YES – Kontera still makes money
It’s been a while since I’ve done a new post about Kontera so I thought I would write a quick round-up and update of my experiences and success with Kontera.
Back when I started GrownUpGeek.Com back in 2006 our only real source of monetization was Google Adsense. We also dabbled a bit in affiliate sales but that didn’t start generating any real income for at least a year and even now affiliate sales only generates a few hundred dollars per month. Of course there was income generated from my ebook sales (~$10k or so) back in 2006- 2007 (now the ebook is free here in the blog), and later, another $90k or so generated in premium content sales. But that first year or so, Adsense was the primary way that we generated income and paid the bills.
Even though we experienced great success with Adsense, and in particular the old Adsense Firefox Referral program (so much success that Google published GrownUpGeek.Com as a Google Success Story) I knew that having all of our eggs in one basket was not a good long term strategy and that we could generate even better earnings by properly diversifying our advertiser networks. The trick was to not cannibalize our Adsense earnings or drive visitors away by lowering our standards and looking spammy by jamming in too many ads.
Enter Kontera: Back in early 2007 I started testing Kontera’s In-Text PPC ad system. Kontera allowed us to virtually double our earnings overnight while not consuming any space on our pages and not looking “spammy”. Also, because Kontera’s In-Text ads look & feel totally different from Adsense text-units or image-ads, I think they appeal to a different type of visitors that may have become ‘ad blind’ to regular banner ads or text units. This allows us to generate additional income with Kontera without significantly reducing our Adsense income (as proven in testing and statistical analysis). And to answer the question: Can you use Adsense and Kontera together? YES, you can use Kontera with Adsense without any worry of violating the current Adsense Terms Of Service.
Over the last 2.5 years with Kontera we’ve seen both Adsense and Kontera earnings fluctuate up and fluctuate down, but virtually the whole time Kontera has earned right up with with, and sometimes better than Adsense. Kontera has also performed better than other In-Text ad networks I have tested over the years. Those solid earnings combined with my own dedicated Kontera account manager that answers my questions and deals with any problems that arise (something you won’t get from Adsense) has kept Kontera on my “Best ad network” list. But, don’t take MY word for it – I always recommend that you test all of your options and use what works best for you on your site, and REtest at least once per year.
Now that we have begun a full shift from premium content sales being our main source of income and are focusing on a long term strategy of advertiser income based on free content, the future looks good. As long as we can continue to generate quality (user generated) content we expect traffic and earnings to continue to grow.
Affiliate links: You can try Kontera at www.Kontera.com. Other links in the post may also contain affiliate links. If you hate aff-links, you can go direct to www.kontera.com.
Appreciate the report I am going to check this out and hopefully put the info to good work
This is really good information. I didn’t think that in-text ads really worked that well. Usually when I come across those, they are highly inaccurate. For example, I’ll hover over a phrase like “email marketing” and it’ll pop up an ad for a weight loss product. I’ll have to check out Kontera, and I’ll definitely use your aff link if I sign up. I don’t know why people dislike aff links, if you told me about a good opportunity of course I’d be glad for you to get some benefit from it, especially when it doesn’t inconvenience me at all. -Mike