It has been a while here since I actually talked about how I make money online. It really has not changed much since the last time I talked about it, but here is a rundown for some of the new people who frequent the blog. As you all know I run ThinkComputers, which is a computer hardware review site. Out of all my sites it makes the most money and is where most of my income comes from. So what are the money makers for ThinkComputers?

Just Relevant
The number 1 money maker for ThinkComputers is Just Relevant, our comparison shopping engine. We moved over to Just Relevant about 6 months ago and it has been great. The backend is very robust and it has many features other comparison shopping engines just do not have. We are on a flat CPC rate, which means if someone clicks on an ad we get paid, even if they do not buy it. I like CPC over commission because more often than not people are not going to buy the product, so if you are on commission you won’t make anything off the ad. If you have a large website and want to apply to Just Relevant please let me know before you sign up and I will get you application forwarded to the right people.

EchoTopic
EchoTopic, which is owned by Exponential, is a contextual ad service. Most of you have probably heard of Kontera or Vibrant Media. EchoTopic is relatively new into the game, but since they are backed by Exponential they know what they are doing. They invited me to the service since I was already a Tribal Fusion publisher. They offered me a flat CPM rate that was better than what I was getting with Vibrant, so I went over to them. They are the red double highlighted links you see on the ThinkComputers reviews. The service has been good and so are the paychecks!

Google
Google Adsense still makes me a good amount of money. We have quite a few ads on ThinkComputers, the one that makes the most money is the in-article 336 x 280 ad, mainly because it is actually in the review / article you are reading so more people see it and are more likely to click on it. Google Adsense is a great way for people starting out online to make some extra money, but you are not going to make that much with it.

Private Ads
Private ads is where I was really banking last year. We had quite a few private ads running on ThinkComputers throughout 2008, but most companies did not renew because of the horrible economy. We are hoping to pick up some more private ads, but I haven’t really pushed it as much as I really should have. That is something I’m going to be working on in the next few weeks.

Besides those 4 major money makers I also do some affiliate marketing, but nothing really major. Hopefully if I get some more time I will be getting into affiliate marketing a lot more.