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.

Kontera - In-Text Advertising at a Glance

About 1 week ago I signed up to Kontera (they don't have a referral program don't worry). They provide another method of site monetisation in the form of in-text advertising. They used to only accept high flying sites but recently they opened their gates to us ‘little-uns’. As I write this only a few in-text ad have appeared, but hopefully that will change soon.

I have just glanced back at the Kontera Publisher FAQ and one of the requirements is to "Generate more than 500,000 page impressions per month". This site doesn't get anywhere near that amount of traffic and was still accepted. They can't have just changed the rules because they say they will notify me by email if there are any changes and I have not received an email, so it's probably OK for you to give it a go but don't take my word for it (sorry!).

What is a ContentLink™?
A ContentLink™ is a contextually relevant keyword. ContentLinks™ appear as distinctive links with a unique underline that open a little window containing relevant advertising information. (They are the orange double underlined words).

Details
- Minimum payout is $100 buy check.
- Kontera is currently working in the following countries: USA, Canada and UK. Within the next few months they are planning to launch ContentLink™ in France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
- Don't forget to log on to your account and add the rest of the code (I didn't realise I had to do this and so the first few days I just sat here wondering why it wasn't working).
- You can check out their Kontera Demo here.

So that’s Kontera for you. Hopefully by the end of next week you will be able to see Kontera’s contribution to my weekly earnings.