Why I Had To Leave Kontera

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Rand Wilson

When I sent my written notice to Kontera informing them that I would not be renewing my contract and would soon be removing Kontera from GrownUpGeek.com, my account rep. replied with dismay – it seemed that she could not understand what would be driving me to make such an irrational decision. So not even taking into account or mentioning that fact that I had to notify Kontera in writing.. At least 30 days in advance before I could remove the Kontera tags from my site without repercussions (I know, I agreed to it, in writing – but that does not mean I like it), I replied that it was simple economics. The fact is, for about the last year or more, Kontera earnings have been on the downswing (read: earnings have sucked!) and I’ve grown tired of the assurances from my Kontera rep that “it’s just a temporary downswing across the industry” or “we’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up for the 2nd quarter – now hurry and sign your 1-year contract”.

It pains me to leave Kontera. Kontera has great customer support, and once upon a time the earnings were spectacular. But like I’ve posted here in the blog many times when discussing Kontera, it works great on some websites, and not so great on other websites – “if Kontera works on your website, use it! if Kontera doesn’t work, try something else..” … So, it’s time for me to try something else.

I’ve just began testing InfoLinks (first day Infolinks generated more earnings than Kontera has seen in 3 weeks) and after 30-60 days, I’ll give Vibrant a try.

I can say that so far, I am unimpressed with support from both Infolinks or Vibrant – Kontera beats them both hands-down as far as support and responsiveness is concerned.. But, support don’t pay the server bills – sorry Kontera.

Below are some graphs showing how Kontera has performed against Adsense and IDG Tech Network.

The first graph shows all three, Adsense, IDG Tech, and Kontera, Jan – June 2011:

As you can see above, Adsense is far and above a better performer than either IDG Tech or Kontera. Since it’s not even fair to compare IDG Tech or Kontera to Adsense, below is another graph, of just Kontera and IDG Tech, without Adsense to skew the scaling:

As you can see above, for the first 6 months of 2011, Kontera has lagged far behind IDG Tech virtually every day.

Now compare 2009 Kontera earnings (Jan thru June) to 2011 Kontera earnings (Jan thru June):

And finally – The average daily earnings of Kontera going all the way back to 2007. There have been some clear ups and downs, but for the last 8 – 9 months, the trend is in one direction: DOWN

Still confused and bewildered over why I would leave Kontera?

As I’ve already said – I’m not saying Kontera is bad, or you should not use Kontera. On the contrary, I think you should try Kontera on your site to see how it performs against the competition. Unfortunately for Kontera, it just no longer performs on my website.

Adsense: Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Rand Wilson

If you are using the new Adsense Beta interface you may have seen the new, bigger, red’er, and scarier warning about your Adsense ads appearing on websites you have not authorized. For those of you that have not seen the warning, the full wording goes something like this:

Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.

Because of the way the warning appears in red across the top of your Adsense overview page it can be quite disconcerting – but for most Adsense publishers it’s nothing to be concerned about.

When you click on the link in the warning banner to view your Adsense Account Settings, scroll down to Access and Authorization, and click the Unauthorized Sites details link you will see all sites found with your Adsense code or Pub ID. Most likely you will see sites/domains such as webcache.google.com, images.search.yahoo.com, facebook.com, translate.googleusercontent.com, and multiple country-specific domains such as google.es or google.hu. You may also see other search engines and proxy-websites. Most of these, particularly the Google domains are from people viewing cached versions of your website. Others, such as proxies from viewing your site via a web-proxy.

You will have to determine which sites you think are safe to add, if any, to allow your ads to be shown. If you don’t allow/add any, you risk losing out on impressions and earnings. If you add too many, you risk bad things happening to your Adsense account (see below). I decided that it was safe to add the Google cache and translate pages, and all of the major search engines and Facebook. After you allow/authorize a site, it may still appear in your warning list for up to a week, and unfortunately, if you leave even one site unauthorized you will continue to see the big-red warning – there is no way to disable or ignore it.

If you have not enabled the option to only display your Adsense ads on sites that you authorize, you may want to consider doing so. This feature was created in part to prevent nefarious web-publishers from using a competitor’s Adsense Pub-ID or Adsense code on a website that violates the Adsense Terms Of Service – resulting in the competitor being banned from Adsense. It’s a great feature, but as you can see it does require a small bit of care and feeding. To enable this feature, in the new Adsense interface, select Account Settings, scroll down to “access and authorization” and click EDIT. Then click the “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account” box and be sure to enter your website domains in the box below.

If you know how to deactivate or remove the “Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized” warning banner, please post a comment and tell us how!

Ad Networks: The Good, The Bad, And The Krappy

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Rand Wilson

In the last few weeks I’ve received a few emails/contacts/PM’s asking about which advertising networks I use and which ones perform the best. So instead of making a post about how well the different ad-networks perform (like every other blogger in the world) I thought I would simply post some pros and cons of the different networks I use or have tested in 2010.

Adsense:

Pros: The largest ad-network on the planet; largest advertiser inventory; easy configuration; very high eCPM for most websites
Cons: Sometimes difficult to get approval, especially in ‘certain’ countries; zero customer support for non-premium accounts (that’s virtually all of us); very little recourse if your account runs into issues; forget about ever dealing with a human being if you need help

Microsoft AdCenter for Publishers:

Pros: The merge with Yahoo could someday rival Adsense; good publisher support via private forums; excellent customization of ad-units
Cons: Very low eCPM (for now); access to the service is very limited and/or closed at this time; will remain limited to U.S. publishers only, for the foreseeable future

Kontera:

Pros: Excellent customer support including a dedicated account-manager at your disposal by phone or email; “in-text” ads do not take up any space on your pages and can easily run along-side Adsense and many other advertisers; potential for excellent eCPM for the right niche websites; good referral program
Cons: eCPM can vary wildly by as much as 75% day vs day; eCPM can be poor on the ‘wrong’ type of sites; low advertiser inventory; Contract is required which locks you in to using only Kontera for in-text advertising on your site xx-months (usually 1 year)

Chitika:

Pros: Decent customer support; multiple types of ad-types; very good eCPM on the ‘right’ sites; good referral program
Cons: low eCPM on some sites; low advertiser inventory

IDGTechNetwork:

Pros: Good customer support with dedicated account-contact; easy to use dashboard (AMP: Ad Management Platform); surprisingly high eCPM based on my testing
Cons: Restrictions on accepting new publishers; contract required that forces the display of the IDGTechNetwork logo on every page

Affiliate Systems (CJ, Plimus, Clickbank):

Pros: Easy to sign-up and create links for your pages; extremely high earnings potential if you can target traffic to the right offers
Cons: Zero earnings if you cant get high amounts of targeted traffic (requires much work, planning, SEO and/or marketing)

The bottom line with these and other ad-networks is that what works great for me may not work very well for you, and you should try out as many ad-networks as you can until you find the fit that is right for you. You may actually find that you are pleasantly surprised with the results.

What other ad-networks have been working well, or not so well for you? Post a comment and let us all know..