Smooth Sailing with The Yahoo! Publisher Network: 3 Cheers for YPN!

Let's pretend for a minute that you are an ambitious webmaster with lots of great ideas for a website or websites that could do very well.

OK, so you work hard to create a quality website with useful or interesting content. You pay for some traffic--just to get things going--then the organic search engine traffic starts rolling in, and eventually you start getting lots of return visitors--proof that you providing content that others find interesting.

Then you reach a point where you have to start thinking about generating some revenue from your website(s). After all, you've invested lots of your valuable time and money to create and maintain your site(s), and it doesn't make sense to go broke as a webmaster when there are numerous affiliate programs out there that can help with paying the bills. Server space costs money. Bandwidth costs money. Advertising costs money.

So you do your research and you find that webmasters are doing well with the contextual advertising programs like AdSense. You signup for AdSense, and things are going great! You start earning enough through AdSense that you even start thinking about quitting your day job. You tell all your webmaster friends about how well you are doing with AdSense, praising the highly targeted ads that are provided by the AdSense system: making money, no spammy ads and consistent payouts from The AdSense Team. Things are great.

Then one day you get an email from Team AdSense letting you know that your AdSense account has been "disabled"--which basically means terminated--and that you can no longer participate in the program. You email The AdSense Team a few times, asking them for a detailed explanation of why your account was cancelled, because you know you didn't do anything that could warrant getting kicked out of the program. You get no response from Team AdSense, or you get a canned email from Team AdSense letting you know that they can't give you details about why they disabled your account because that would put their algorithm secrets in jeopardy.

You search the forums, and find that lots of webmasters have been booted from the program, each and every one of them receiving the same "invalid clicks" email from Team AdSense. Sure, some of those webmasters cheated by clicking their own ads, or by conspiring with others to cheat the AdSense system--those webmasters deserve to get kicked out, no doubt. But there are countless publishers who didn't cheat, and got booted anyway. You find that some publishers have been able to get their AdSense account reinstated, but this is rare. And, most importantly, why is Team AdSense kicking innocent publishers out of the AdSense program? What happened to "Do no evil?" Why should a publisher who has done nothing wrong be forced to literally beg to get their AdSense account reinstated when he/she has done nothing wrong?

Click here to read about a typical publisher's tale of getting booted from the AdSense program for no reason, then getting reinstated after groveling to Team AdSense.

For those webmasters who have been booted by Team AdSense and not reinstated, it's back to the drawing board. It means not getting paid for all the quality traffic you delivered to advertiser sites. It means long hours of removing the AdSense code from all your websites. It means countless hours of searching for a good alternative. A colossal waste of time.

Then Yahoo!'s Publisher Network (YPN) Beta program debuts and you decide to give them a try. You are a bit nervous because you got booted from AdSense for no reason, so you call--that's right call, because they have a toll free support hotline!--to see what they have to say about so called "invalid clicks." They tell you that their system detects "invalid clicks" and automatically nullifies them, so even though you won't get paid for them, you also don't have to worry about your YPN account getting disabled for "invalid clicks."

Hallelujah.

Why do I love The Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta Program? Let me count the ways:

1. A toll free phone number you can call 24 hours a day to get help, information, advice, recommendations--whatever. Email support is available as well, making the YPN support system second to none in the affiliate program world.
   
   
2. If you accidentally click your own ad, you won't get banned from the program. If a competitor clicks your ads in an effort to get you banned, it won't work: you won't get banned. The YPN system automatically detects invalid clicks, and doesn't pay you for them. Such common sense! Countless webmasters have been banned from that other popular contextual advertising program for mysterious "invalid clicks."
   
   
3. Many webmasters have been reporting very strong earnings with YPN.
   
   
4. I've read about certain webmasters having their YPN Publisher account suspended because of too much international traffic. But this is not a total (Google-style) ban. The folks @ YPN are going to let these webmasters back into the publisher program when YPN goes international, which should happen later this year.
   
   
5. Ad targettting, ad blocking, URL tracking, YPN ads for RSS feeds--the list goes on.
   

I'm looking forward to new features that are coming, like the ability to add a YPN web search box and direct deposit.

So, in conclusion: 3 cheers for YPN!

If you are a webmaster with a quality website(s) are you aren't on board with the YPN program yet, apply as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

Microsoft may have a competing program out some time this year. They've got their work cut out for them: it will be tough to outdo both AdSense and YPN, but not impossible. Time will tell.

If you have any stories related to contextual advertising programs like AdSense, YPN, Chitika. etc. feel free to post a comment. Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

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