Kontera’s Unobtrusive PPC In-Text Ads

Kontera in-text ads are yet another way to monetize a blog or web site. I've used them in the past on other blogs with some degree of success and when I saw it mentioned in John Chow's post 'Blog Income Report - February 2008' I decided to to a quick write up on it and implement it on this blog. In general it is frowned upon for many reasons to advertise early on a blog or web site. Reasons such as SEO, reader trust, etc. I don't plan to include ads all over this site in the short term but unobtrusive text ads or affiliate text links are no big deal in my opinion. While doing my blog setup/hosting purchase exchange for many people over the past 6 months I have received a few common questions about Kontera and I'll address those in this post.

First, in case you have never heard of Kontera, here is a brief description of their ContentLink^TM service:

In other words, keywords throughout the text of your web site may automatically be hyperlinked with a double underline and when hovered over a relevant ad will appear. If the ad is clicked you will generate revenue. It's a great way to include unobtrusive advertising into your site.

Implementing Kontera Ads Into WordPress

All of the blogs that I've setup for people have been WordPress. In general I would do the little extras like installing Kontera ad code myself but a lot of times they wanted to do the setup themselves. Here are the quick steps to insert the Kontera code into your WordPress blog.

• Copy the code that Kontera sends you from the welcome email or your Kontera Control Panel.
• Login to your WordPress admin, click Presentation, click Theme Editor and click the footer.php file from the list on the right.
• Now paste the code just before the closing body tag.

The above steps will include Kontera ads on every page of your blog. It usually takes a day for the ads to show up.

Configuring Kontera Ads

You are given a few options to configure your ads. Some require emailing Kontera to make any changes which kind of sucks. Here's what the Kontera code looks like:

You can change the var dc_AdLinkColor value to whatever color you would like for the links. It's often best to use the same color as the existing links on your page to keep things looking good. Remember, you will still be able to distinguish between your regular links and the Kontera links because the Kontera links have a double underline.

By firing off an email to Kontera you can get things changed like, the number of links that show up on your site, blocking advertisers and I think even certain keywords blocked but don't quote me on that. According to the FAQ, the process takes a few days. Why? I don't know. It's been awhile since I've done anything with AdSense but I believe those things are controlled in the Control Panel. It'd be nice of that were the case with Kontera.

Using Other Hyperlinking On-The-Fly Services In Conjunction With Kontera

If you are using ALinks to create links on the fly in your posts, or any similar service, then you will be violating the terms at Kontera. Plus, I think technologically it might be a bad idea to have more than one service trying to accomplish the same thing at the same time. Kind of like running multiple anti-virus programs at the same time. It just doesn't make sense.

Kontera Referral Program

There's a couple hoops that you have to jump through before being able to refer anyone to Kontera and get some 2nd tier commissions. You will receive 10% commissions on revenue generated by your referrals for the first 12 months. In order to qualify to send referrals you have to do the following:

• Be a member in good standing for at least 3 months.
• Earn $100.00 per month in Kontera revenue.

Fair enough I guess. I think Kontera is a decent way to grab extra cash from your site and feel it's worthy of a recommendation even though I don't qualify yet to profit from any referrals.

You can signup at Kontera.com. For what it's worth, put in the comments that KeithJamesLock.com sent you

If you've been using Kontera at all, what do you think of it? If you haven't and you have any questions check out the FAQ at Kontera or post a question here in the comments and I'll try my best to answer it.