by NotePage, Inc.

The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. However, evolution and growth of Internet has hampered growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search engine algorithm changes, along with search engine's clear distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in use of software programs that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be considered.

A Healthy Alternative or Supplement Google's Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Google's pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Google's spider parses adserving website and serves ads that relate to website's content. While Google's Adsense program still has some issues, they are making efforts to improve it.

The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert javascript into webpage or website template. The javascript calls ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to webpage. If visitor clicks one of Adsense ads served to website, website owner is credited for referral.

The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google dictates format of ads. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent improvement allows webmasters to modify ad boxes to resemble website's color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of creative ads webmasters are accustom to.

One of common issues that marketers face when using Google Adwords, is that use of popups on target page for their ad is not permitted. Many Adwords advertisers just completely remove popups from their web site, which can not only significantly damage profitability that results from other traffic sources, but, as we shall see, it is also not entirely necessary. This article looks at alternative solutions, which when implemented can virtually double ROI (Return On Investment) for Adwords ads.

It is well recognized that by capturing visitor's email address, and then following up with them via an effective auto-responder campaign, marketers can more than double their chances of clinching sale. Popups can be a very effective way of doing this, often helping to convert 50% of more of visitors to subscribers.

With Google Adwords however, because popups are not permitted, you need to look for other ways in which you can maximize visitor-to-subscriber conversion ratio, and thereby also maximize value you get out of each click-through to your web site.

Here are three main ways in which you can do this:

1. Set your target page for your ad as a so-called 'name squeeze' page - this means whole page you direct them to is focussed on one thing, to get their name and email address, following which you can always redirect them to your normal sales page to try and 'make sale'. You still need to make sure of course that your ad accurately reflects your target page.