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The 800 lb GorillaThe 800 lb gorilla can pretty much do whatever it wants to, because nobody can do anything to stop it. Google is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with, but it is also a company which does in fact provide benefits to browsers, sellers, and publishers. Who would have thought that you could produce information, and make money without selling anything, which someone could come and use for free, with all of it being paid for by a third party? There are people that I try to explain AdSense to, who just cannot understand how I can earn from a website that the visitors do not pay to use! There are reasons why Google is the 800 lb gorilla: 1. They got there first. 2. They did it smart. They made sure their service had the potential to benefit everyone involved. 3. They allowed people to participate that cannot use any other system. 4. They protect themselves first. Not always a positive thing for people who get in their way, but it has kept them alive. The end result is that now, if you look around for an alternative, you won't find anything nearly as flexible. Here are some things we found when trying to find an alternative to Google AdSense: 1. Many programs won't let you in unless you can prove high enough traffic. 2. Many have MORE restrictive standards than Google about page content. 3. The ones that have lower standards also serve trashier ads. 4. Many do not have enough advertisers to deliver sufficient targeted ads. This is even a problem with Google sometimes, but gets REALLY bad with others. 5. They almost always pay lower amounts. 6. They are usually more difficult to use, or dependent upon action on the part of the advertiser to manually choose your site (hard for small sites to compete). So far, in our search, Google is the only company that delivers a service which a small website owner can earn from as well as a big one, and which is truly a fix it and forget it solution as far as maintaining the service itself is concerned. So, Google may change the rules. They may institute new restrictions. They may pull the plug without warning on site owners, and refuse to explain why. They may, in their attempts to stop genuine clickfraud (which IS a problem), end up penalizing some innocent parties along with the guilty. But so far, no other company has managed to produce a program that is anywhere near comparable. If they had, I'd be testing them on a site or two, just so I could be able to tell people how they measured up. An 800 lb gorilla it may be, but so far, it seems to be the only company getting the job done. Written by Laura Wheeler |
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