. This business model allows websites to achieve a more consistent revenue source with PPC than with commission based affiliate marketing.
With PPC advertising, a merchant generally bids to pay a specific amount every time an affiliate sends them a website visitor through one of their ads. There are some other types of PPC advertising that mimic pay per lead advertising or even traditional pay per impression advertising, although these variations are not found on all networks. Some websites can make use of numerous PPC networks on a single site, although affiliates should really select the programs that will work best for their niche and website traffic.
Even though the pay-per-click advertising model is fairly simple with a specific cost being paid for each click on an advertiser link, most of the major PPC affiliate programs use this model in modern ways. Some of the programs will automatically alter bid amounts based on conversion rates, use interactive graphics for ads, or even show ads on mobile devices.
When an affiliate can achieve high click-through rates on their PPC advertisements, earnings will often be significantly higher than what can be achieved with commission based advertising using the same website traffic, assuming there are at least a few different merchants willing to pay a decent amount per click.
Google Adsense
Quite possibly the most heavily used and well known of all pay per click affiliate programs for both merchants and affiliates is Google Adsense.
Being the number one search engine in the world has certainly attracted a large amount of merchant competition to their PPC ad network. As a result, affiliates are able to earn some extremely high earnings per click on Adsense ads in a variety of niche markets. Thousands of Google Adsense niches will pay $1-$2 or more per click. Many of the best can pay $20-$40 per click or even more.
Adsense ads are contextual based, which means they are based on the content of the specific page where they are being viewed. Merchants bid a cost per click on different keyword phrases with Adsense. An important thing to remember about Adsense is that they will not allow affiliates to use another contextual advertising network on the same website where Adsense ads are being displayed. Other popular PPC programs are usually not contextual based, which allows them to be used with Adsense.
Affiliates do not get to choose what ads they will display on this network, and there is no guarantee that a high paying ad will be displayed. However, careful control of content on a website will allow an affiliate to have a certain degree of control over what kind of ads will be shown on their website. This is generally done by selecting high paying keyword phrases as website or page topics.
Chitika
Another popular pay per click affiliate program that is often used alongside Adsense ads is Chitika. Over 100,000 websites are already affiliates with Chitika, and these sites deliver more than 3 billion ad impressions each month, even though the company has only been around since 2004.
Chitika is a unique PPC affiliate program because it utilizes the information from search engine visitors to a web page to deliver targeted advertising. This puts Chitika in a different category from Google Adsense, which allows both Chitika and Adsense ads to be used together. Just like Adsense, Chitika also offers a decent variety of options and advertising types, including local and mobile device targeted ads.
Websites with a large amount of search engine traffic will be able to earn the most money from Chitika, while a site with a large amount of direct traffic may be better off with other programs.
Infolinks
One of the youngest and most successful of the major pay per click affiliate programs is Infolinks, which was created in 2007. They are the highest paying PPC affiliate program in the industry, which is based on the amount of advertiser revenue they pass along to their affiliates.
Infolinks is another unique PPC program because their advertisements are based on keywords within website content. Since these ads are nothing like Google Adsense ads, they can be used together. Infolinks also guarantees to pay the highest revenue share to any affiliate, despite their traffic levels. Google Adsense in infamous for paying a lower revenue share to most of their affiliates while only offering higher earnings to sites with more traffic.
Infolinks scans website content in a similar manner to Google Adsense, except Infolinks turns keywords within the content into targeted advertisement links. This creative approach to pay-per-click advertising has allowed Infolinks affiliates to achieve the highest CTR in the industry. When it comes to generating revenue based on the number of clicks an ad receives, higher click-through rates mean more money for the affiliate.
