Kontera is good for technology and shopping/product review sites

Kontera ads is another way to monetize your website, but it isn't for everyone.

I applied for Kontera for my main website http://portallanguageservices.com which is an educational website for language learning, several weeks ago. I was finally authorized about 9 days ago and I added the code to my HTML pages and my blog.

Here is my experience in the first 8 days of using Kontera. Take this with a grain of salt because the Kontera site says that you should wait two weeks before the ads become good and let you actually make money.

1. The click reporting is NOT real time.

The click reports are not available until around 9 a.m. the following day. When you log in to your account, the report only shows for two days ago and before. You can select yesterday's date to see yesterday once the report has been run. If you want to see a breakdown of clicks and pay/click, click on the name of your website and you'll see the last few days' results by day.

2. The advertisements are almost all for shopping sites

It might seem obvious that most of the links are for shopping. The problem seems to be that the ads are not as specific as the keywords that they are attached to.

The keyword 'Oprah' gives me an ad that says 'shop for Oprah'. I really doubt the Oprah would want me to shop for her. I doubt that she is short of funds and I'm sure that her friends, SO, and show sponsors give her plenty of gifts.

(Note to Oprah Winfrey: If you come to Mexico city please send me an e-mail first :-) )

3. Kontera is not for every site

Kontera seems like a great idea and I really hope that they optimize their keyword links so that the links will add value for visitors instead of just being annoying. I do plan on asking for permission to add Kontera to any shopping sites that I may make in the future once they get at least 200 visitors/day.

In one forum that I have been participating in, another forum member mentioned that his educational site is also getting very few clicks, but his technology based site gets several dollars a day in clicks. It makes sense. What is normally sold online? Computers, PDAs, electronics, software, etc. are commonly sold online, so if your content is related to computers, the shop for... well maybe not oprah... say shop for software will make sense for a visitor and they'll click on the link.

What I am not saying

I am not saying to avoid Kontera. I'm saying that you should consider the topic of your site when applying, so you can submit the sites that will do the best with Kontera.

When monetizing your website(s), experiment with different programs and different combinations of advertising services until you find a mix that works great. The mix of advertising services will vary according to the topic, strategy, and page layout of each one. There is no magic formula.