If you want people to actually see your contextual ads (and thus be more likely to click on an ad of something of interest), you need to avoid ad blindness. Ad blindness is where people are so used to seeing an ad at the top of your page or on the sidebar that they consciously or unconsciously tune out to the ad.

So here is how you avoid it: Place a HUGE 500 wide by 250 high block of Google AdSense that is in the middle of your post/page. This is accomplished by using two 250×250 text ads side by side in a table, as shown in the screen shot below.

The drawback of this, however, is that on blog posts, you are limited to only 1 post displayed at a time since if you display 2 or more, you violate Google’s terms that limit the number of ad units displayed to 3. (Each block contains two ad units) You can, however, use this display on pages of your WordPress blog or on standalone pages of a website. Also, you can use this method on a Blogspot blog pages (as opposed to posts) since only 1 is displayed at a time.

Here is how you do this:

1. Set up code on Google AdSense for a 250×250 text ad that matches your site colors.
2. Set up a channel on Google for your new ads so you can track results.
3. Copy the code Google provides and paste it into the code shown in this file after you save the file to your computer  first.
4. Copy the code of the text file with your ad code inserted into your blog page or post approximately in the middle of your page or post. Note that you will need a blog text body area of at least 500 pixels to do this – otherwise the larger table might distort your blog. Note that there is a better way to include this code – use what is called a server-side include. See below.

Using a Server-Side Include
One problem with simply pasting in the code for the table containing  two Google AdSense ads is that sometime down the line you might change your blog template and font colors.  Then, all your Google Ads will not match and you will have to switch them out, one by one. Or, perhaps you want to try some ad other than AdSense for a short time – again, you will have to replace code on all your pages, one at a time! If you have a hundred such tables, that is a lot of work!  The solution to this is to use a Server Side Include to input the contents of a file into your page. This way, if you need to change the ad code, you only have to change it on ONE file, not 100+ files! One file changed produces changes on all the pages it is loaded onto. Here is how you do it:

On a WordPress Blog

1. Install the plugin Include It. To do this, simply search for “Include It” as a plugin and it will be the top result you find.
2. Save the code you created for the ads as a text file called adcode.txt (or whatever you want to name it). To save as a text file, use wordpad, notepad, or an html editor.
3. Upload your text file to the root directory of your hosted site using your hosting control panel or some ftp tool. The root directory will be the same location as where your index.php file is located. Coreftp.com is a good free tool if you want to give this a try, but your hosting control panel will work as well.
4. Insert the code shown below wherever you want the code to be inserted.
   

On a Non-Blog HTML Website

1. Save the code you created for the ads as a text file called adcode.txt (or whatever you want to name it).
2. Upload your text file to the root directory of your hosted site using your hosting control panel or some ftp tool like Coreftp.com. The root directory will be the same location as where your index.html file is located.
3. Insert the code shown below wherever you want the code to be inserted in the same folder as where the page resides.
   
4. Insert the code shown below if your page resides in some sub-folder or sub-directory.
   

Affiliate marketing involves the following process:

1. You create a website or blog.
2. You find a merchant that has an affiliate program for products you would like to promote on your site. You join the merchants program.
3. The merchant provides you with linking code. This code will build a tracking link or banner on your site.
4. Your site visitors click on either the text link or banner and is taken to the merchant’s site. A tracking cookie is then sent to the visitors computer. This cookie is as harmless as the cookies used to remember passwords or settings for sites like weather sites. But the significance of this cookie is that it will track your sale even days or months later if it has not been overwritten by another cookie or removed by some other means.
5. If the visitor from your site purchases a product and the sale is tracked (most sales made immediately are tracked), then you will be awarded a commission. Commissions generally are 3-15% of the purchase price.

This all sounds very nice, especially since the merchant is handling all of the ordering, shipping, and customer service. Your links earn you money without any effort on your part! There are a few problems however:

• Once the visitor finds the merchant site, they will go directly to the merchant site (rather than your site) for future purchases.
• You are in competition against very large shopping sites like Pricegrabber.com, Shopping.com and others that do affiliate marketing in a very big way.  These sites offer comprehensive comparison shopping features that you as an individual could never match.
• Major search engines like Google will place small affiliate shopping sites very low in the results if they only offer products and banners and little unique content. Part of the reason for this is that your affiliate product links will be considered as duplicate content since perhaps hundreds of other affiliates will have exactly the same product links. This was not always the case, but it certainly is the case now.

So, is affiliate marketing still a viable means of making money? Yes, if you do it right. And here is what you must do:

Pick out a niche that gets a fair amount of traffic, yet is something you can create an extensive content site on. Google loves putting good content sites near the top of the search heap! In my page on What Should I Blog About, I point out the example of the 57 Chevy topic. This would be an excellent topic to blog about as well as an excellent topic to promote affiliate products! That is, of course assuming you are willing to become an expert on the 57 Chevy, if you are not already one. Owning your own 57 Chevy to work on and blog about would be a big plus! (Believe me, if I had one and worked on it a lot, I would have a 57 Chevy blog or site!) You could write all kinds of content pages, get involved in auto communities, and then work in your affiliate links as text links, used in context throughout your site where appropriate. You could also create some product pages, but your first emphasis would be to create a good content-rich site.  You could find auto merchants with affiliate programs at Shareasale (my favorite network) or Commission Junction or from other networks as well. By narrowing your focus to one where you have expertise and are willing to create extensive posts on such things as repair procedures or detailing methods, you then have the advantage. And with enough effort you can be at or near the top of the search results for the given topic with your site featuring valuable content. Just remember the key word: value.