NeedMoney: Kontera - Good or Bad?

Does Kontera work?

If you have a website which you are trying to monetize (aka make money off of), you could do worse by choosing Google's AdSense product for contextual advertising. Contextual means the ads are displayed based upon the content of the web pages.

Some time ago, the Adsense program forbid using multiple advertising schemes alongside their ads. Which meant that other ad programs like Kontera were offlimits to Adsense enhanced pages.

In the past year or so, when the Ad sense program was revised, a number of other options became available for ad-sense publishers. Which is a good thing for those of us trying to make money.

Kontera is a contextual advertising product which is slightly different than Adsense. Rather than placing ads next to content, it includes the ads as hyperlinks in the actual content. So a keyword like "hosting", "diets" or "smoking" would have a java scripted hyperlink which when clicked, takes the reader to another website with related content. The publisher would then be compensated for the click with a portion of the advertising revenue.

Kontera also has a "hover" feature which shows the reader a small amount of the information being advertised with the keyword by "hovering" their mouse over the keyword.

Kontera requires little work on the part of the publisher; simply insert the code on the webpage or blog and away you go. There are some caveats with the Kontera program which you should be aware of before signing up.

- Kontera limits payouts to a minimum of $100.00. This is a standard many, like Adsense currently use.

- Kontera limits earnings to a minimum of $5.00 per month. This is a biggie. Let's say you only earn 4.06 in Kontera clicks in a one month period. That revenue is forfeit at the end of the month for being below the monthly minimum, i.e. you don't get it. However, if your earnings are above 5.00 a month, but have not reached 100.00, Kontera will roll the earnings to the next month until payout.

- Kontera prefers that each website be considered a channel and get approved before their code is included. If you have multiple blogs or web sites, you will need to get each one in the system. Kontera does have a channel option obviously, to keep everything separate and in order.

My own experience with Kontera is mixed.

Update - May 2010!

- On one hand, the additional revenue helps. I recently started seeing about a %3.00 click thru rate on my Kontera ads which means a some additional revenue per day. That is always good.

- On the other hand, the revenue is not that great per thousand visitors as compared to Adsense for instance.

- The ads are sometimes hit and miss. For instance, a hover on the keyword "print" showed an ad for a department store. Another for "IP" showed a realtor website.

-Some readers may be "ad blind" or turned off by the hyperlinked ads. I have not had any complaint myself, and have actually seen my CTR and revenue grow. Your experience may vary.

- My Kontera revenue has been growing substancially since I first wrote this post. I now average between $3-5.00 a day with Kontera. Do the math. That's a potential of an extra $100.00 a month.

Finally, let me say a bit more about click revenue. My average click revenue was in the sub $.50 range aggregate. Depending upon the content, a similar CTR would normally earn about dollars instead of cents with Ad-sense. I wish it was a bit higher due to the amount of clicks and the recovered revenue by Kontera.

If you are looking for a no headache revenue option for your website, it might do well to check into Kontera and see how it works for you. I have had fair results and plan on trying it in a few more places.