Blogging Experiment

Make Money Online with Kontera

Published January 14th by Ben in Blog Monetization 34

In a continuing effort to make money online, and to hit my goal for the month of $1,500, I’ve decided to give the contextual advertising service, Kontera. For those of you that read other “make money” blogs, you’re probably familiar with the double underlined text links. Basically, these are ads that visitors and readers will only see when they hover over the linked text and/or click on the link.

Kontera’s website describes the service like this:

Kontera’s ContentLink In-Text Advertising solution lets you monetize your content in real-time, enabling an incremental increase in ad revenue by providing a new source of untapped ad inventory that does not compete with the other ad programs running on the site. ContentLink™ also creates a valuable user experience by serving relevant and informational ads that match the user’s interest and frame of mind.

While I’m obviously in favor of making more money, keep in mind that Kontera is also trying to sell their service. Despite Kontera’s claims, the ads do compete with not just other ad programs, but everything else on the site. The ads may not take up any extra space, but they definitely do compete for the visitors’ attention. Also, even though they are targeted by keyword or phrase, I wouldn’t exactly call them “informational.”

I plan on testing the ads for a month or so and I’ll probably spend some time tinkering with the different customization and targeting options. As usual, I’ll report back on the results I see. However, if you’ve already given Kontera a try, or are currently using a similar service, please share your results (and of course any tips you might have for me) in the comments below!

TAGS:

Comments

  1. Justin Dupre January 14th, 2008

    I used to use Kontera on an old blog. It was pretty, but I don’t think I had the readership I should have had. I never got a click. Might wanna play with the color of the links so they don’t intrude with the real links on your blog.

    Lots of other programs have in line text. Adbrite and Text Link Ads are two examples.

    Justin Dupre

  2. CatherineL January 14th, 2008

    Hi Ben – I’ll be interested in seeing how it goes. I signed up for Kontera weeks ago, and they emailed me the other day to apologise because they’d somehow forgotten about me!

    I haven’t set mine up yet though. Hope you reach your goal this month.

  3. Ben Cook January 14th, 2008

    @ Justin, Kontera was only up for about half the day yesterday and I had 6 clicks. I didn’t make much at all but it’s at least a start.

    @ Catherine, I’m well on my way and have half a month to go. Hopefully things keep going the way they have been. Oh, and congrats on winning the ProBlogger give-a-way!

  4. Coryan January 14th, 2008

    Personally, as a reader I am not a big fan of the Kontera ads. I find them intrusive when I am moving my mouse across a page only to have an add pop up. Ben, I think you’re correct that they do compete (as does everything on a blog) with ads and other content. But the real matter here is the results…can Kontera deliver.

    I would caution against deriving any opinion from the 6 clicks you’ve had today. That could just be a temporary increase in curiosity from folks reading your post about the ads. I almost did it myself.

    I look forward to hearing about this again in a month. Good luck.

  5. Ben Cook January 14th, 2008

    Coryan, yeah, I can’t say I’m too fond of the popup feature either… I’ll give it a while yet but barring some significant income, I’m not sure I’ll stick with em after the trial period.

    Also, I agree, you can’t judge one way or the other with only a day of results. Justin had mentioned he never received a click so I was pointing out that I’d already had a few clicks. The price per click was pretty poor so I’m hoping that improves as time goes on as well.

  6. Terry January 15th, 2008

    I have used Kontera in my blog since last year. My experience is the same with Justin. I guess not so many people like to click those kind of stuff. However, I would love to see how your Kontera perform.

  7. James Mann January 15th, 2008

    I was talking with a friend, just yesterday, about Kontera ads. He was pretty ticked at them.

    I would say that he doesn’t like them at all.

    His words were something like: “You can even move your mouse around the screen without getting those stupid pop-ups. They are really annoying so I just leave those sites.”

    I like to use affiliate links when I can, as long as the links go with the topic but when I was using Kontera the posts just looked a bit to cluttered. I wasn’t making enough to keep them as I would make much more from my affiliate links.

    I would also say that my friend won’t be using them any time soon either. :)

  8. SEO Blog January 15th, 2008

    I am already using Kontera, it pays bills but I could not actually say if it is good or bad. One thing is for sure, unlike for example with adsense, the earnings (or rather the clicks and you will know what I mean) jump pretty high when traffic bounces, this said, the earnings with Kontera rely very on traffic.

    But I am curious to know how it will work for you.

  9. David Bradley January 15th, 2008

    Any system that annoys your readers cannot be a good thing in the long-term.

    db

  10. Ben Cook January 15th, 2008

    David, I agree with you and that’s why I hadn’t used Kontera before now. But, I realized that several blogs I read on a regular basis use it, or an ad program like it, and they really hadn’t been an annoyance to me. I mean hadn’t clicked on any of them but I also hadn’t been interrupted while reading etc. So, I figured I’d give it a try and see what it does. If nothing else it will be nice to know.

  11. David Bradley January 15th, 2008

    Fair enough. If it pays and you don’t lose readers, then you’ve gained ;-)

    db

  12. Silvano January 15th, 2008

    I just started using adbrite, a silimar service on my blog. I dont have very much traffic at all, but I chose them as they sounded less intrusive than some of the others I had looked at. It does do the linked mouse over ads, only on the top blog post though, so its not that bad, but I dont like how they decided to take over my header with their ads as well. Can’t really comment on payout yet, but i am interested to hear your thoughts on different payouts for different ad programs. Also which you’d reccomend for a low traffic blog. Thinking about doing an add program for my newest site as well, but I havent decided yet. http://www.rap-it-up.net

  13. SEO Blog January 15th, 2008

    How could a double lined textual ad annoy your readers? As i said on my post about Kontera, we (webmasters) are weird, we do like placing ads on our site but we don’t like them on other sites.

  14. Scarlett Tarjick January 15th, 2008

    Hi Ben,
    Kontera is a good company to make money with. If you are wanting to increase your revenue, check us out here at LinkWorth also. Let me know if you have any questions.
    Scarlett T.
    LinkWorth Staff

  15. thatedeguy January 15th, 2008

    I’ve been running Kontera on my site since early July of 2007. My earnings have increased every month since then. I now make more through Kontera than I do with Text Link Ads OR Adsense on thatedeguy.com.

    One note though: Even though Kontera claims a 30 day “adjustment” period for optimization, I found it to be closer to 90 days before I saw a good pickup. You can see in my October Income report that Kontera started to pick up and has since exceeded my expectations in November and December.

  16. Ben Cook January 15th, 2008

    @ Silvano, you can control where the links appear or don’t appear. I’ve been looking at that issue and will probably turn it into a post of it’s own later this week.

    @ Seoblog, the bubble thing that pops up when you mouse over the ad I could see as being annoying but I realized that I certainly don’t follow along with my mouse as I’m reading and I don’t think many others do either.

    @ thatedeguy, I’ll definitely take a look and thanks for sharing! Any ideas why it takes so long to ramp up? Did you have significant traffic increases during that time period as well?

  17. Tom Printy January 15th, 2008

    Ben,

    I am glad that you took my suggestion. I hope it works out for you.

  18. SEO Blog January 15th, 2008

    I’d rather find annoying popups that jump once you access a site rather than a “bubble” (ad window) when you hover. Looks people are so stressed that even a small window bothers them…well at least they do like the few cents that come along with the clicks on those windows.

  19. BlogEntrepreneur January 15th, 2008

    I despise Kontera links. I hope you make money with them…but I hate em…to the point that I find myself quickly skimming the contest and getting out.

    My 2 cents.

  20. Vered January 16th, 2008

    Hey Ben,

    My name is Vered and I’m from Kontera. Glad to read that you’ve decided to partner with us :) .

    If you’re interested in more information about optimizing ContentLink for your site please visit our blog.

    Feel free to contact me with any question or comment and welcome to our network.

    Vered,
    Publisher Services Manager
    Kontera

  21. Make Money Online January 16th, 2008

    I use Kontera and the majority of all my websites and I have seen a significant monetary result. But you will need significant traffic to make this program work.

    Kenneth Elliott

  22. Homeboy's Skiing Blog January 16th, 2008

    I’m using Kontera and I am satisfied with it. I agree with those who say Kontera’s ads make reading a bit more difficult, but they are not that bad that I would stop using Kontera. It gives pretty easy money, but not very much. Naturally, the more you have traffic, the more you get money. In case of your blog, which is “make money from blogging” blog, I would not expect much revenue. The reason is that readers are bloggers and not interested in ads. I would use Kontera in other niches where readers are not mainly bloggers. Here are my Kontera stats for three months:

    Impressions: 21,388
    Clicks: 234
    CTR: 1.09%
    Revenue: $9.27
    ECPM: $0.43

    As you see, CTR is very low. People don’t click those ads so much. This is a summary of two blogs. My best CTR (2.3%) is in my astronomy blog in http://homeboyastronomy.com.

  23. Mike Huang January 16th, 2008

    It’s either losing readers or gaining money. Using these type of programs causes readers to leave…

    -Mike

    p.s. I’m experienced with this, so yea..

  24. Ben Cook January 17th, 2008

    Mike, I’m not quite sure I follow. Are you saying that to gain money you have to lose readers?

    Also, I’d love for you to share your experiences with us. Did you have a problem with Kontera or something like that? Like I said, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea to begin with but wanted to give it a shot. I’m all for learning from other people’s experiences though if that’s an option.

  25. thatedeguy January 17th, 2008

    No, I had no significant raises in traffic. I think it just took that long to optimize itself. It is looking like this month might be the first month that I’ll actually have the Kontera income go down since I started using it in July, but that’s somewhat deceiving because I had some really crazy traffic in December. I still think it’ll be better than November so I think that counts as the trend continuing.

  26. Scott Brooks January 21st, 2008

    I use Kontera on a few of my sites and have done OK. Their customer service isn’t that great though.

  27. SimplyWebtastic January 25th, 2008

    Wow, I just sent in my application a few days ago to Kontera, and now I’m not so sure it’s the way to go. Seems like most comments were that it’s annoying for viewers and doesn’t really generate that much revenue (for most).

    As a blog newbie, I’m starting off with Google AdSense, but honestly, the more blogs that I visit, I rarely see AdSense. Instead I see, what I would assume, are lots of affiliate links (CJ???).

    What do most of you use, and what works best?

    Thanks.

  28. Jason Simon February 3rd, 2008

    Thanks for the insight on Kontera. I have been exploring advertising streams and wrote a post called, “Blogging about Blogging” at http://opentodifference.com/2008/01/28/blogging-about-blogging/.

    – Jason Simon

  29. Buyers Web - Make Money Online Blog February 7th, 2008

    I currently run kontera and i find they are about the same ctr as google adsense…the only issue i had was the low cost per click but it still extra money for anyone that has alot of visitors…as they get more popular maybe the bids will be higher and get a common cpc of around 20 cents or higher instead of 5 cents…
    Other than that they have good ad presentation i reckon…

  30. Scott February 15th, 2008

    I used Adbrite very briefly, and flagged me; removed their ads from mmy account because I clicked on my advertiseres accounts.

    Adbrite’s customer service is horrible.

    I’m now trying Konetera. Thus far, I have had little luck.

    Anyone know any better sites. Hey, someone create something better, or I guess I will have to create a better advertising site myself.

  31. Ben Cook February 15th, 2008

    @ Scott… um yeah dude, clicking on your own ads is no different than theft. I wouldn’t expect any ad company to keep you on board when you’re stealing from advertisers.

  32. Offgrid iving February 17th, 2008

    I have been running Kontera on my site for about 1 month and have earned about $40. I don’t think the Links are very relevant to my content (let me know what you think) and the payouts are low. I am doing much better with Adsense and the links are very relevant. I’ll give it one more month and decide what to do (keep or remove) Any reviews, suggestions would be helpful. Thanx

  33. Write Articles Fast September 3rd, 2008

    I have kontera on some of my hubpages and blogs, i am earning .11 per click on average and the CTR is hovering around 11% which is not bad. I would never put it on my adsense sites that pay over $1 per click though as they would pull money away from me. I think they work good on niches that pay out low for adsense or hubpages.

  34. uk exhibition February 18th, 2010

    Added Kontera to 11 of my ‘adsense’ blogs, each getting an average of £3.66 per week over the last twelve weeks. One week later, Kontera $1.34 in clicks commission for 961 impressions. Google Adsense Revenue dropped to £2.61 per site. Not happy; Kontera Clicks could have been Adsense clicks earning a damn site more. To those, like me, looking for ways to increase earnings from their sites, all I can say is that Kontera may cost you money rather than make it! beepy1968.

Add a Comment