Google Adwords may be the king among search engine advertising networks. It not only allows you to create search engine ads, it also helps you reach out to the massive community of Adsense publishers. Google Adwords is a great place to start to push your business and market products online. But like any portfolio,  you will have to diversify to hedge your risks and maximize your bottom line. While testing will be too costly in the stock market, when it comes to advertising, you always have the chance to turn off your test campaigns and reflect on what results you have gotten.

Focusing on Google Adwords only would be a big mistake. While the service is capable of driving you traffic, you may be leaving money on the table if you are not taking advantage of 3rd party advertising networks such as Chitika and ClickRiver. I have talked about how ClickRiver can help you get your product in front of millions of Amazon customers in the past. Chitika is another popular advertising network that empowers many bloggers and publishers around the web by helping them make money online from their SEO content. And if they can make money from their SEO content, that means your product can be in those ads, in front of a highly targeted set of visitors.

Think about it. Let’s say you have an ebook reader or an accessory for Amazon Kindle. Wouldn’t you be more likely to gain clicks and leads when people are actually getting to your ad by searching for a highly relevant term? That’s what Chitika for Advertisers helps you do.

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Amazon is one of the most comprehensive online retailers around. That’s the understatement of the day. The company has been around for years, and it’s truly amazing to see how the company has come progressed from a small book seller to a huge global retailer. Amazon gets a lot of hits everyday. You don’t have to be  genius to realize that. But did you know you can actually put your products in front of people on a PPC basis? That’s exactly what Product Ads on Amazon allow you to do. It’s actually very simple and powerful. If you are a small business hoping to get the word around about your product, Product Ads is a must try service.

In order to take advantage of Amazon Product Ads, you need to upload your catalog to the system. Amazon then will charge you on pay per click basis, depending the type of product you are trying to promote. Here is how the fee works out:

So how does this service work? It’s pretty simple. If you have bought products from Amazon before, you have probably seen those third party sellers who you can’t buy from on Amazon.com. You have to log on to their website to make the purchase. That’s a Product Ad. The sellers only pay for clicks while they get the traffic they need to grow their business from Amazon. Here is an example:

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One of the most underrated advertising services that often goes under the radar is ClickRiver. So what is Click River? It’s your key to the kingdom that is called Amazon. Amazon is one of the most visited sites on the Internet. A large number of people visit Amazon on an everyday basis with their credit cards handy and ready to buy, so you do have a whole lot of people that are in the shopping and buying mode. If you have used Amazon in the past couple of years, you have probably seen listings that are similar to the following:

The good thing about Clickriver is that you can choose to pay by category. Whether you have a service on stocks or just a programming product that you want to sell, you can list it on Amazon using the ClickRiver service.  Here are the main categories that you can use for your ads:

• Automotive Services
• Home Services
• Leisure Industry
• Education
• Personal Finance
• Health & fitness services
• Technology Education

There are many subcategories to choose from, but best of all, you can use Amazon’s geo-targeting to show your ads only in local areas! Now that is very powerful. Clickriver is very similar to the advertising system offered by Stumbleupon. It is a very basic system that does it’s job brilliantly. I personally have found that ClickRiver traffic is more qualified and converts better than Stumbleupon. A lot of people feel that the traffic from ClickRiver should convert as well as Google Adwords to be a viable option, but the traffic is cheaper, and if you have hit the ceiling with Adwords, can help you acquire more customers.

Should you use ClickRiver? It really depends on your business. A lot of people don’t even bother with Clickriver, but you’d be surprised how well it works in some verticals.

Now I get this question a lot. If you have read any books about pay per click marketing, you have probably heard the saying that you shouldn’t graduate to Yahoo! and MSN Adcenter until you have pretty much mastered Google Adwords. The truth is, a lot of concepts that you learn by using Google Adwords can be applied to Yahoo! and MSN. But at the same time, you won’t waste your money away as Google usually has the best traffic. But a lot of people start with all three at the same time, and that is understandable as well. Now here is the thing. What should you do if you have exhausted all the options with the three services above?

If you are a one man business, then you probably have enough to worry about with the top three PPC services. But most big companies are not satisifed with the amount of traffic they can get from these three, so they look at other services such as ASK, Miva, ClickRiver, and even Stumbleupon. I personally have had so much success with Stumbleupon, but Stumbleupon is not really for everyone. In fact, they won’t even approve your site if you don’t meet their content criteria.

But of all the other 3rd party PPC services that I have tried, Miva seems to have the most reliable traffic. Now you can’t expect to get Google type results from Miva, but you don’t waste your money with Miva either. Best of all, these guys are very responsive to questions, which helps a lot.