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Last Updated on October 26, 2020 by Yovana
Did you start your blog yet? If not, check out How To Create A Self Hosted WordPress Blog. If so, you probably applied for Google Adsense for hopes of monetizing your new online venture. And if you already were approved for Google Adsense, you probably think you are ready to earn loads of money. Think again.
Google Adsense does not live up to it’s hype. In some cases it is extremely hard to be approved for Google Adsense and once you do get approved, you end up making only chump change. In addition to the tough approval process, Google Adsense is also very strict about it’s rules. They constantly monitor your site and ads and if you violate any of their rules even once, they will ban you. If you are banned from Google Adsense you can NEVER reapply for it.
The biggest frustration I hear the most from bloggers besides the tough approval process and strict rules is that Adsense pays very little per click if you have low traffic. If you are more of a veteran and have been able to get high traffic consistently, then big advertisers will contact you to pay much more than Adsense anyway.
Once you are about to get paid from Adsense (if you ever do) it will take you forever to receive the payment. Adsense minimum payout is 100$, once you reach that amount you should receive a payout to your designated payment setting. However, you will have to wait for many weeks or a month to receive any payouts.
I have experienced these same frustrations at one time or another so I decided to start looking into other options. There are a ton of other ad networks out there for you to use that aren’t as a pain to be apart of like Google Adsense.
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Related:
How To Create A Self Hosted WordPress Blog – You must have a site or blog to submit for approval to ad networks and to set up ads on.
Google Analytics For Newbies – You must have google analytics set up on your site for any of these networks to approve your application.
How To Monetize Your Blog Using WordPress Plugins – To ease your ad implementation.
Table of Contents
These are the top alternative ad networks to Google Adsense.
Keep in mind these are not the only alternatives. Everyday I learn of a new way to make money online.
AdMaven
I love Admaven since once you register, you will be immediately approved. You will them immediately receive access to Ad Maven’s platform that happens to be extremely user friendly. Ad Maven increases your revenue by identifying your website type and presenting to your users ads that are most likely to convert. They will also increase your revenues by 50% by providing an Adblock bypass solution allowing you to present ads to 100% of your users.
AdMaven recently launched a new product called “Native push notifications” A monetization method which is 100% compliant with Google policy and can be used alongside AdSense ads.
Native push is a clean, user-friendly and absolutely non-intrusive ad format.
Working perfectly on mobile and desktop, the Native push generates extremely high conversion rates, allowing publishers to make amazing money while keeping their users experience high.
Native push don’t disrupt the flow users get while browsing on your website and they do not decrease the profits from other ad formats as they don’t take up space on your website or redirect users to different sites.
Adbuff
Adbuff advertises themselves as one of the top Adsense alternatives and I can definately see why. They claim to work with the most advanced contextual ad delivery system ever created. You can double your page RPM with their innovative ad units. They will also give you $25 dollars for every site they approve and run ads on for 60 consecutive days.
Chitika
Chitika ads are search targeted so i fyou get most of your traffic from search engines, this is the perfect Google Adsense alternative for you. However, they will allow you to use alternative ads that you can display to your non-organic visitors to make use of your ad space. Their minimum payout amount if $10 which is great and they also offer an affiliate program!
For easy implementation they also offer a WordPress plugin and support for Blogger!
Media.net
Media.net gives you exclusive access to the Yahoo! Bing Network. They are one of the largest contextual ad networks in the world and some of their publishers include Forbes, Reuters, ELLE and Good Housekeeping. They offer their publishers several ad styles, including content ads and search targeting ads. You can also customize these to fit your needs. However, search targeting ads only appear to search engine traffic.
Media.net also provides a nice web bar and mobile ads (sticky at the bottom) to its publishers.
Mediavine
Mediavine has a sessions minimum of 25,000 per month, as required by their ad partners. So if you have traffic below that threshold they will reject you but encourage you to reapply once you reach that threshold. I am very pleased by their support and customer service. Once you do get approved for Mediavine ads, you will reap the benefits of working with Mediavine as they are one of the best paying ad networks.
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Adsterra
Adsterra is a premium advertising network serving over 10 billion geo-targeted ad impressions per month. Among their ad formats for web and mobile devices are popunders, standard banners, pushups, interstitial, sliders, and direct links. Adsterra works with websites from all types of niches. Unlike Google Adsense, Adsterra has a great ad fill rate for all countries.
Publishers get paid bi-weekly, and always on time. They also offer a 5% referral program for more potential for earning and site monetization.
Adversal
If your site gets over 50,000 page views a month, this one is for you! They have fast approval rates but make sure your site meets their requirements before applying. Unfortunately, If you do not have that sort of traffic Adversal will reject you but will also encourage reapplying once you reach that threshold. They offer various types of banners in various sizes. They have a minimum payout of $20 and also offer an affiliate program.
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Daniella is the creator and author of iliketodabble.com. When their wife Alexandra and them aren’t globetrotting or playing with their 7+ animals, they are dabbling and working towards a future of financial freedom.
This is a great list! I have certainly been frustrated by Adsense as I haven’t even met the payment threshold in the last year and my site gets decent amount of visitors. It is such a shame. I am definitely going to try one or some of the above.
Setting up my brother’s website now, and this comes on the right time, helpful post 🙂
What an awesome post I really love this information, Glad that you share this with us.
Have you ever thought about writing an e-book or gust writing on other websites? I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my readers would appreciate your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to send me an e mail.
Yes I would love that!
I use it but I don’t really make anything on it which it is frustrating, I will definitely check out your suggestions.
I haven’t tried Google Adsense and now thanks to your post I will be applying for these programs instead. I like the sound of Chitka and that the minimum payout is $10!
Thanks for this list! I pinned it! I’m looking forward to checking a few of these out more carefully.
I’m still pretty new to blogging, so I have yet to take the giant leap into Ads on my site. This was super informative and helpful, thank you for all this great information. Seriously needed it right now!
I have to admit that Google Adsense doesn’t always seem like worth the time these days. It is not a steady stream of revenue and I wonder if I should continue using it.
I actually haven’t tried Adsense before and this is good to know. Did not realize that there are so many options out there.
Nice tips for blogs, unfortunately not usable for youtube channels that work only with AdSense. They have to be monetized by direct sponsorships to make more money.
Read my 7 simple tricks for better skin (link).
It’s great to have a variety of companies for advert placement. I haven’t used any before as I don’t actually have ads on my blog at the moment.
I’ve loved working with Mediavine for my ads. There are definitely some really great alternatives to Adsense out there!
Keep working ,fantastic job!
I’ve yet to place ads on my website, but if I ever decide to, I’ll definitely reference back to your post. I had no idea there were so many options out there, and all seem to have their unique pluses and minuses.
I’ve never used any of these alternatives before. I have to admit, adsense can be quite of a headache and it’s definitely one of the things that you can’t easily add to your blog.
I think it’s really nice that there are alternatives to adsense. Adsense is great but they’re very strict with the rules and not a lot of people can use it.
I was never really crazy about Adsense. I tried it out and just didn’t like it. I’ll have to check out some of your recommendations!
Thank you! I have never managed to set up AdSense on my blog. Tried, unsuccessfully lol. Good to read about the alternatives anyway, didn’t know of them before x
Thanks for sharing will definitely try our some myself and see the outcome
I have never used google adsense before, I’m apart of rewardStyle which is what I use always! These are great alternatives, I’ll have to take a peek at some of them
I have been looking into alternative options for a long time. I am using Amazon ads, but they are low paying. I am also trying out Reward Style’s ads, and they’re a lot better. I did use Mode for years, but we all know how well that worked out in the end! Thanks for the other recommendations, I’ll check them out!
I was using Adsense and Media.net until I just got approved for Mediavine. So glad! But Media.net was much better than Adsense. Great list.
This post comes at the best time – I literally spent half a day yesterday arguing with my friend about how bad/good Adsense is haha! Totally trying some of these out tomorrow xx
Adsense definitely can be a challenge. It’s great to see their are other options for monetizing your blog.
These are fantastic resourses thanks for much for sharing! I only put ads from small businesses and crochet related ones on my blog but I need to branch out!
I love this list! I haven’t tried any of them before, but I would absolutely love to. I’ve tried Google Adsense before and I didn’t like it.
Thank you for these tips. There have been a lot of talk about Google Adsense going down hill. xx
Some great alternatives here for those looking to monetize their blogs, thanks for sharing! x
Thank you for sharing I am going to set some time aside this weekend to read it more carefully. Nice
greetz
So helpful! I have shared this on a local blogger group as I think everyone could benefit from giving this a read! I’m looking into putting ads onto my blog in the near future so this is definitly going into my bookmarks!
Thanks a lot for helping me out with such comprehensive list. I am definitely going to try couple of alternatives. Thanks a lot again.
I think this is great advice! I never used GoogleAdsense, and as soon as I got 10,000 page views I went with Gourtmet Ads (I’m a food blogger), and as soon as I hit whatever the minimum was for Mediavine, I made that switch.
Yeah, I get little to nothing from AdSense. Thank you for all the great suggestions, I am going to go and check them out.
These are a few good resources. I personally like Share A Sale.
Thank you so much for the ideas. I’m a new blogger, and don’t have many readers yet. Its so hard to know where to start. This is really helpful.
I have to say, I didn’t realize there were so many alternatives to AdSense. I will have to check some of these out when I have time this weekend!
I know very little about this area but I did want to start making money from advertising on the blog so this is so helpful to me. I’m saving it to use for future reference, thank you!
Great ideas here – google adsense can definitely be frustrating when you get limited traffic and you see $1 earnings for 3 months!
I’ve seen lots of people expressing their ill feeling about Adsense. I’m sure your tips will be appreciated by many
Yes I admit all these ads and Google ads are so confusing for me. One of these days I just need to sit down take a course and read through everything so that I can understand it all .
Can we apply for multiple networks and put ad of multiple network at a same time?
yep.
OMG thank you so much! I hate adsense, so these are perfect. I am going to set some time aside to check these out and sign up this weekend.