No More Kontera!

I hinted in my last post that I would be making some changes to this site. I have just removed the Kontera code from this sites template. Kontera provided the 'in-text-content links', which were the words in actual posts that were underlined in orange. This may seem like a fairly minor change, but I assure you it is a tiny one in comparison to the things to come!

Why did I remove them?
1. They hardly made any money. I made a grand total of about $7 with them and they were here for over a month.

2. They make the page slow to load! This page may have loaded super speedy for you, but for me it loaded far to slowly, even with my high-speed broadband!

3. They looked bad. No matter how you disguise them, Ads look bad.

4. They are bad for the readers’ experience. I hadn't bothered to filter out unrelated or scammy sites, so who knows what I was promoting and where I was sending people.

5. I was getting sick of the over-monetisation. I think this is something you can only understand if you have spent a certain amount of time blogging. I have reached the stage where I read a lot of blogs and I am ashamed to say that this site was (and still is) grossly over monetised compared to almost all the blogs I read. I have formed a sense of pride in what I blog and my standards are being raised all the time. No more sneaky tacky ads. Thanks Maki for giving me the nudge I needed.

Will the Adsense go too? Wait and see.

I'm not expecting the removal of Kontera advertising to have a major effect on this blog, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s funny actually, people spend a lot of time waiting with eager anticipation of the day their blog 'comes of age' for acceptance into an advertising group; but losing Kontera is a relief. I have finally dropped a heavy burden.