When it comes to monetizing websites, you should never rely on just one source of income. The logic behind this is obvious and if you haven’t heard of this concept by now, you really should start looking at using multiple different publisher programs to earn more money from your websites – (Check out my recommendations here if you’re looking for a few ideas). If your main revenue source starts to decline and you aren’t using other revenue streams it can be disastoruous so if you aren’t doing this now take the first step and start to use more than one publisher program on your websites.
While utilizing multiple different publisher programs on your websites is important, I’d like to take it one step further. You should also always be consantly experimenting with various publisher programs that offer the same type of advertising solution. In this case, I’ll be offering up some numbers on two different in text advertising programs. After running Kontera’s Content Link on one of my forums for several months I decided to try another in text advertising option – Vibrant Media’s IntelliTxt. After negotiaiting my way into Vibrant Media’s program, I finally got the ad code installed on my forum a little over one month ago. But before I get to the numbers from Vibrant Media, I’d like to show you how Kontera performed on Dec 10th to Jan 10th:
Not that great huh? For 17k impressions it made just over $5. However, it’s important to note that 7 days into the above time frame I set the ads to only display to guests because I felt they are too intrusive for members. Either way, you can see why I wanted to try out a different in text advertising option to see if there was anything else that could do better than $5 in a month time period even though it was only on 17k in impressions. Here are the results from Vibrant Media’s IntelliTxt program:
(Thanks for the misspelling of my company name by the way)
Wow this one did even worse! I logged into my account after running the ads for three weeks and saw that there were 0 clicks! Are you kidding me? I actually emailed my account rep over at Vibrant Media to see if there was a problem with the ad code and he assured me that there wasn’t. He ended up changing the link colors from the blue that matched the color of the links on the site back to the standard green but this didn’t do much to change the outcome. I wasn’t generating a ton of impressions, but it’s funny that for displaying close to 60,000 impressions the ads were only clicked 3 times!
Now that I’ve finished running IntelliTxt for a month, I may try out AdBrite next. I’d really like to find an in text advertising option that performs better than Kontera or I may just remove in text advertising completely because it already only accounts for a very small portion of the chunk of the pie. What I’ll probably end up doing is keeping the if conditionals to only display the in text ads to guests anyway though. It’s also important to note that while Kontera’s Content Link made more money than Vibrant Media’s IntelliTxt on my forum it may be the opposite for you depending on your website’s niche, demographics etc. I can’t stress this enough, if you want to increase your online income than you must experiment with a wide variety of publisher programs!
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I’ve been thinking of trying Kontera or Vibrant Ads. But, after seeing how you fared, I don’t think I’m going to waste my time. Especially since you generate twice the impressions I do. At best I’d be looking at $2.50 — gaaad – what a waste.
I totally agree with multiple streams of income! I’m always trying new things so that when one hits troubled waters, I’m not S.O.L.
Thanks for the info!
Well you also have to keep in mind which niche your website is in too. Video Game keywords and ads don’t pay out as much as others will.
It’s all about the testing.
Hey Chris!
I found a way to ‘veryify’ the clicks vendors are recording.
Feel free to contact me if you’d like that link!
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
Hey Pam, I will. But I did contact the account manager and a technical guy to make sure there weren’t any issues on their end.
Nice tips. I currently only have adsense on my site so will look at other alternatives. Just going to check out your recommendations.
I stumbled across your site because I was thinking about switching from Kontera to Vibrant Media, but I think after reading your comments I�ll stick with Kontera.
I, too, thought my ad revenues were very low, but I realize that they�re really not that bad. Last month with 33,699 impressions, I earned $62.20 with Kontera. I guess that�s not too bad comparatively speaking. My site that has household tips generated the bulk of the ad revenue, while the others didn’t fare as well.
Thanks for your informative post. You�ve saved me the time of switching the code to Vibrant Media and then back to Kontera again.
You’re welcome Felicia; however, I’d still recommend that you test the other program as well.
Some niches pay better on different publisher programs than others.
Well, I got into Vibrantmedia somehow by negotiating like you 😀
I have experience with Kontera, it sure sucks, but compared to it, Vibrantmedia does better for my Automotive niche sites. But they sure have to waste a lot of impressions, but at times their pay per click is higher than even Adsense, so it sums up 😉
But the prob with them is they only show ads for US based-traffic…
Because of your post, I am now thinking if… I will use Kontera as part of blog. Thank you for sharing your honest report about it.
You might try mediatext as well. I earned $0.25 – $0.5 per click, much higher than Kontera. However, they only pay for clicks coming from qulified countries (US,Canada, etc.). Also, the visitor must click on the pop-up ad and not on the “link” to get paid.
Hi Chris
So, how did Adbrite perform vis-a-vis the other two?
Anand�s last blog post..Which is the Best Ad-Format for your User?
Thanks for the info
Lovelylum�s last blog post..Miss World Mariana Bridi da Costa Is Dead.
Kontera really sucks, You should earn minimum 100$ to request a payement !!
I’m thinking of trying Kontera on some of my highly trafficked websites. But I heard a lot of people complaining about getting paid from them and their customer service sucks.. Have you got any problems getting payment from Kontera? Do they pay on time?
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/64180/ redtube, xkcvxrr,
I should recommend infolinks and chitika instead of adbrite indeed.
.-= adsense alternatives´s last blog ..Clicksor =-.
I’ve been trying Kontera for a couple of weeks so far, but after what I saw on this post I think Ill stop wasting my time with it.
When I first started with Kontera back in about 2007, I was averaging about $120.00 – $180.00 per month on about 50,000 page views. Sometime in 2010 the income plummeted to about $30.00 a month! Same amount of page views…if not more, but FAR less revenue.
I am now trying out Infolinks to see if that helps.