Was looking at my arch nemesis John Chow’s blog today and noticed 8 million things loading in the status bar. Fired up firebug and holy crap kontera loads SIXTY EIGHT (68) different things:
I could not even fit them all in 1 screen shot on the 30″ Apple Studio Display.
Click for full image:
And notice the one is a 404 (file not found)…. oups.
Looks like a lot of people have been removing them from their site.
I was sitting with a guy from Kontera on a panel at blogworld and was asked point blank why I dont use it. I gave the honest answer…
1) Editorial control – Like with Google Adsense I have very limited editorial control over what is displayed on my site.
2) Selling yourself short – Unless you have some scrapper blog do you really want to give up your reader traffic for pennies?
3) Loading issues – as mentioned above.
I challenged Kontera a while back in my forums (now killed off) and they said they would accept but I have not heard back from them sense.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2412 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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I used to be FAT until I had A Duodenal Switch 
Dialing In Your FaceBook Campaigns 
How 2 Split Tests Made Me Over $93,000 
{ 109 comments… read them below or add one }
I signed up with Kontera right after I started Sabrina’s Money Matters and hated it, it made my page load slow and there were no conversions so it was a waste of my space.
Off topic though – - If I sent you a shirt for your Friday blog from my site, MouthyGirl.com – would you still wear it even though it’s for a “girl” site? I think you’d rawk it – but wouldn’t want to waste a tshirt if you don’t wear girl site shirts…..lol.
That’s why I use NoScript in Firefox. I don’t get all the junk like kontera. Just to check I went John’s site and no script forbids kontera from loading. Of course I don’t let pimptel.com load on Shoemoney.com.
LOL… In my never ending quest to learn as much about how YOU do things Jeremy…
I spent more time looking at the FF toolbars portion of the image! LOL
Lets see… typo generator, ringtone link, Ask… and one I’ve never read about, Trigget!
Time to go read for awhile… wait, wasn’t this about Kontera?
Mark
Kontera’s never been my cup of tea – it really irks me to find a popup box when I accidentally hover over a “contextual” link.
That’s why they pay him $1000 a month regardless of how much money he actually makes with them or not, which in my guess is not that much anyway.
Yeah, I was able to get my blog signed up for Kontera by mentioning John’s blog, but took it off when I realized how slow it made my site. Like most things John pushes, it’s not the actual product that makes him $$, its all the signup referrals. I think that is where his marketing skills lie – he’s able to sign a ton of people up for stuff.
Didn’t even know about kontera until you mentioned it. seems like many of the smaller kontera images load slower than the big ones. although I would want to test it multiple times to really tell. You will be negatively hitting his signups now
I ended up removing Kontera, and this is one of the reasons why. It’s impossibly slow (as well as being spammy looking and hardly earning any money).
Does it load last? If it loads last, does it matter how long it really takes? Just curious…
Yes I dont like it as well. First it takes too long to load, and second not a good conversion there.
I use Kontera, and have had no problems with it so far. @Hyder and Devtrench : I definitely agree that John Chow makes a great income from referring people to services.. probably is where his greatest skill lies.
What was the load time for that? Did some one say he gets paid for using the adds even when he is not referring any visitors? I will have to go visit his site and see how its doing, I did hear a buzz that he was unindexed altogether even for his name on Google. How did that turn out for him?
shhhhhhhhh fixed
I hate that crap with a passion…
That’s why I stopped using them on my sites as well, also I got the feeling that they were a bit annoying to the users as well.
Yes I have never had any luck or cared for Kontera. Thanks for bringing this to our attention Jeremy.
Kontera seems like a big pain to me. I don’t enjoy having to dodge all the in content pop ups my mouse may scroll across.
What’s typo generator for?
He actually has good grammar, but doesn’t want to let on…
I’ve never used it. It seems like I probably never will either.
I’m not a big time webmaster, but honestly, ?who cares? I make a significantly larger amount of money with the addition of in-text to my site than just AdSense alone and my users don’t hate it as much as my coder does. I get tired of people that bash everything new. I remember people that hated flash as well as and HTML in email. It’s 2008 — lighten up a little.
for generating typos
just my opinion chief
BTW I still hate flash.
Yet there are still two typos in this post
I tried Kontera in the past, but took it off after realizing that viewers HATE it! But I guess if you’re John Chow, no one really cares..
-Mike
Hey shoe, hit F11 on your browser and you’ll be able to show more of that screenshot.
Alternatively, would you have your babysitter or wife model it? If you picked it that is…
it takes some time to optimise.
I never understand what Kontera was trying to get you to click for anyway. Their ads did not make any since to me. A first grade could have done better with the keywords. I do not think they will be around much longer anyway.
Used it for a while…a few readers complained…ditched it. Perhaps with John’s level of traffic it’s meaningful but for me it was just a distraction.
It pays him enough that the positives outweigh the negatives. The visitors don’t seem to mind either. I don’t really like the delayed load time but I still go back for some reason
~Terry
AdBrite has something similar to what Kontera does. I actually replaced AdBrite’s with Kontera’s context links a few weeks ago and haven’t had enought run time to compare conversion rates. Any thoughts on one vs the other?
In text advertisingf are scandalous…
We did a trial run with Kontera and asked for feedback from our members on what they thought of the ads. It was weird, but most folks preferred them over Adsense. Some went as far to say Adsense was annoying, and the Kontera ads were very subtle.
We were quite surprised with the feedback. Regardless, the payout was so poor we stopped using them after the trial week.
Then Kontera contacted us and asked what would it take to run their ads again. We gave them a CPM we wanted, and they agreed… We’ve been running them on a CPM contract ever since… and it has been an excellent addition to our income.
We have not had any performance complaints either… but we do limit the number of links to 3 per page, which might help on performance…
They do. I dont like the fact that Johnchow.com loads so slow.
My forum members get pissed off if I ever add that. They all complain the slow page loads. I myself face it. So I block myself from showing kontera. Unfair that members face that and I run away from it.
Johnchow.com loads so slow for me that it is extremely pissing. VERY SLOW!
Takes ages to load and most of the time never completely loads also.
They are crappy. How much time you need to optimise?
Yup, that happens to me also but still running on adsense do gives me better ads.
YUP! I removed it for long time because of low pay and it makes my visitors away from my blog. Loading time too!
i have read that in your forum, and i was waiting for the kontera review. i guess the kontera staff agreed on the review on your forum. It is very sad to know that they did not responded.
My march average is 5 cents per click, and all my visitors are from google, msn/live, aol and yahoo, and the content is absolutely unique and sites are niche sites! looks like it’s time to remove and forget kontera,
Interesting approach. Perhaps I’ll give them another try.
I think Flash has it’s place. But that place isn’t everywhere…
Another proof that some advertising networks rather spam the computer han being user friendly.
haha. I agree
I really agree that Kontrera and all similar programs on the market(don’t think it’s right to focus only on Kontrera) are not suited for a blog that really does provide quality content. They just ruin it.
At least me, personally, wouldn’t bother reading any article full of those links that can popup little windows at any time. I would be more willing to click a link or an ad at the sidebar rather than in-text.
As mentioned in the article above, they do slow your website, especially if they are a lot in number.
The only bad thing is that new bloggers, think that as their ideal way to earn money through their blogs, and focus on creating Kontrera-keyword-links-friendly articles so that they’ll get their..cents..
Actually with so many advertising programms (in case they don’t get accepted at AdSense), that plethora of affiliate networks and yet lot of people focus on Kontrera-like networks.
Pitty..
I had Kontera on my blog for a month or so. It made me 36 USD only, much lesser than the other forms of ads on my blog. Also, it made my blog look ugly!
So, i forfeited that 36 USd and removed it
John Chow and his useless tips. Look at the interview he had on tv, rubbish tips. He has no idea what he is toking about.
He’s doing typos so that the post will rank also for typos more traffic!
Speaking of crap did you see Johns vid post about the subject? I thought it was really funny. I am sure that you have seen it, I just don’t know why he posted it. He is crazy!
Sounds like they had a good idea but aren’t backing it up the way they need to….
Kontera sure sucks, I even made a blog way back – http://xtoned.com/log/2007-08-29+kontera-sucks
But am still looking for a Kontera alternative, content link solution for my sites :S
i think its tacky! I dont think your selling yourself short, money is money!
I’m dissapointed Shoe… you should be using Safari…
Who is even promoting them? I really dont see anything there but waste of time only!
are you sure of that? lol
Well, John Chow sees value in using them. For the life of me, I don’t see why. I think the quality of their ads are rather poor.
Yeah, Kontera sucks.
If you’re gonna get pennies for your clicks, peakclick is the best, i think, after Adsense and Yahoo, of course.
CPA is a whole lot better.
Scandelous…
That’s pretty interesting that they agreed to the CPM that you wanted. I guess they figured taking a cut in profits would benefit them in the long run. I wonder if they give everyone the option of choosing their prefered CPM?
~Terry
The sudden pop-up in kontera is really distracting
Wow, shoe PWNED me!
pop-ups are pop-outs for customers, its good only for first timers
if you use it you look desperate and tricky
You should see the new ones John just wrote about on his blog. They’re even bigger.
Thank god that most of those sites I visit don’t use Kontera! A little tip for you webmasters: if you are frustrated by your sites loading time and slow loading is becouse of too much headers and stuff, try PHP Speedy. It gzips all code and images your site has and improves loading time.
Does anyone know a better Kontera alternative??
Hi Paul, I saw it too. I think it was posted to get reactions – like yours and mine, because it made no sense to me – I am a bit slow though
wow I am gonna stay away from kontera
Sorry, but personally I regard AdSense as the best system to monetize most of my sites traffic. So in my opinion is really nothing to talk about.
I got on with Kontera right at the beginning too, but it only took me about a week before I removed them totally. I know it has it merits and the advertising might be good for some people but I find it totally annoying when reading an article myself, so I didn’t want to have up something I didn’t like to read around.
I suppose it depends on how successful your blog is, if your already well known then it probably doesn’t hurt much… If your a small blog like 99.95% of us then I agree it hurts more then it helps… I wouldn’t mind so much if the ad’s were a little less frequent… People visiting John Chow’s site are hammered with a lot of advertising already so whats a bit more..
John Chow likes Kontera. I’d like to see a viral video debate between JC and Shoemoney on this issue. That would get hits.
Is it really that annoying? I don’t mind it.
That’s about the one thing I don’t like about his site. Why is that?? It can’t just be Kontera.
I’d prefer it over Adsense as well. It’s hidden in the content as opposed to some bright ad box over on the right that’s distracting.
How much money did you make from other ad networks during that same period?
The ads are a little too intrusive for me.
Kontera’s ads are too intrusive.
I have just disabled them on my blog. Blog is little bit faster too.
Thanks for the nice warning
Yea, they are kind of annoying. It’s a hassle when you drag your cursor across a target word and that dang box just pops up and blocks the content you’re trying to read.
John Chow blog loads very slowly but he has fresh content so he thus gets away from the nuisance which smaller blogs may not be able to do so.
NoScript rawks! It’s cool not being forced to load stuff you don’t want to load.
I’d eat that one up too. I would follow it like religion to say the least.
I really don’t mind it. I easily just cruise my mouse around the link and avoid the pop ups. I also prefer it to seeing another bunch of google text links.
actually it dosenot makes a difference to my adsense earnings, so i keep them! am just worried about the page loading which is really really slow!
never tried them, some ads look so cheap . . .
yeh , kontera suchs.
It makes the site slow and i dont like irritating popups.
I dont like flash, too.
Looks nice, gonna use it soon.
Ditto. I gave up on kontera after a few days. For the amount of impact it had on my website; i.e. slow load time, wall to wall links, etc it just wasn’t worth the pennies per click I made. I can’t recommend to anyone. In theory it is good idea- the implementation is just abysmal.
I hate all the double underlined words. it is simply a distraction that no one clicks on.
I haven’t heard great things about it either but I might give it ago and then post a review of it and what it was like and it does make the site take much longer to load.
I tried kontera briefly…it made navigating my site a nightmare!
I used Kontera, also, but removed it after a couple of months. Now they want me to start showing the ads again for 30 days or they won’t pay me (Kontera owes me about $500 for those couple of months). Nice guys, yeah.
Yet another extremely dissatisfied ex-Kontera publisher.
http://themebot.com/tips-and-tutorials/kontera-contentlink-advertising
First it takes too long to load, and second not a good conversion there.
you can make kontera faster.
eg:
var dc_AdLinkColor = “#f26522″ ;
var dc_PublisherID = #######;
sorry looks like the code was filtered. what I was trying to say was use
LANGUAGE = “JavaScript1.1″
instead of
type = “text/javascript” to make it fetch faster.
If you are thinking about using Kontera, please read this article. You might have to take them to court to get paid what they owe you:
http://themebot.com/tips-and-tutorials/kontera-contentlink-advertising
good thing I closed my kontera account. I’ve waited for six months to get my $250.00 something, then after I was paid, I removed the kontera plugin in my blog.
I’m so happy kontera paid me even if I only earn a few cents per day. I will never put back kontera in my blog again.. never
Don’t forget also that under Clause 4.2 of Kontera’s terms if you make $5 or less in any month Kontera keep that for themselves you won’t see any of it – ever – it is not added to your growing stash of Kontera dosh –
Kontera’s Payment Terms
Clause 4.2 – Payment Terms ………… Notwithstanding the foregoing, if the Revenue Share for any given month is five dollars ($5) or less, Kontera shall not be liable to the Publisher for any such payment.
I forgot to mention that Clause 4.2 should in fact be renamed Catch 4.2 – much catchier !
kontera owes me around $500 and has not paid me for over 5 months, it is ridiculous, there reply comes after ages, i have asked them for payment and waiting for there reply
are they out of funds?
Most of these “alternative” ppc or contextual adv. programs are scams. Why not stick with the majors or sell ads yourself and cut out the scammy ripoff middleman?
Try infolinks or echotopic.
I tried kontera for several months but it really sucks. The revenue rates are pathetic. I can’t even buy peanuts from Konteras revenue. I am removing them from all my sites.
uContext.com … simple, quick, and free starter membership with Clickbank products
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