Blog Monetization: Google AdSense, Yandex.Direct or Begun — Which I Chose
Hello everyone! Great mood today: my blog just earned its very first revenue from contextual monetization — my first 8 cents!
Let me start from the beginning. I decided to follow the trend and set up contextual monetization on my blog — as a character in a movie once said with a serious face, “it’s a package deal” :-)
The Options: Google AdSense, Yandex.Direct, and Begun
Yandex.Direct
This one was ruled out right away: to qualify for the Yandex partner network, a site needs at least 300 unique visitors per day, and my traffic is still way below that threshold. According to webmaster forums, Yandex has plenty of well-paying commercial niches and competes Neck-and-Neck with Google across the Russian-speaking web.
Begun
I searched around for reviews of Begun and found plenty of complaints. A few webmasters claimed it earned more than the others, but they were in the minority. I came away with two main drawbacks: first, the payout per click is generally lower than in AdSense or Yandex.Direct, and second, the contextual matching often misses the topic of the article. Still, you have to test it yourself to know for sure.
I actually had a brief experience with Begun earlier from the advertiser side: when registering a domain at nic.ua, I received a $10 promotional voucher, which was spent within two days. Seeing my site highlighted at the top of search results for my keywords felt great. Analytics didn’t show any major surge in visitors, but since it was free bonus credit, it was fun to test :-)
Google AdSense
My friends and I already use and like Google’s ecosystem — Gmail, Search, Google Apps, and Google Maps. Straightforward sign-up, reusable code snippets across multiple sites, a localized interface, and the reliability of a global tech giant settled the choice for me. Not even the payout process scared me off: earnings are sent via paper check by regular mail, which takes a lot more patience than receiving instant WebMoney transfers.
Day One
Yesterday I made my final choice, registered an account, and placed the units on the blog. To me, the pages actually looked livelier with them. I spent a good while refreshing different posts just to see how accurately the algorithm matched topics to each article. It was fascinating to watch :-)
The golden rule for any new publisher is to strictly follow program policies and never click on units on your own site, since automated invalid-traffic filters take account integrity very seriously.
Looking Back Years Later
Reading this archive note from June 2008 today brings back a lot of nostalgia. Time has put everything in perspective: Begun, once one of the major players on the Runet, shut down years ago, and paper checks that took weeks to arrive by mail and clear through bank collection have long been replaced by direct bank wire transfers. Meanwhile, choosing Google AdSense back in 2008 turned out to be the right long-term decision — it has been running reliably on this blog for well over a decade and a half.