You’ve surely noticed that there is some advertising on Beyond the Rhetoric and while it’s far from providing any sort of full-time income, it’s nice to have a little pocket change at the end of the month to spend on Vietnamese noodles or whatever.
The mistake that many bloggers make is that they sign up for Google AdSense and rely on the big G to provide them with the entirety of their blogging income. That’s a mistake. If you want to make money blogging, you need to diversify.
Down with Kontera ContentLink?
I’ve tried out a few different advertising networks on this blog and some have performed better than others. Kontera ContentLink has been implemented on this blog for some time now and while it’s doing a little better now than when it was first implemented, it’s still making a lot less money that I would have hoped. It’s not as much of an issue anymore, but it was also a downer to discover that Kontera is not compatible with PayPerPost. Some people have also said that the ContentLink ads take away from the overall user experience.
Another issue that has come up is that the ad code for Kontera ContentLink can slow down the loading of a webpage. Shoemoney went to see how much of an effect Kontera has on the loading of a page and found that Kontera loads 68 different things. These loading issues can be terribly problematic.
The Alternative: LinkXL In-Text Advertising
As you may recall, I wrote a review of LinkXL last month on John Chow dot Com and LinkXL appears to be a possible alternative to Kontera ContentLink.
Instead of selling contextual in-text advertising like Kontera, LinkXL sells text links in a marketplace like TLA. The paid links are in-text and the thing is that they are are supposed to leave zero footprint. In this way, the paid links are supposed to look “natural” to search engines. LinkXL publishers can also choose whether to have the links as nofollow or dofollow.
In the review that I did for John Chow dot Com, I said:
Although I realize this may sound a little hypocritical, I personally find that LinkXL is too deceptive for my tastes. How you feel on the matter is up to you.
Time to Make the Switch?
Well, it’s time to be a little hypocritical again, because I am contemplating the possibility of implementing LinkXL on this blog. To maintain the best user experience, I was thinking that I would open LinkXL to older posts in the archive. This way, current readers would not be exposed to the additional ads, whereas visitors coming from search engines and other sources would.
What do you think? Should I ditch Kontera ContentLink and opt for LinkXL instead? The affiliate program is easier with the latter too (as you may have noticed).
I’ve used Kontera before for a bit and didn’t get any results. Then again the traffic at the time might of been the cause of that (little traffic = lower CTR).
I’ve signed up for LinkXL (with your link) and I’ll see how I find them. Doesn’t hurt to try them out right?
An interesting decision to make. Are there are any numbers or reports on different earnings between the two?
You mentioned Kontera is not compatible with PPP, what about LinkXL? Does it circumvent this conflict?
I’ve always felt those pop-up windows of ContentLink ads are irritating, just hoping LinkXL can offer readers an “irritation-free” reading experience.
You might want to get confirmation from IZEA (aka PayPerPost), but I remember them saying that you effectively could not use any other advertising in a paid post under the PPP/IZEA system if the advertising “obscures” the content of the PPP advertiser in any way. This includes inline Google ads as well, from what I remember, but not ads placed in the sidebar or header. In this way, LinkXL is probably not compatible with PPP/IZEA either, because the links are in-text.
In terms of “irritation free”, the LinkXL paid links just look like “natural” links within a post. There is no pop-up.
Actually LinkXL is great. They don’t care if you use them with other Monetization programs such as Kontera, IntelliTXT, AdSense, etc.
Their links are hidden to search engines / humans and the links are placed in the body copy of the page- not sidebar or footer bar. Their links take on the style CSS of the publisher website and either the advertiser or publisher can elect a DoFollow or NoFollow on the links.
All links are monthly rentals and the placement of all links is automated. If you want to change the landing URL mid month you can- all automated.
I, as a SEO love this and I really cannot ask for anything more.
Oh, in regards to the Kontera ads, LinkXL will trump those if purchased by an advertiser- so I run both. If someone wants to buy that work Kontera is utilizing for CPM what do I care- now I have a solid price all month and my renewal rating is at 90%+ for advertisers. It’s good money and growing each month.
Please stop the insanity – I hate the little popups embedded in text like LinkXL and Kontera. The only worse offender is Snap’s SnapShots – for the love of all that is holy, don’t do it.
Google may hate it, but TLA is doing it right!
LinkXL doesn’t have popups. They look like “natural” links.
LinkXL doesn’t use any type of popups. They are just links. I’ve used LinkXL and TLA. LinkXL is better by far! TLA is on it’s way out. LinkXL is on it’s way in.
Both are good and has its own strong points.