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10 Best Google Adsense Alternatives For Bloggers 2017

Are you looking for some effective AdSense alternatives for monetizing your blog?
AdSense has a good potential for earning if your traffic is from the western countries or has a good number of visitors.
However, you might want to have some other sources of income that can earn you a good amount other than AdSense on your blog.
If your AdSense is banned or you are in a niche that doesn’t get approval by AdSense, this article will help you with similar and even better-earning streams.


Why Should You Look for AdSense Alternatives?

If you’re wondering why you should look for AdSense alternatives in the first place here are some reasons that might help you:
  • Your AdSense account is banned, or possibly you were never approved for AdSense program because of your niche.
  • You are looking for a monetization means that has more ROI than AdSense: There are literally endless ways to monetize your blog that can bring you better revenue than AdSense. I’ll show you why in a minute.
  • Your traffic is not responsive to AdSense: Sometimes you are in a niche that doesn’t perform well in terms of AdSense revenue like the blogging niche itself. Most bloggers are aware of AdSense as an ad network and hence do not click on them.
  • Increasing use of Ad blockers: With the rise of Ad Blockers around the world (both for Desktop and mobile users) ad revenue from programs like AdSense is decreasing like never before.

Please Note: This post is not about disapproving AdSense as a blog monetization technique. Our aim is to show you better alternatives for earning from your blog which can have higher return on investment than AdSense.


In case you want to continue with your AdSense, you could, of course, use AdSense along with these ad programs in order to supplement your revenue.
Ready for the best AdSense alternatives?
Here we go!

Top 10 Google AdSense Alternatives That You Can Try Today!

 

For your convenience, I’ll divide this section into two parts:
1. AdSense Alternative Ad Platforms (contextual ads)

  1. Media.net
  2. Infolinks
  3. Bidvertiser
  4. RevenueHits
2. Affiliate Marketing
(It can be very profitable)

  1. Grammarly
  2. StudioPress
  3. WPEngine
  4. Instamojo
  5. GetResponse
  6. Amazon Associates

Adsense Alternative Ad Platforms:


In this section, we’ll discuss about making money with AdSense alternatives that work on the same format of monetization as AdSense (displaying ads).
The programs discussed here require little or no involvement from your side apart from initial ad optimization.
The payout of these ad platforms is more or less similar to AdSense and has no scope for scaling in terms of revenue.
It is best if you’re just starting out and have no option to try other monetization methods.
If you’re looking for AdSense alternatives that can boost your income manifold, be sure to check out the second section.
Media net adsense alternative
Media.net is probably the best paying AdSense alternative that gives you a more or less similar revenue as Adsense would.
Media.net is a contextual and display ad network owned by the Yahoo! & Bing network.
Media.net allows various ad formats that blend perfectly with your site’s content thereby increasing the click-through rates and revenue.
Used by publishers like Forbes, Cosmopolitan, etc. media.net offers contextual ads based on your traffic source (organic search traffic, referral/direct traffic, etc.) which increases CTR.
PROS
  • One of the top AdSense alternatives with a similar ad inventory
  • Different ad formats for direct traffic, search traffic, and mobile traffic.
  • Has the maximum return if your audience is from western countries.
  • The keyword block ad format clearly blends with the content and has maximum CTR.
CONS
  • Very strict approval policy
  • Requires separate approval for each site to display ads.
  •  
  •  
Bidvertiser Google adsense alternative
Bidvertiser is a PPC ad network that pays you a bonus for every conversion your lead makes in addition to the ad click revenue.
If you’re looking for an AdSense alternative that pays you better than it, Bidvertiser is a must try.
With Bidvertiser, you have text ads, banner ads, and even mobile responsive ad formats, so you have ad inventory for all sources of your traffic.
And Since it has multiple levels of monetizing clicks, it is one of the best AdSense alternatives for low traffic sites.
PROS
  • Bidvertiser works on bidding system which means you automatically display ads of the highest bidder for your site.
  • Bidvertiser is a high paying AdSense alternative because you get paid extra for every conversion (whatever the ads require your reader to do, like signup, purchase, video view, etc.) you make.
CONS
  • The bidding system naturally has some cons like no one opting for your site if it has poor metrics.
  •  
RevenueHits Best Adsense Alternative
RevenueHits is a very popular AdSense alternative that works on a CPA model rather than CPM model.
With the CPA format, you get a high commission rate than normal AdSense impressions.
If your AdSense is banned or you want to try something more robust in terms of ad management, RevenueHits is a must try.
RevenueHits is said to pay around $30 per CPM which is why it is a better AdSense alternatives to earn for high traffic sites.
Be sure to read my RevenueHits review which gives you additional information on how to make more from this ad network.
PROS
  • Geo-targeted ads which increase relevancy and hence more clicks.
  • No prerequisites for sites applying, which means it is the best AdSense substitute for smaller sites or newly launched sites.
  • Contextual ads do not hamper the user experience of your blog.
CONS
  • Please note RevenueHits is a CPA network and you do not get paid if your reader doesn’t take action on an ad.
  • RevenueHits is very strict with pages that have zero content. You are not allowed to place ads on such pages
  • .
I can go on and on with other CPM alternatives for AdSense replacements, but these are the ones that have proven to be a good replacement for Google’s AdSense Ad program.
Now, let’s head on to some better monetization methods other than AdSense.

Better Monetization Methods Than Google AdSense


In this section, we will discuss the AdSense alternatives that have huge opportunities for growth rather than the display ads that we discussed above.
Affiliate marketing is the process of referring your readers/followers to a product/service you think would benefit them and earn a commission from the former without having your readers pay a dime extra.
Here is a detailed guide on how to get started and become successful in affiliate marketing.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing:

  • You don’t have to bug your user experience with ads.
  • You get paid to refer your readers to things you use and love.
  • Readers feel gifted to know about tools/services that help them to grow their business.
  • The commission you get paid is much more than AdSense or any of its alternatives.
  • Affiliate marketing works on autopilot with just a bit of optimization here and there.
  • The beauty is, you can even use them in addition to AdSense and other.
Please Note: Affiliate marketing isn’t a set and forget process like AdSense, but they pay a huge income that AdSense can never have. So it's worth a try.
Let’s head over some of the best affiliate programs you can join and promote to make more money than AdSense.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a very popular grammar and punctuation checker tool that helps users write better English.
It checks for over 250 different punctuation errors among other things.
Moreover, it is available as a browser add-on and works automatically whenever you write (email, social media updates, blog, etc.).
Grammarly Spelling Checker
Check out my review of Grammarly for more details.
The best part of promoting Grammarly is, it is a free tool (which means your readers will not hesitate to use it) and it helps in better English writing (which means it is a hot selling tool that has users no matter what your niche is).

Benefits of promoting Grammarly:

  • Hot offer that has a customer base in every niche.
  • The free plan itself is so useful which gives you $0.20 per lead.
  • Grammarly gives you an upfront $25 as soon as you join their affiliate program.
  • Gets you a hefty $20 for every sign up that buys their premium plan.
  • Grammarly has a referral program which enables you a 10% lifetime earning of every sale of anyone who becomes an affiliate using your link.
  • Minimum payout is $50, so you get paid faster than AdSense.
  •  
Studiopress themes
If your audience is in the blogging or marketing niche you can earn huge commissions of up to $75 per sale by promoting themes by StudioPress.
StudioPress themes are the world’s #1 selling WordPress themes that have good SEO value, are clean and feature-rich.
Read my review to know more or check out this page for popular themes that you can directly promote.

Benefits of Promoting StudioPress Themes:

  • They are the most selling WordPress themes hence you can sell them easily.
  • They have a huge payment option of 33% commission's which is massive since some of their themes are over $100 each (don’t worry people pay $100 easily for a StudioPress theme).
  •  
Here is the step-by-step guide for you to get started with StudioPress affiliate program.
wpengine hosting
This one is a massive commission affiliate product that you can promote as an AdSense alternative.
WPEngine is a great hosting with a huge fan following, and it is definitely one that users like to buy.
WPEngine pays you $200 per sale which in itself is a rare feat.
Even if you make only 5 sales a month, you are good to go about $1000 just from this.
Moreover, WPEngine is a 2-tier affiliate program that pays you a part of the income your referrers make as an affiliate.

Benefits of Promoting WPEngine Hosting:

  • It has various models of referrals like free tools, ebooks that you can get your readers to use/download. After That, your job is done. WPEngine guys will do their best to convert your free lead into a sale and still attribute $200 as commission for the referral.
  • It sells the best if you have (or rather write one) a guide on how to start a blog where you show your readers a step-by-step tutorial on how to install WordPress on WPEngine.
  •  
instamojo affiliate
AdSense alternative for Indian publishers!
Not having an audience interested in blogging?
Here is another potential AdSense alternative that can give you a good income stream.
Instamojo is an Indian payment platform that helps you sell goods, receive payments for them and all this without setting up a shop or store on your blog.
Instamojo pays you a clean 500 INR for every successful referral which is much more than any successful AdSense CPC.
Check out my Instamojo review to know more.

Benefits of Promoting Instamojo:

  • Instamojo is focused on Indian market, so it is one of the best AdSense alternatives for Indian bloggers.
  • Payment is fast and quick.
  • Niche-independent.
  • Anyone who has something to sell (books, goods, tickets, you name it) can become your valuable potential referral.
  •  
GetResponse Affiliate Program
GetResponse is my favorite email marketing service provider amongst all.
It is affordable, feature-rich and does a great job as an autoresponder for blog newsletters.
GetResponse sells like hotcakes, and if you have an audience that is interested in email marketing, you can make a great income from it.
Read my GetResponse review for more details.

Benefits of Promoting GetResponse:

  • It has a generous 33% commission's rate which means you get a whopping $54 if you successfully refer a customer to their highest plan (about $165).
  • They have a cookie tracking period of 6 months which gives you a good time to convert your leads to sales.
  • GetResponse does have so many festive promotional campaigns which can help you boost your signup rates.
  • GetResponse also has a referral plan that you can use to refer to your friends/readers post which you both get a $30 to use on the platform. I use this referral system to make my entire email marketing free of cost.
  •  
amazon associates program
If you think your blog is in a layman niche and affiliate marketing isn’t your thing, think again.
Amazon affiliates is a great alternative to AdSense which often converts better than the latter.
With amazon affiliates you get access to millions of product Amazon sells and can promote then based on your blog target audience.
Below is a screenshot that I came across from one of the leading news portal Business Insider which shows how you can use Amazon affiliates no matter what your audience is.
business insider amazon affiliate
See how the page points to Fitbit and will earn a commission on every successful referral.
Since there are a lot of items to promote you can choose the relevant and best-selling ones based on your niche.
Like technology items like smartphones, laptops, PC games, clothes, etc.Other products range from books to office supplements, kitchen to gardening products and lifestyle to jewelry products.

Benefits of Promoting Amazon Affiliates:

  • You don’t need to worry about your niche. Amazon fits into any niche you are working on.
  • Commission's rates vary based on products so you can select the best ones in terms of ROI.
  • If done properly, you can easily earn $1000 or more with Amazon affiliates.
  • Here is a ready-made blueprint for you to earn more than $1000 alone from Amazon affiliates.
  •  

Over to you..

If you’re looking for a good AdSense alternative that can earn you more than your AdSense revenue, the above products can help you.
For those wondering what to do after AdSense ban, I’d like to say that this is where the real game begins.
Use any of the above contextual ads alternative to AdSense (like media.net) or start affiliate marketing that makes a huge profit with the traffic that you have.
If you’ve any doubts or issues with getting started with these better monetization strategies than AdSense, do let me know in the comments below.

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You can also customize it further by changing the accent color, switching the background color or adding a background image. It also includes two page templates, support for post editor styles and support for theme translation. Included translations: Swedish/svenska. Interested in Hoffman? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Lovecraft And another Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme! Lovecraft is a beautiful two-column WordPress theme for bloggers. It features a two-column design with considered typography choices – it really is a joy to read. The big header image makes a striking first impression and is replaced with the post thumbnail on single posts and pages. Lovecraft has built-in support for Jetpacks Infinite Scroll function, which means that new posts will be loaded as soon as you reach the bottom of the page. You can also use the Jetpack Tiled Galleries function to display posts in a beautiful masonry grid. This theme is built to scale gracefully to any and all screen sizes – from a 27″ desktop display to a 3.5″ smartphone. The navigation and search form is hidden behind easy-to-access toggles on mobile. It also features editor styles, a full-width page template, three custom widgets and translation-ready code. Interested in Lovecraft? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Fukasawa Okay, one last Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme. Fukasawa is a minimal masonry blog theme for photographers and collectors. Fukasawa features a beautifully minimal layout that displays your posts, images and videos in a Pinterest-style grid. It’s perfect for sharing your content and, in particular, your images. There’s support for the image, video and gallery formats, and presents your galleries in a beautiful slideshow above your posts. Regular old posts look great as well. Like other Anders Norén themes, Fukasawa enables you to load new posts without reloading the page using Jetpack’s Infinite Scroll feature, and display your images in a beautiful grid with Jetpack Tiles Galleries. You can also change the accent color, upload your own logo and use the sidebar widget area (including five custom widgets) to give Fukasawa a personal touch. Interested in Fukasawa? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Gillie Gillie is an elegant business theme designed for YouTuber who want to grow their following. It includes all the key elements you need to share tutorials, course materials and make your passion a fully-fledged business. Build your user base with slider CTA overlays, testimonials, eye-catching imagery, free downloads and easy access to your channel. Scattered image placement, testimonials, and promotional text make your home page feel more like an invitation than a sales pitch. Expand your reach and create a new stream of income with a dedicated site for building your user base. There are pre-styled MarketPress and WooCommerce page layouts that enabled you to get a shop up and running without any customization, so you can start selling everything from downloadable sheet music to physical copies of your latest album. Interested in Gillie? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Issue This magazine-style design is ideal for taking your print publication to a digital audience. Issue will make it easy for your subscribers to find articles that match their interests thanks to its strong use of typography, image buttons and simple search, giving readers quick access to blog posts and articles. Issue includes space for advertisement strategically placed throughout the site. Run a special, promote a local business and generate additional income. The included contact page provides a simple way for users to get in touch. The big interactive Google map, built-in contact form and stylish social icons are both visually appealing and functional. Interested in Issue? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Make Make is a free open source builder theme that – according to its developers – has been refined over 5,198 times. Okay, that’s a lot of development time, but what makes it special? Its biggest feature is its intuitive Make Layout Engine, which is basically a page builder for WordPress. It’s designed to work like a native component of the WordPress page editor, so if you feel comfortable writing a post, it won’t be much of a learning curve getting used to building pages. You can take care of all customizations using the Theme Customizer in WordPress. Every detail, big or small, is yours to customize, including fonts, line height, spacing, even word spacing. Make is WooCommerce compatible, so if your plan is to build an online shop you won’t have any trouble selling physical products. If you want to sell digital goods, Make is compatible with Easy Digital Downloads. And if you want to add forms to your site, simply drop in Gravity Forms. This theme is also responsive, SEO-friendly and retina-ready. Interested in Make? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Seriously, when did the standard of free themes in the WordPress Theme Directory suddenly get so good? This list is a collection of our favorites. If you have a favorite that we missed, share the link below in the comments! Raelene Morey: View a list of posts by this author. Rae is the managing editor at WPMU DEV. When she’s not picking apart other people’s words or working on websites, she enjoys brunch, biking and bushwalking. Fancy some more reading? READ ARTICLE WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT FOR INTERMEDIATE USERS: THEME DEVELOPMENT IN DETAIL READ ARTICLE WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT FOR BEGINNERS: BUILDING THEMES READ ARTICLE 10 HOTTEST WEB DESIGN TRENDS YOU GOTTA KNOW FOR 2017 Or how about trying out our plugins and themes for free? Try (and keep) all WPMU DEV plugins, themes, services and full 24/7 support, free for an entire month - no catch! SPIRIT A professionally crafted, high-end portfolio theme with a fresh, natur LEARN MORE FIXER A flat and vibrant business theme for selling your services and standi LEARN MORE PANINO A friendly one-pager theme inspired by the delicious coffee, tasty foo LEARN MORE LUKE + SARA Let your images speak for themselves with Luke + Sara, a contemporary LEARN MORE 4 Responses Youri Regular Joe: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 51 pts: Hero points 7 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 0 Very useful post but I think you miss one of the best free themes with a pro version; GeneratePress. It’s super fast, clean code and for just $ 39,95 you can use it on unlimited sites with almost customizing every pixel. I use it on 45+ websites now :-) May 15, 2017, 5:19 pmMay 15, 2017, 5:19 pm: Link to comment Log in to Reply Click to visit Google Plus profile Click to visit Twitter profile Raelene Morey Author: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 9 pts: Hero points 644 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 6 Cool, I’ll check it out :) May 16, 2017, 2:36 amMay 16, 2017, 2:36 am: Link to comment Log in to Reply Tony Site Builder, Child of Zeus: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 242 pts: Hero points 233 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 4 I’ve recently had to look through themes for three completely different types of businesses. One site is for a café, another for custom jewelry, another for software. There are themes slightly targeted to these “vertical” applications. (Note the awesome evolution of WP here where blogging is now just a feature, not the primary application.) The more time I spend looking at themes the more I’m able to differentiate them based on immediate suitability for the application, ease of use, customizability without getting into code, and basic functionality. Some free themes are really just a tease for an up-sell. Others are so good that I feel like paying the developer, even for their free theme, just so they don’t lose interest in their work. My approach is to install a theme, spend about 30 minutes in the Customizer, and see what it takes to modify the home page, a single post page, and the various widgets and menus. If it’s not feeling good in 30 minutes then it gets uninstalled. And for me that’s really at the heart of all of this. I no longer look for great themes. I look for themes that serve the immediate purpose adequately. Theme developers get bored. They move on to the next fun project. They don’t want to look back and maintain what they’ve already created. WP changes frequently and developers are looking to create new themes, not to retrofit existing ones. So, as much fun as it is to look for great themes, the reality is that “good enough” is acceptable. We shouldn’t spend too much time looking for “great”, because we’re going to have to do this at least once per year if we’re going to keep a site fresh and functional. There is a never-ending stream of “high quality themes for 2014/15/16/17/+..”. It does help to look for consistent developers who produce a new good theme with each new WP update. In business terms, getting a completely new theme from a new developer is going to cost time=money. Developers come and go so (unfortunately) if you’re doing this for a living it probably makes good sense to align yourself with a single theme publisher where there is more than one developer. This helps to get the consistency of the vendor, not the individual. I’m really sorry WPMU DEV, but I recently spent a lot of time with Upfront/Parrot and was not impressed. This is at least the third time that I’ve given this parent theme an opportunity for a new site. It failed in many ways when editing individual pages, and was frustrating and inadequate to create a common multi-page site. I absolutely will not install Upfront or related child themes for at least another year. Perhaps by then you’ll have worked out the multitude of usability issues and overall inadequacies. Please don’t ask what the problems were. I started to document the issues in my 30 minute re-review but after spending 2+ hours with more note taking about problems than progress on a web page I decided my time needed to be redirected to current efforts rather than doing QA for someone else’s theme. And that’s precisely my point about theme selection and these frequent reviews of current themes. If you spend too much time fighting with a theme, chuck it and go for something else. Our task is to create websites, not to debug other people’s software. There are plenty of themes to choose from. Don’t waste time=money on themes that might look great and have a lot of nice features, but they’re a pain to use. Add that to your criteria for choosing a theme for your next project.

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