So here's the "million dollar question": Which is better, Yahoo Publisher Network or Google AdSense?

Let me make this short and sweet .. YPN is better for well-established websites with US-based visitors, and AdSense is better for un-established - or under-established - websites with a majority of visitors from outside of the US.

Allow me to explain why in more detail.

The number one reason Google's AdSense program has far outweighed Yahoo's Publisher Network is because they've been able to spread out as far and wide as possible in as little time as possible. Some may argue that this has caused Google to stretch their selves far too thin and possibly cause instability in the contextual advertising industry, but that remains to be seen. At this point it is only speculation whether or not either program has become ineffective or unprofitable to advertisers or publishers respectively.

Google has been able to cater to a diverse audience of independent or direct marketers with its AdWords program over the years and they have managed to more than quadruple their shares doing so. This brings us to Yahoo, which has still proven itself in the market second to Google, in contextual advertising, but remains advantageous in respects to displayed and branded advertising from larger firms.

In regards to payout YPN retains generally higher CPC (Cost Per Click) than Google and thus appears more profitable to publishers. YPN also sets a minimum monthly budget for its advertises in order to create advertiser integrity and increase revenues, whereas Google has no minimum spending budget and imposes less stringent screening of their ads.

The only real noticeable difference is that AdSense seems to make a lot more sense. What I mean is AdSense will display far more relevant ads in regard to the content of its pages than YPN. For a website publisher this means that the chances of a visitor clicking on an ad - and thus generating commission for the publisher - are a lot higher with AdSense.

This is what we refer to as a conversion rate; the number of ad impressions made versus the number of times ads have been clicked on. The higher the conversion rate the more money you make as a publisher. So in a sense Google AdSense can more than make up for what it lacks in CPC with what it generates in higher conversion.Both YPN and AdSense are free to join and extremely easy to implement on any website with even the most basic HTML and web-design knowledge. However, YPN requires a little more maintenance than AdSense for one very daunting reason. YPN does NOT allow publishers to display their ads to NON-US visitors, and in fact will boot you from their program for doing so, if even inadvertently. With YPN a publisher would be required to resolve to their own geo-targeting solution in order to prevent ads from being displayed to visitors from outside of the US.

While AdSense, on the other hand, implements geo-targeting directly and serves the ads up on your website with the visitors location already in mind. You can not be penalized by AdSense for which visitors view what ads, simply because they take care of all this for you in-house. This makes AdSense worry-free, requiring virtually no tech-savvy skills, for those website publishers who aren't too familiar with coding.

Another underlying, and sometimes oblique, constraint between the two programs is that you technically cannot use both on the same website. Some publishers will hard-code their websites to display only YPN ads to US visitors and AdSense ads to non-US visitors so that both do not appear on the same web page at the same time.

For YPN this does not seem to cause a problem, seeing as to how their Terms of Service explicitly state that using similar or other third-party advertising is not prohibited given that YPN ads are not displayed on the same web page as ads of a competing contextual advertising program (i.e. AdSense). However, some publishers have reportedly been banned from the AdSense program for using YPN even on the same website. While this is unlikely accurate (since Google will never tell you exactly why it is you have been banned from AdSense) it may be possible, because carefully having reviewed the Terms of Service there are restrictions that seem all too vague, but considerably risky to leave unascertained. But then again Google seems to be changing their Terms of Service for AdSense publishers constantly.

Overall, AdSense seems to be a much faster and effective method of website monetization for the average publisher as opposed to the laggy slower YPN. AdSesne will likely review your website and either approve or deny your application for a publisher account within 2 to 3 business days. YPN may take up to two full weeks. Let's not also forget that YPN has been in beta for several years now.

If you're just starting out as a website publisher and need a fast and easy way to monetize your pages in a hurry, stick with AdSense. However, if you're an experienced website publisher with a large well-established US-based visitor count, you may be able to use YPN to a greater advantage.

If you've been researching techniques for making money online, you've probably come across the term "AdSense Arbitrage" a time or two. And many people don't quite know what this means, or they're confused about how it can make you money. So let's review what exactly AdSense arbitrage is, and how you can make money with it.

The Basics:

AdSense is an affiliate style program offered by Google, which allows website publishers to place ad blocks on their pages. When someone clicks an ad in one of those blocks, the website publisher earns income from each of those clicks. Once the website publisher has earned at least $100, Google will send them a check at the end of the following month.

AdWords is a classified ad style advertising service offered by Google. This service goes hand in hand with the AdSense system. AdSense publishers do not have to use AdWords, and business owners who advertise on AdWords also do not have to be AdSense publishers.

With AdWords, businesses and individuals place small classified ads on the Google search engine. These ads are designed to appear when certain keywords or phrases are typed by search engine users, and the advertisers pay a specific amount of money each time someone clicks on their ad. AdWords ads are displayed along the right hand side of all search engine results pages, plus they're displayed on the websites of AdSense publishers.

Arbitrage

The term "arbitrage" simply means you're going to try and make a profit from price differences between one market and another. AdSense arbitrage then, is the process of placing advertisements in the Google AdWords system, which leads visitors to a website page which has AdSense ads on it.

The purpose of Google Arbitrage is to buy clicks cheaply in the AdWords system, then get those visitors to click ads on your website which pay more money than you're paying for the clicks.

This is a little complicated so let's look at a fictitious example. Say for instance, you have a website all about pet health care products. And you've discovered that when someone clicks on an AdSense ad at your site, you earn about a dollar on average.

You then do a bit of research, and discover there are some pet related keywords you can get listed for via AdWords, which will only cost you about five cents each time someone clicks one of those ads to visit your site.

So you set up ads where you're paying just 5 cents each time someone clicks to visit your site. And when those visitors leave your site, they do so by clicking one of your AdSense ads which pays you $1. If all the visitors who click your AdWords ad that you pay 5 cents for, also click on one of the AdSense ads on your website and earn you $1, you're making $0.90 profit for every visitor you pay for through the AdWords advertising system.

And that's AdSense arbitrage in a nutshell. Buy clicks on Google for a very low cost, then get those visitors to click a higher paying AdSense ad on your website.

Trying to keep an even balance between your spending and earnings on your affiliate programs at the beginning has to very closely watched. Advertising is an absolute necessity but you have to make sure your advertising budget is less then what you’re making. Most of the time this is easier said than done. To help make sure you keep your head above water here’s a few tips.

1. While many people make a lot of money in affiliate marketing as well as you can it just doesn’t happen overnight. If you think you’re going to make 2500 dollars a week to start in the affiliate marketing game then you’re sadly wrong. You have to realize that finding the right niche takes a while. This business is like anything else. The more you do it the better you’re going to get at it. If you have the patience to hang in there the chances are good that eventually you will become quite successful.

2. Learning how to advertise is the most important. You should study what Google is all about. Make sure you study how the adwords program works. Once you know how it works it can be a very affordable way to advertise. It’s important to remember that every time your add is viewed you will be charged a fee for it. Make sure your keyword research is well studied before you start using the adword program or else you’re going to end up paying Google more then you are making.

3. When you work with affiliate marketing programs you always have a partner and especially at the beginning it’s important that you check them out and make sure you trust them. At the beginning I would suggest affiliating with someone like Amazon. While the commissions might be a little lower at least you know that you will have a support system, great tools and you know you will get paid. Once you’re into it for a while then you can attempt some of the higher paying ones. At least by then you will know that affiliate marketing works but there are always a few bad apples.

It’s too bad but since affiliate marketing has become so profitable for both parties there are going to be people out there who try to scam you. If you’re experienced you will probably notice a scam right off the bat but for those with less experience I would suggest that if you’re not sure just stay with the bigger companies until you build a confidence level.

These are just a few tips for the newbie’s who are thinking of getting into the affiliate marketing game. Affiliate marketing for the right person can be a very lucrative business and the right person can be any one out there as long as you are willing to be realistic and be able to work hard at your new found business. Don’t be scared to go after affiliate marketing as a career just remember, just like anything else you are starting at the bottom.