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RevResponse – The AdSense Alternative You Were Looking For?

on June 11, 2008 in Money Matters

I have been using Google Adsense here for a while. It sure consistently pays and covers my hosting costs and some more but it’s probably not the best monetizing option for a technology blog.

So, I continuously experiment with different ad options here to find the right balance that offers my readers something interesting to look at and actually useful as well. That’s when I came across RevResponse being reviewed by some of the blogs I read frequently. And I was glad when they ordered a review from me as this will give a chance to take a closer look at it and share my thoughts with you.

How is RevResponse different?

RevResponse by Netline has an interesting business model. You get paid when someone downloads one of the free resources being offered through your site.

I hope the post title didn’t mislead you into thinking that this an alternative to Adsense by being a CPC-based ads where you get paid by clicks. It is well known that Adsense fares well in certain blogs and that’s probably the reason you are considering an alternative in the first place. RevResponse is different where it’s not contextually looking at your content to determine teh kind of ads being displayed.

RevResponse pays you commission for giving away free products and services to your readers. I like this model as the readers are in total control of deciding if they would like to read a certain white paper or try out a service that’s being showcased through RevResponse widget. There’s no backhanded way of dealing things or shady about it.

How does RevResponse work?

RevResponse has partnered with multitude of B2B publishers who are giving away complimentary

  • business and tech magazine subscriptions
  • white papers
  • product trials
  • podcasts
  • document downloads

And you get paid commissions ranging from $1.50 to $20.00 for every qualified subscription. RevResponse provides you, the publisher, nice tools to promote the above products that are in such a wide range of categories. You can create different ad formats based on your needs and what will best suit your site from text links, ad banners of different sizes, or flash widgets of different sizes like the one below. You can create customized ad code for your blog/website with a user friendly wizard that provides the completed HTML code that you can just drop in your site in the spot you like.

Some of the categories you might be interested include:

Agriculture, Automotive, Biotech and Pharmaceutical, Computers, Construction, Education, Engineering, Executive and Management, Finance, Food and Beverage, Government, Health Care, Human Resources, Industrial and Manufacturing, Internet, Information Technology, IT – Data Management, IT – Security, IT – Software and Development, IT – Storage, Insurance, Mechanical/Machine, Meetings and Travel, Multimedia, Network/Communications, Purchasing and Procurement, Retail, Sales and Marketing, Small and Medium Business, Telecom and Wireless, Trade/Professional Services, Transportation and Logistics, Utility and Energy.

As you can see you can pick and choose the industry your readers might be interested in trying out free downloads or magazine subscriptions.

In addition to offering a friendly portal to create, manage and analyze the performance of your various ads, Netline also assigns a personal manager to your account who will assist you in case you need help with promoting or if you had any questions. I like the personal touch where they display the contact information of your account manager with their picture. Nice touch. In fact, they are even open to creating custom marketing material for you.

Also, you get a co-branded website via TradePub that helps with branding your product recommendations. You can see ShanKri-la branded website by clicking on an offering in the flash widget.

Shankri-la's RevResponse Site

Plus, you get access to a frequently updated blog with news about RevResponse. In fact, there is a contest right now running for the month of June. Also, there is a forum to talk with fellow RevResponse publishers just to even see what works and what doesn’t for various people.

Try RevResponse

As with any other monetizing option, RevResponse will work great for some and not so much for some. But, the broad range of categories opens up another great alternative for those of us looking to monetize from our blogs. The only way to find out if it’ll work for you is by experimenting.

You can be nice to me and sign up using my Referral link or use this Direct link. Yes, their referral program is pretty enticing too. Learn more about it here.

I would love hear your thoughts on how you see RevResponse change your monetization options?

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  • http://cybersurge.org Michael

    This looks great, I’ve been looking for more ways to monetize my blog but don’t want to clutter my blogs design to much. Since this seems to actually give my readers content it looks like it would be a great option.

    Michaels last blog post..iPhone Firmware 2.0 May Be Released June 27

  • http://techmalaya.com Syahid A.

    Looks like more good news for bloggers. Still waiting for those Adsense feeds ads launch though.

  • http://webtoolsandtips.com Silki

    Karthik,
    This looks interesting. Looks like blogging has more good times ahead.

    Silkis last blog post..FREE online desktop publishing with YUDU

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    This looks like a great alternative or addition to using contextual advertising such as Adsense, especially when CPC-based ads aren’t the best way to monetise a Tech Blog.

    I’ll take a better look at it when I get home and will use your link when I sign up. Cheers!

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Hi Michael, it sure is unobtrusive and there are many color options for the flash widget too. I think something subdued focuses attention inside the widget.

    Syahid, me too. I linked my adsense account from inside Feedburner but haven’t seen anything in adsense yet.

    Silki, it sure is! I love it that there is no end if you are into experimenting until you find the right one for your blog.

    Zath, you are right that this isn’t limited to being an alternative. I am replacing adsense with this instead try to supplement it. I knew I could count on you to use the referral link. :wink:

  • http://www.meandmydrum.com Mark@MeAndMyDrum

    This does look pretty interesting, K. I signed up under your link. I like the idea of offering freebies to entice downloads, making it easier to gather up clicks.

    Marks last blog post..People Really Do Win Online

  • http://smartsavings101.com Fred @ WaMu Credit Cards

    This looks like a great option for me. I run a blog about blogging and Internet news. Adsense does not do too well for that niche. Maybe this will be a better alternative.

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Mark, great to see you buddy. Appreciate the sign-up. :-) And congrats on the iPod win. I am going to experiment with this and see how attractive this is to my readers in general.

    Fred, I know that never ending search for the monetizing alternative. Adsense doesn’t do too well here in a tech blog either but so hasn’t the traditional widgetbucks or ttc media either. So teh jury is still out for me.

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Have now got signed up through your link and will look at testing this out as soon as I can!

    K – have you found any particular type of post your write about performing better income-wise or is Adsense not that great site-wide?

    Zaths last blog post..Family Gamer: Dad’s Edition

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Zath, thanks buddy! Adsense doesn’t fare too well site wise and I am very close to hiding it from my regular readers anyways with Who Sees Ads plugin. It’s targeted towards the search engine visitors and I have few posts that fare well with that. What is your experience with it?

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Well I tried using a modified version of Shylock Adsense which only showed the Adsense on the first page that a search engine visitor viewed. I was testing out that it would improve CTR (which it did) and therefore see if it had an effect on the value of ads being shown on my site.

    After about 2 months of tracking it, it didn’t seem to improve the amount per click so I went back to showing one Adsense block on each page.

    Zaths last blog post..New Ender Animation!

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Talking of Adsense, I don’t suppose anyone here’s know how to exclude it being shown from specific posts do you? (when the code is setup on the single post theme template page)

    I’d like to test out removing it on a couple of posts that I have affiliate marketing on, to see if the Adsense is taking away sales from those posts.

    Zaths last blog post..New Ender Animation!

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    I had found similar experience myself before but in the past 2 weeks my click worth has dropped drastically and makes me think I have been smart priced.

    About hiding adsense from single posts, here is just what you need http://hackwordpress.com/how-to-skip-advertisements-on-single-posts/

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com Shankar Ganesh

    Your review tempts me to try the program. Should explore it one day :)

    Thanks for the great write up!

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Shankar, I am starting to see good results with it. Let me know how it fares for you if you end up trying it. :-)

  • http://www.the-debt-clinic.co.uk James@TheDebtClinic

    Cool, will give this a spin. The best money can of cource come from some nice paid links from nice big corporations .. hush did I just say that. Just make sure they are built into the site nicely ..best do they deal your self just talk to a nice Big SEO Agency and sure you will get some space sold.

    But yeh really nice will be suggest this to people (and my self) who want a new way to ern from there Blogs etc.

    Cheers
    James

  • http://nasavo.com diani

    Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.
    More alternative to monetize our blog.

    dianis last blog post..Tools to Monitor Your Website Performance

  • http://webtoolsandtips.com Web tools & Tips

    I have run Rev Response for one week on my blog, but found that the links on the widget are not targeted. I think it needs some time before more and more advertisers are affiliated to it so that the ads are targeted and suitable for every blog and website.

    Web tools & Tipss last blog post..Orb24 | A decent, if not best "Free File Sharing Program"

  • http://www.effortlesshr.com/blog/ Aaron@HR Software

    There are other alternatives out there as well but none of them have ever worked as well as adsense does for targeting content and geolocation. But as long as competition is around there will always be companies fighting for alternatives so I am sure we will be seeing plenty of ad companies in the near future.

    Aarons last blog post..Going “Green” – Small Business Can Do Its Part

  • http://www.msnnedir.com msn

    Zath, thanks buddy! Adsense doesn’t fare too well site wise and I am very close to hiding it from my regular readers anyways with Who Sees Ads plugin. It’s targeted towards the search engine visitors and I have few posts that fare well with that. What is your experience with it?

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Thanks for mentioning that msn – it’s the first time I’ve looked at the Who Sees Ads plugin.

    If it works like it says it does then I’ll be testing it out on my site, although I may set the regular reader to some more, maybe between 5 and 10 pages.

    Zaths last blog post..Sandisk Cruzer Titanium Review

  • http://www.uberpiglet.com Simon@Free Vector Art

    I would be interested to know how this works out for you. Adsense works well for making money if you get a lot of search engine traffic, and your topic relates to high paying terms. However, if you have a blog that gets a lot of traffic from social media and social booking marking sites like digg and stumbleupon, then adsense can perform poorly. So if this works out well for you I will give it a try. Cheers.

    Simons last blog post..Free Terminator Vector Image

  • http://www.effortlesshr.com Aaron@HR Software

    @Simon: I still have found nothing better than adsense. I wish a company would emerge and bring some competition to google.

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Just as an update I thought I’d say that I’m still using Who See Ads plugin still, but now only show Adsense on the first page that a search engine visitor sees on my site – the reasoning being that if they look beyond one page, there’s hopefully the chance they’ll become a regular reader and that’s just as good if not better than an Adsense click!

  • http://www.dealndeals.com/Addicting-Games.asp Aamir@Addicting Games

    i think it should be taken as an addition to adsense. Since these are free resources, that you are recommending. So instead you only choose either adsense or RevResponse, we can use both. I am going to signup. Hope it will work good. Thanks for sharing it.

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Aamir, it’s true that RevResponse is more a complimentary service to Adsense than a replacement. I am finding that after experimenting. It has been doing well since I changed from teh Flash widget to the normal text widget. I will update here sometime later on how better it is performing since the change. Hope you have good luck with it.

  • http://www.zath.co.uk Zath@Technology Blog

    Hey there,

    I’ve got round to looking at RevResponse again – I just wondered how it had been going for you and whether it is has a good performance rate?

    Zaths last blog post..LG Plasma TVs

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Zath, it hasn’t really took off but it is performing decent enough for me to keep it around. I am not sure if it will still be there when I re-design the site sometime this year. :-)

  • http://www.untwistedvortex.com/2008/06/12/a-niche-is-a-bitch/ A Niche is a Bitch

    [...] looking at other alternatives. I may be signing up with RevResponse, but I haven't decided yet. BidVertiser is out of the question. I've already tested it [...]