Note: This review is not paid for. Just my honest and – in this situation – harsh opinion of an intext advertising solution.
InfoLinks is an in text advertising solution, similar to what Kontera and Vibrant Media provide. In fact, I shared my experiences using both of their solutions on my old video game forum GamingVidz.com back in 2008 here: Kontera vs Vibrant Media (spoiler alert: they both performed miserably). Last year I decided to give in text advertising another go around and decided to go with InfoLinks this time. I then proceeded to install the code on a limited number of my websites / blogs. This time I decided to steer clear of using them on forums, which are notorious for performing poorly with advertisements.
Income Results for 9 months:
For the past 9 months I’ve used them on a technology blog where I earned $328.81 off of 414,525 impressions (about $1.20 per day):
My average eCPM was $.75 and I’ll be the first to admit that I’d like to see a MUCH higher number than that for something as intrusive as in text advertising; however, in text advertising solutions like InfoLinks are designed to be a supplemental income stream – not the primary solution. Of the three I’ve tried InfoLinks has shown the most promise, but I’m basing this on my experience with Kontera and Vibrant Media from back in 2008. So I’m currently in the process of reusing both of their intext advertising solutions for a month each on the same website to provide you an apples to apples data comparison (I’ll do a follow up post when I have enough data to show solid numbers).
InfoLinks ad targeting and display is very poor
InfoLinks appears to have a lot of directories / small search engines that advertise with them because I’ll frequently see ads that simply use the double underlined ads like this: “Search insert advertising phrase on randomdirectory.org” and there are often several times that the images on the ads are not displayed for ads either. I’m sure if they improved the quality of the ads that were displayed through improved tracking and acquired more premium advertisers the publishers would make more money and in turn use the ads on more of their websites.
Wrap Up
InfoLinks is a decent supplemental income stream but it should never be used as the only way to make money from a website. I suggest you use it more on informational style websites and less on websites that do well with affiliate marketing. I believe the clicks on websites that do well with affiliate marketing are worth more than websites more focused on providing information. You don’t want a potential $25 commission leaving on a 5 cent intrusive click. In fact, I suggest that you analyze your bounce rate after implementing an in text advertising solution to see if it drops. Even if it drops a couple percentage points it’s probably not worth using an in text advertising solution. I’ll provide more data from other in text advertising solutions before I crown a champion, but so far InfoLinks has performed better than the dismal displays I saw by Kontera and Vibrant Media back in 2008.
What experiences have you had with in text advertising?
Note: I wrote this review at the end of February and already have nearly a full month’s data using Vibrant Media’s in text advertising solution. I’ll share my results with them in the beginning of April and then in May I’ll share stats from Kontera. If you’d like to see more case studies like this be sure to subscribe to my blog.
I was looking at adding another ad slot to one of my larger sites yesterday, and I got pretty far into it before I reminded myself: You not only have to look at how much you make from a particular revenue opportunity, but how it affects the site as a whole. I know some people hate those in-text links, so you have to gauge not only how much revenue they bring in, but also their negative affect on your site — the number of people who don’t come back, don’t link to you, etc. Obviously there’s no way of knowing that for sure, so it’s more of a gut feel, but the point is that many revenue opportunities also have a negative cost. (AdSense taking visitors away from your site is probably the most well-known.)
.-= Shane´s last blog ..Who Will You Believe? =-.
I think this is absolutely true. Just as a user, I despise in text links that popup when my mouse runs over them and I always think of the site using them as unprofessional and even spammy. I don’t know why I developed such a strong association with these types of links and spam websites, but it’s there and I know I’m not alone in my opinion on this subject. I would much rather see an article packed full of affiliate links or even AdSense than these types of in text links. For my own websites, I try to remember how I feel as a user and let that guide me as to what type of monetization methods I try.
.-= Lynn´s last blog ..The 50/50 Challenge Round Up: Week Three =-.
Lynn, that may have been true a few years ago but there are sooo many authoritative and legitimate high traffic sites using inline ads. And I do mean large sites! More and more people are becoming acquainted with it as a reality – that sites need to monetize through various means because people hate to actually pay for content.
That might be the case but they’re not yet prevalent at the sites I visit, so I haven’t yet had the prejudice against them worked out of me. I hate them with an unbridled passion because they make it impossible to read text unless you make sure your mouse is as far away from the page as possible, and yet if I’m trying to hover over links, I always end up triggering several of the ads. I almost always leave a site as soon as that happens unless the information just absolutely can’t be found elsewhere. ๐ Maybe lots of people aren’t as opinionated about it as I am, but I’m not taking any chances with my websites.
.-= Lynn´s last blog ..How to Emulate a Static Website With a Blog Using WordPress =-.
Hey Shane,
I agree and that’s exactly why I like to carefully monitor bounce rate on the website both before implementing in text advertising and after. I also do believe that in text advertising can be distracting if the other links in the article you’re trying to push are affiliate links.
Good feedback though. It’s all about experimentation I suppose.
Chris, there are codes which you can insert into the text to make the ads “jump” sections or a whole page if you want. Just like google adsense, it can be customized and tweaked.
Yah, but at the same time some of it should just work you know?
Hmm, I use Kontera and I am actually thinking about switching out of intra-post text links entirely. I would have to agree that it is too intrusive to be worth your while unless you are really making a pretty penny, and none of these services really produce results. Thanks.
.-= Jimvesting.com´s last blog ..So You Want to Make a Sales Video? The Key Elements to a Successful Pitch =-.
Hey Jim, I’m going to test all three of them out and then do a definitive write up so stay tuned for that ๐
Thus far Vibrant Media is actually doing really well. Up to about $100 in only 3 weeks when InfoLinks would have been only up to about $25.
I am already using them on m y entertainment blog. I ould say that tehy are giving me another alternative for Google Adsense.
.-= Palabuzz´s last blog ..Sunshine Dizon is married =-.
Nice review. It was really helpful.
Btw. you have a really interesting story/background. I have to keep coming back ๐
.-= Julius Kuhn-Regnier´s last blog ..How to Enable Google Analytics Site Search for WordPress =-.
nice review Chris
currently using infolinks and till now earning is only 0.09$ ๐
.-= Dev | Technshare´s last blog ..30+ Inspirational Social Bookmarking Sites =-.
Chris, check out Headup for in text links. http://www.headup.com/install.php
I would use Vibrant myself and switch from Kontera but my page views are not high enough yet. They say you need at least 500K per month to apply.
.-= ProMovieBlogger´s last blog ..How to Set Up a Movie Website Sidebar: For Profit =-.
500K per month? That is pretty hard condition for small scale.
Hi, I’ve just signed up to this and i’m just waiting for them to get back to me. I’ll try it out on the blog area of my site first and then maybe move it over to some of my other sites. I was thinking of adding it to my fishing forum website but im not sure how it will do, adsense gets a merely .95% CTR there so maybe worth a try.
i already have an infolink account but it is not converting as much compared to chikita ads… are there any tips to improve chikita btw?
Have been considering using Infolinks, expecially as Squidoo uses them and appears to be successful with it. But I guess you need to run it with another ad program, and you need thousands of page impressions to make it work
I have used Infolinks for some of my sites and it’s working well. Although it doesn’t get you a lot of money until or unless you don’t have significant number of pageviews, it’s a very reputed site. Why I like infolinks is they don’t have any strict requirements for your sites to be approved. It is true that you will not be able to earn enough if you don’t have traffic. Also their revenue share is so high comparing to Kontera.
I am trying with infolinks need to verify how far they are good
Infolinks is a another best way to earn money from your blog. Thanks for Sharing this Review
Hello,
Great Review of Infolinks, but I have some question sin my mind regarding Infolinks.
As I am looking for a secondary way to monetize my website, Does Infolinks do well with Adsense? And also, my majority traffic is Indian, will Infolinks pay good for Indian traffic?
Urgently want 2nd monetizing method as Adsense is not doing good with Indian traffic, also the CTR is low.
~ Rubel