What is Kontera?

Kontera is a company that provides web publishers with a method of earning online income from advertising. Kontera provides web publishers with special affiliate links that are tied to certain keywords found on your site. Kontera describes themselves this way on their website:

“Kontera’s ContentLink In-Text Website Advertising Solution lets you monetize your content in real-time, enabling an incremental increase in ad revenue by providing a new source of untapped ad inventory. ContentLinks also enhances user experience by serving relevant and informational ads that match the user’s interest and frame of mind.

ContentLinks are contextually relevant ads and information units dynamically linked to keywords on a publisher’s web page. The keyword is linked to the most relevant and highest paying text ad from among Kontera’s thousands of advertisers.

These ContextLinks appear as links on your page with small ‘pop-up’ bubbles that appear when you hover your mouse over them.”

This is what it looks like:

Visitors click on the pop-up and you earn on a CPC basis. So for example, let’s say your blog post is about Apple iMac computers. Kontera might highlight the words “Apple” and “computers” in your post. If visitors to your website wanted to know more about these topics, all they would have to do is bring the mouse over to the highlighted word and an advertisement bubble or pop-up would appear. If the reader found that ad to be interesting and decided to click through, you would earn online income in the form of a commission.

How Kontera Works

Kontera is very easy to use. Once you have been admitted into their program, Kontera will provide you with a snippet code for your sites. You’ll simply need to install this code on every page of your website and voila! A lot of the words on your website will be converted into contextual advertising links. Once a visitor clicks on one of these links, you will get paid, earning yourself more online income.

Why use Kontera?

If you’re looking for a good way to increase your online income, Kontera may be the solution. Kontera’s ContentLink can be a great source of additional online income and can be used along with Adsense and other advertising programs you may be using, without taking any extra space on your web page. Even though Kontera is a contextual advertising system you can use it on the same pages as Adsense. The Adsense TOS has recently been updated/clarified and states that you can use competing contextually-based advertising systems as long as they do not have the same “look and feel” as Adsense. Kontera is also really easy to set up, all you have to do is insert their code on all the pages of your site and you are all set.

My Thoughts on Using Kontera for More Online Income

I find that Kontera is a very easy program to run. Like I mentioned above, I totally forgot that I was even enrolled in this program, and only remembered after I received their check. I also found that it did not conflict with my Adsense earnings. I will definitely continue to use their program and will experiment with adding it on more of my smaller sites.

This is what I like about Kontera:

• ContentLink is very easy to install. Installing the code on your site will only take a few minutes.
• It’s a legitimate program that pays on time.
• Kontera ContentLinks don’t take up additional ad space.
• Kontera doesn’t conflict with Google Adsense, an advertising network that you are probably already running on your website. This means that you can use Kontera alongside Adsense, which gives you another way to monetize your website. Kontera is also a reliable option for webmasters who do not like  to use blocks of Adsense-style contextual ads on their website.

This is what I don’t like about Kontera:

• I find the pop up ad to be annoying. If I’m annoyed I’m sure that some of my readers are annoyed as well.
• To add more websites to Kontera’s contextual advertising network, you have to email them with a list of the domains you would like added to your account.
• Kontera script slows down loading time for web pages.
• Reporting is not that great.
• $100 minimum payout. While this doesn’t really bother me much, people who don’t receive a lot of traffic to their sites, may wind up waiting a long time before they get paid.

Like anything else, your earning potential largely depends on how much traffic you receive at your site. Higher traffic will inevitably lead to stronger CTR and earnings. Traffic will also compensate for the possibility of getting low paying keywords which can give you less than $0.07 per click. The more traffic you receive, the more online income you will earn.

So how do I get started?

To get started, simply fill out the publisher application form on the Kontera website. There are, however, some qualifications that need to be met in order to be accepted as a publisher

To qualify for ContentLink, your site must:

• Use English as the primary language
• Be content-rich with more than 50 words per page on the majority of the site
• Contain original content, not repurposed content that is owned and created by the sites themselves
• Not be used for domain parking
• Be a live site and not “under construction”

Once your site is approved, you will receive an email containing a JavaScript code snippet that must be embedded into the footer of your website.

If you want to read more about Kontera, or to sign up, go to www.kontera.com

Fast forward to 2009, and I can happily say that I still sell stuff on eBay.  I introduced my husband to eBay after we got married in 2004, and he wound up leaving his job in 2007 to pursue selling on eBay full time.  We are now eBay Powersellers, and our online income has risen dramatically with sales of over $1000 every month.

There is definitely money to be made on eBay, but it is definitely not a get rich quick scheme.  There is a lot of work involved in selling on eBay.  First, you have to identify and purchase products that are in demand that can be purchased at a deep discount and resold for a profit.  Next you have to take photographs of each item you intend to sell.  Then you have to create an ad listing for it on eBay.  Finally, when the item sells, you have to pack it up and mail it out to the buyer. You also have to be detailed oriented as you will have to keep track of: your inventory, payments, and shipping log.

It’s not for the faint of heart, but I would definitely recommend eBay as a great way to make money online.  I always advise people to start slow, just like I did, by finding stuff around the house that you no longer need and take it from there.  Once you learn the ropes, it’s all up to you to take it to the next level, so if you haven’t already, sign up for eBay today!

I plan on providing lots of tips and tricks on selling on eBay to improve your online income cashflow, so please stay tuned!  And let me know if you have any specific questions on selling on eBay.