If you plan to make a living from online advertising, do not use Google AdSense because running Google ads on your website will only return pennies per click. That’s a piece of advice coming from Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher.

Foremski shares some valid concerns - AdSense publishers have to accept the pricing of the advertising fixed by AdWords and second, Google is shrinking the percentage of AdSense revenue that it shares with its publishing partners.

However, the question is that if you block AdSense from occupying any real estate on your web pages, who else do you approach for filling all those vacant spots ? Small publishers neither have the time nor can afford to hire an independent sales team.

Let’s see what choices (other than AdSense) are available to web publishers who want to make some money out of their web content:

Yahoo! Panama and Microsoft adCenter are not so popular and available only to US publishers. BlogAds, Federated Media, WPNI Blogroll and TechDispenser offer better rates but are open only to select group of websites. Non US traffic cannot be monetized with WidgetBucks or Chitika. Very few sites are successful with affiliate programs of Amazon or eBay.

Readers will abandon your blog if you become regular to PayPerPost kind of programs. And selling Text Link Ads will definitely put your Google rankings in jeopardy. Do you know of other AdSense alternatives in the International space that can guarantee returns ?

Agree, AdSense does sometime pay pennies per click but these pennies definitely add up to enable you pay the web hosting fees and other utility bills. And if you have fair number of eyeballs to your website, these AdSense pennies together can actually help you live a comfortable life.

Related: AdSense Premium Publishers