So that traffic can be sold to. I’m sure you have seen Chitika - why not try doing such a well to such visitors? Leave up CPM ads for ‘normal users’, and throw out the CPA ads for SE-referred people.

I would never trust a file hosting company that offers everything free, and a real estate listing aggregator can make a killing by reaching deals with the people they are aggregating - realtors.

Eg - we own a domain/site on a very popular tourist destination site for country X. Instead of popping up Google AdSense ads (it has a lot of advertisers) we reached a deal with a travel agent. Did it require some effort? Yep. But the end result was a fantastic CPM. We get good money, the travel agent gets targetted leads - it is in everyone’s interest.

Selling through affiliate links is the way to go. It’s immediate as long as they approve your publisher account.

Well I don’t know but here’s a thought.. most web 2.0 companies are service oriented and aren’t in relation with any or most products sold through affiliate links. Take for example Digg.com, it doesn’t have any reason to sell products or put up product links on it’s site, although my personal opinion is that they will do well putting up tech related products because they handle large amounts of traffic and have strong supporters, but otherwise it won’t cut it for them.

Another example would be file hosting companies, or real estate listing aggregators etc. these really won’t have the ability to use affiliate links.

But yes, its true that these companies should rely on other sources of income apart from Adsense like i’ve said previously. So it’s all about marketing tactics I guess.

I can cite an example from a genre I used to previously deal with - MMOs. Eg World of Warcraft - our earnings were roughly 6x CPC. All we did was swap out Google AdSense and recommend people purchase gold so that they can enjoy more of the game faster.

Basically you take topic X, what would interest people interested in topic X, and sell based on that. For a sports blog - sell tickets. Webmaster site - referrals work great.

It does take time and effort, but it is well worth it.

I do know and most of us do acknowledge that CPA is way better than Adsense. But I think for most websites which have just started out or have just started-up, have problems in depending on CPA.

What I’d suggest is that web 2.0 companies should start-off using Adsense for the first few months of operation while building it’s traffic and authority in a particular niche that it’s serving. Then it should think about diversifying it’s revenue stream by offering low CPA rates for it’s probable advertisers as a start or even offer free advertising for a minimum contract period i.e. pay a low CPA rate for two months and get one month free - therefore the advertiser gets a 2+1 months advertising package.

Then the company could introduce subscription services for it’s services. This way the web 2.0 is really diversifying it’s revenue stream and building a hopefully more profitable company rather than just depending on Adsense.

The main problem that web 2.0 companies face when appointing affiliate ad sales team is the company’s own authority is not yet known, and the ad-sales team might not try hard enough to sell your ad inventory until the company builds repotoire. That’s why many go to Adsense. The fact that there will be advertisers on their screens in a matter of minutes and as soon as traffic builds up there is high hopes of high click throughs is appealing to most.

So what are your thoughts Ahmed?