Well, the pool of resources for generating income from your website is growing. It's an exciting time for webmasters and bloggers alike.

The latest addition is a program offered by a company named Chitika.

Now, the neat thing about Chitika is that it can be used as both a contextual advertisement (meaning the ads will automatically be targeted to the content of the page) and a keyword-derived advertisement. When set as a keyword ad, it is not considered contextual, and it may be placed on the same page with Google AdSense ads and Yahoo Publisher Network ads. We'll get into that more later.

The Chitika ads show an image of a product along with anywhere from two to four tabs which reveal new content with each mouse over. This actually offers a small interactive feel to your web page. As of this writing, the tabs read description, search, best deals and reviews.

The ads are attractive and organized, and, most importantly, manage to avoid that gaudy appearance which comes with some ad programs.

From the Chitika site, users can choose from ten different ad sizes which vary enough to find the perfect one for you site.

Webmasters can also alter the color of the ads and blend them into their site's theme and feel.

The inventory from Chitika is rather large but contains mostly products. Our main site, http://www.NJLawman.com, is about police and law enforcement issues, and finding product ads which would perform well in the context of a law enforcement website has been challenging.

Sites covering technology and related issues would probably do better since there is a seemingly never-ending supply of cell phone, computer, and iPod advertisements.

Earnings per click (EPC) has also been challenging for our site, but we have been using keyword ads that are generally low paying. There have been many posts, though, in top-shelf webmaster forums reporting high earnings.

Click through rate (CTR) has been low for us, however, our audience is primarily made up of police officers, so cell phone and iPod ads are clearly not targeted. Remember, as much as everyone loves great EPC, if your ads are not targeted to your site's audience, they will probably get very few clicks.

The "Reports" page of the Chitika control panel is very basic and doesn't even compare to that offered by AdSense and YPN. However, Chitika has assured they are working on it and there's more to come.

Finally, as touched on above, one of the great features of Chitika is the ability to place Chitika ads on pages with AdSense or YPN. Both of those programs prohibit placing other contextual advertising on the same page with their ads. However, when you set your Chitika ads to be keyword targeted, they are not considered contextual, and you may place them on a page which contains AdSense or YPN ads. This is excellent for maximizing revenue.

All in all, we give high marks to the Chitika program, but it won't be for everyone. You should, though, try it out and see if it's for you.

Good luck and good earnings!