My first week with Kontera
For the last week I have been using Kontera on a few of my blogs, including BloggingTips. I signed up to Kontera last year but I never got round to adding it to any of my sites but Kontera Rep Brian Larson got in contact with me a few weeks ago and persuaded me to try it out.
For those who don’t know, Kontera is an in-text affiliate solution. By placing a small piece of code on your blog, Kontera generates affiliate links with certain keywords on your blog (you can see these ads on BloggingTips, they’re the blue links with a double underline). Once you hover over the text link a small ad will pop up.
My opinion of these types of ads used to be that they were too obtrusive. I still think they are a little but they’re not as bad as I used to think as the ad only appears if you hover over it and the double underline indicates what links are Kontera links. Perhaps readers don’t realise this though so I place a note somewhere telling readers that affiliate links are in blue.
I’m still unsure whether I will use Kontera long term. At the moment I am getting just under a 1% click rate and I’m making about a dollar a day, not exactly a lot of money but extra income nevertheless. I can certainly see why high traffic content websites with hundreds of thousands of impressions would use something like this.
It doesn’t work exactly how I want it though. I would prefer if these ads just appeared in the post area however Kontera places them everwhere on the blog it’s place. For example, the ‘Latest News’ link in the newsletter subscription page converts to a link (which annoys me no end).
I’m going to try Kontera for a while longer but I’d love to hear what readers think about this kind of advertising. Do you find this type of advert annoying or does it not bother you?
Link : Kontera
Jackie Jackson | August 21st, 2008 at 5:10 pm #
Hi,
I just want to re assure you that in-text advertising is extremely irritating to say the least. it just destroys the user experience, and even if you do mention their presence to the readers, it hardly makes a difference.
Because when you are reading something with focus and concentration and suddenly something pops up because you’ve accidentally placed your mouse over it, you actually feel kind a exploited.
There is a very nice article by daniel on his website relating to this topic. (http://www.dailyblogtips.com/stay-away-from-in-text-advertising/) .
Just think twice before going permanent with this. take care.
Sly from Slyvisions dot Com | August 21st, 2008 at 5:21 pm #
I had Kontera before when I started my blog, but only lived to stay for a few weeks. It trully is a very annoying type of ad.
By the way, there’s a way to target just a part of your site that kontera will show up. It’s been a while so I don’t really remember how to do it. It should be onyour kontera admin page though.
Sly
http://slyvisions.com
Myo Kyaw Htun | August 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm #
Kevin,
You can configure by using Konafilter in html class. See help file in your kontera account. By the way, I also did not use Kontera since click rate is too low and most of the visitors found that it is annoying.
WetcoastBob | August 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 am #
I am totally with Jackie Jackson!!!!!
Stacy | August 22nd, 2008 at 2:10 am #
I’m going to chime in here and agree that they are just awful from a reader’s p.o.v.
They make me not want to read the post, let alone click on it.
john | August 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 am #
Their plugin has a feature where you can make it so that the links don’t show until a post is x days old which I really want to make work, but for whatever reason it isn’t. Anyone else using the plugin having this problem? or has actually made it work?
Kevin Muldoon (Post Author) | August 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 am #
Thanks for all your feedback and the help with filtering.
I’ve removed Kontera from the site. As I said, I’ve never been a huge fan of them however the rep from Kontera was very helpful with me so I wanted to at least try it out for a bit so that I have a better understanding of the network.
TheAnand | August 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm #
If you have a 90% traffic from the usa, you might make a bang with this, else dont bother. Also, you can remove ads from those places where you dnt want it to appear with some tag called kona filter or something, it used to be there when I used them over a year ago. Try chitika, might help, I am making about 5$ on a normal service related site, but if it was a gadget site, i would have been making more….
Squeaky | August 24th, 2008 at 8:04 am #
Just added Kontera to my blog today. I also had signed up, but never got around to installing the code. I am not to fond of mouse over popup ads, but decided to give it a try and see what happens.
I get a fair amount of traffic, just need to find things which will work withing my niche.
Amith GC | September 17th, 2008 at 12:48 am #
good one
London Gigs | October 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am #
This is an interesting PPC alternative. I had never heard of this before till recently therefore decided to have a look, and this posting came up. Interesting to read. Maybe I will join up and try a little. Can they be put of on the same pages as adsense. Please write something on that as well.