I've been trying out BlogKits for about a week now, and I have a few thoughts.  BlogKits claims to be in competition with AdSense by earning money for blogs with little to no traffic.  But I think they're a completely different thing.  As one of the commenters said, BlogKits is similar to Commission Junction and LinkShare, which are affiliate marketing sites.  The difference is that AdSense and other Pay Per Click advertisers try to display ads that blend in with the context of the site.  When a user clicks on one of the ads, money is exchanged.  Affiliate marketing and other Pay Per Action services are like earning a commission.  If I use a product or service and recommend it to someone else who in turn uses the service, I get a kickback for referring the person.  I get nothing if the person doesn't buy something. 

In my opinion, affiliate marketing seems to make more sense.  I think people are much more willing to try a product or service that's directly recommended by another person as opposed to trying something based on a computer-generated suggestion system.  For example, if I'm having a conversation with someone and we're talking about coffee, which ads would most likely be more effective:  Ads that say "Buy coffee now!", "Coffee ranking site", and "Coffee lawsuit lawyers"; or ads that say, "Shop at DunkinDonuts.com for great coffee deals" and "Buy international coffee at Starbucks.com"?  I'd go with the second set.  And from my brief and limited experience, that's what affiliate marketing is about.  It's not always the case; affiliate marketers can recommend products they've never tried or even tried and hated.  But at least there's a choice.  With AdSense, you don't get to choose your advertises.  And even with BlogKits, you don't get to choose your affiliates.  But looking through Commission Junction and LinkShare, I'm able to individually select each advertiser I'm willing to do business with, based on my own opinions and experiences. 

The other benefit CJ and LS have over other ad servers is that they're not really an ad server.  Traditionally, I'm given a javascript snippet to put somewhere on my website.  That script connects to an ad server, gets information, and relays it back to my site.  This takes time, and I'm not a fan of things that make my website slower.  CJ and LS give out HTML links.  I can just copy and paste these links on my site.  The HTML does include a tracking image for statistical purposes, but I can omit it if I choose.  And I can even change the link text (though everything I read says it's a bad idea [I'll still do it anyway]).  So instead of having a script communicate with a third-party site, I can have an internal script execute before the page even loads.  And I can even setup an ad rotation system by using something like Witty Text or wp_quotes. 

So until the next thing comes along, it looks like I'll be trying this. #entertainment