Friday, February 12, 2010

In text ads and Infolinks - Alternative Pay Per Click

I've recently discovered Infolinks, an affiliate program and pay per click (PPC) network and been trialling it on several sites so I thought I'd run a quick review.


Advertisers will be disappointed that Infolinks appears to focus on publishers and the website not allow advertisers to create an account.  In fact everything is done manually via email with their support staff.


I have been using Infolinks as a publisher, however, with moderate results.  Infolinks claims to be the highest paying context advertising.  However, the revenue per click is as low as 1 cent.  Adsense is capable of generating a hundred times more than that.  However the click rates for Infolinks are far higher than Adsense.  So a direct Infolinks vs Adsense comparison doesn't stack up.  On my site Adsense generates about 5 times more revenue each day.  However the good thing about Infolinks is that it can work together with Adsense and other programs in combination.  Together it can be an effective complement.  It also seems to be consistent based on page impressions, whereas Adsense doesn't work great with low traffic blogs.  


Other things I like about Infolinks is the low payout threshold and regular payments in comparison to Adsense which has a high threshold and confusing payment system. 


However Infolinks tends to be very distracting for users and I've had some feedback about misleading and offensive ad content which is unrelated to the highlighted keywords.


But as a means of generating revenue from a website or blog, Infolinks is worth a try.