Kontera, Adsense, IDGTech, & Affiliate Performance

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Rand Wilson

Back in March I gave an update on earnings throughout 2010 and the first month or two of 2011 so I thought I would post a quick update on the last two months or so.

Traffic: March and April 2011 were nearly identical to March/April 2010 at just under 1-million page-views

Adsense: At just under $10,000 for the 60-day period of March and April 2011, Adsense was up approximately 3% over the same 60 days in 2010. During the second half of April 2011 Adsense has been very close to breaking the $300/day mark. It hasn’t hit it yet, but it’s creeping very close.

IDG Tech Network: I didn’t get on-board with IDG Tech Network until late 2010, so I cant compare 2011 performance to last year. However, at nearly $2k for March & April 2011 and considering the fact that IDG Tech Network finally broke that magical $100/day mark (not every day, but several days, for the first time), I would say that IDG Tech Network is doing outstanding.

Affiliate Earnings: We only have a few affiliate links, on only a couple of pages, but those pages do receive a fair amount of traffic. In March/April 2010 affiliate earnings were approximately $120. In March/April 2011, those exact same Affiliate links on the exact same pages generated over $800. Note to self: If you have pages that get a lot of traffic and you can find an affiliate that makes sense for that page, use it!

Kontera: While Adsense and IDG Tech are measured in hundreds of dollars per day, Kontera coming in at nearly 50% less in 2011 than the same period in 2010, is floundering – In recent days not even breaking the $10/day mark. As much as I’ve touted Kontera in the past and as much as I love Kontera’s support-team, looking at those $8 earnings days are just too painful to continue and the time has come for us to part-ways. I have given the required written-notice that we will not be renewing our contract, and will soon be removing the Kontera tags/code from our site. I will then test other in-line text advertisers and report on their performance here in the blog. Of course I will test Kontera again at some point in the future and if it performs acceptably, I’ll be more than happy to dump whatever ad-network is lagging.

So overall, 2011 is going great. I’m curious how your traffic and earnings have been so far this year. Please post a comment and let us know if you are UP or DOWN.

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!

MailBag: What about MY success ?

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Rand Wilson

Technically this isn’t a “Mailbag” question because the question was posted in a comment and not sent to me via email or my Contact Page, but it brings up a good point so I thought I would share the question and answer here for everyone to read. After-all, I can’t really go around preaching about how to be successful without mentioning my own success at least once in a while, right?

Longtime readers of my blog may remember that in the past I would post quarterly or yearly updates on earnings and traffic, but for various reasons I have done that less and less. Fortunately none of those reasons were because I (or my websites) were no longer successful – am I still proof that a little-guy that does not know much about building websites, SEO, or marketing CAN BE SUCCESSFUL ON THE INTERNET!

Anyway – here is the post/question by CPVR from VirtualPetList.Com:

… Are you going to do more things to your blog this year? It would be nice to hear about your earnings from last year to this year – and how well you’re doing with Adsense and kontera.
I used to remember checking out your blog and finding it motivating to see more success.
Or, also, have you thought about talking about Grownupgeek’s latest success? Like, how is it doing traffic wise?

Am I going to do more things to my blog this year? Probably not. The new (current) look should last me for another year or two before I get bored with it, and still no plans to add any advertising to the blog. That should make my blog one of the very few “make money on the internet” type blogs that does not have any advertising on it. (I hope you guys appreciate that – tell a friend!)

Over at my main website, GrownUpGeek.Com, Adsense, Kontera, and now IDG TechNetwork all did very well in 2010. Kontera had some ups & downs (aka, very bad months), and Adsense had some record-high months. I started using IDG TechNetwork in mid 2010 and it turned out to be the real surprise of the year. Although IDG TechNetwork earnings were slightly lower than Kontera earnings each month in 2010, beginning in 2011, IDG Tech has overtaken Kontera, and is now earning more than double what Kontera earns each month. Overall earnings for 2010 were right at $60k – that is more than double 2009 which was a record bad year for earnings..

Adsense was the highest earner in 2010 with approx 70% of all earnings. Kontera brought in approx. 15%, and IDG Technetwork brought in about 5%. Various affiliate sales (Comission Junction, Plimus, Chitika referrals, direct ad sales, ect) rounded out the balance with an approximate combined 10% of earnings.

Traffic in 2010 was slightly lower than 2009 – but just barely. 2010 brought GrownUpGeek.Com just under 5.5Million page views, while 2009 had a whopping 6Million page views. So far in 2011 traffic is 10% higher than at this point in 2009, so it looks like 2011 could be another record year.

Here is to a successful 2011 for all of us! (even if it is a bit late)..

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..