Now obviously, thousands of webmasters have posted long lists of every single Google supplements out there. How am I any different? I’m going to rank the programs in order of what has made me the most money.

Note: All of these programs are 100% compatible with Google Adsense.
2nd Note: This is a supplement article to a series of adsense experiements I’m currently running, to be posted once all the data is in

Chitika

Link: Chitika

Chitika made it big with their eminimalls, which allow users to see and interact with products in an ad. Now they’ve blown up, with inline ads, myspace ads, and commission sales. Since their launch, these guys have been huge for me. They were and remain, my primary google supplement. You know how you could wake up one day and be banned from adsense because some moron user clicked your ads 25 times? Chitika filters your clicks, so the only way to get banned is to click the ads yourself.

The downside to Chitika is that minimalls look more ad-like than text ads. Luckily, the inline ads and shopcloud ads still blend very well with text heavy sites.

Bloggers: I recommend slapping Chitika shopcloud and Chitika linx onto your site, with a minimall going down vertically on your sidebar.
Forums: Use a 728*90 minimall either in your header or footer to bring in a few extra bucks a day.

Adbrite

Link: Adbrite

Another one of these ad programs that doesn’t try to replace Adsense. A huge upside here: Enter you adsense code and a minimum eCPM. If Adbrite can’t meet your minimum, it’ll display your Google Ads. This is a win/win anyway you slice it. I prefer Chitika over Adbrite because I find the pay per click to be higher. The CPM earnings here definitely outweigh any other ad programs, so it’s a great program for forums.

Bloggers: Use adbrite at the footer of your posts, above the comment area
Forums: Stick adbrite in your footer above the quick reply box with adsense as an alternative. I currently have my eCPM set at 15 cents, but I’m experimenting with different values (more on this later).

Text Link Ads

Link: TLA

TLA is a pretty awesome program: Just place a few text links on your site and earn pretty good money each month. The good news? Easy to incorporate for all bloggers. Not hard for forums either. You literally have to do nothing to earn the money and selling 5 links for the average site will probably come up to around $60-$75/month.

The bad news? Most little sites will rarely have anyone sign up on their page. Also, Google has gone on a vendetta against TLA and is handing out punishments to anyone they think is selling these bad boys, so prompting people to sign up for your site is tricky.

Personally, I wouldn’t worry. I think Google’s actions are more symbolic than anything else. Google’s engine live and dies by site to site links. Punishing link sellers is futile because it’s damn near impossible to differentiate someone selling links from someone with a friendly blogroll. In fact, Matt Cutts, the google engineer, has 3 outbound “friend” links on ONLY his homepage, a characteristic that text ads usually have (single page vs site wide).

Blogs: Go for it. I’d say 3-5 links is safe and anything more than 6 is getting risky.
Forums: It’s payday for you guys. The recent crackdowns are aimed at blogs. I think now is a prime time to get in the game. Sell 3-4 links at the bottom of your homepage and no one will be the wiser.

Widgetbucks

Link: Widget Bucks

Although this up and coming ad program is aimed at blogs, I really don’t think it’s all that great. The CPC is decent, but I find the ad styles bulky and screaming “IM AN AD”. I’ve made very little off this from blogs, and even less from forums.

Bloggers: You might want to try to and experiment to see how it works for you, but I wouldn’t give it more than a week.
Forum Owners: This actually has an impressive CPM, going up to about $0.25. Unfortunately, CPM only shows to visitors outside of USA, Canada and the UK (kind of fuzzy on the exact country list, but you get the picture). If you run a forum with a lot of foreign visitors, I’d recommend picking this up for its CPM.

TTZ Media

TTZ Media

Internet superstar John Chow’s ad network, that pays at least 15 cents a click? Must be pretty awesome right? Sorry John, you’ve always got a place in my heart, but not your ad network. This one has actually made me the least money. And by least, I mean nothing at all. Worse, it hasn’t shown me any statistics.

I know what you’re thinking–maybe I didn’t get impressions, clicks or screwed up the code. Maybe. I tried re-installing the code a few times just to make sure. I know for a fact I had at least 50 000 impressions with this code. The ads displayed fine. Just because I trusted John, I gave the ads a week to run. Still, no stats.

OK well shit happens right? Submit a support ticket and get it all worked out. Too bad the support team has yet to reply. Too bad the TTZ Media support system is really just a box that asks you to submit your message. The FAQ was very simplistic and said the stats update every few hours.

I was really disappointed to see something from John Chow have such poor quality. Now I consider myself a fair man, so if in the future this all gets cleared up, I’d be happy to rereview TTZ Media.

Blogs and Forums: Try at your own risk.

I have to admit that I got caught up in GoDaddy’s marketing hype. They’ve done a great job of convincing the general public that they’re the cheapest and most reliable registrar. A surprising amount of experienced webmasters have also fallen into this trap. In fact, this blog and several of my other sites are registered at GoDaddy…

What’s wrong with GoDaddy?

Not a whole lot. If all you’re looking to do is grab a domain they’re not too bad. But what if you want to buy and sell domains? What if, like me, you want your domain to be registered privately (ie. not have your personal info available to everyone)? After calculating my 2007 finances, I realized I’ve spent, or better yet, wasted $42 on private registration from GoDaddy!

Now don’t get me wrong, keeping my information off that giant database is well worth paying extra for. The reason I say waste is because NameCheap offers WhoIsGuard for about 2 bucks. With new domains? Free.

Transferring Domains made easy (buying and selling)

So we all know of GoDaddy’s coveted “Use a buy agent to get this domain!”. Thanks GoDaddy, but I’ll pass. Again, you’re really paying a hell of a lot more because of GoDaddy’s name and high advertising costs. What about NameCheap? Selling a domain goes like this:
1. List your domain in their marketplace.
2. Buyer contacts you, negotiation and payment follow.
3. You go to manage domains–>transfer domain. Enter your buyers NameCheap account.
4. Done. The actual transfer time takes about 30 seconds.

Mo Money Mo Money Mo Money

As soon as my domains are up for expiration, everything is moving to NameCheap. It’s a well reputed registrar with great customer service. The best part is I just cut my domain costs this year by 50%. But do you want to really know how much I like NameCheap? You won’t find a NameCheap affiliate link in this post. In fact, I’m a GoDaddy affiliate: anyone who buys from GoDaddy makes me money, NameCheap buyers don’t earn me a dime. This is just to show people that there is a better alternative to GoDaddy.

See: GoDaddy and Namecheap

On Next week’s episode: GoDaddy hosting vs other sites…