Kontera - In my opinion, don't bother.....

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   ryankettposted 14 years ago

   Now that I achieve about 12000 page views per day, I felt it a good idea to give Kontera a whirl to see how I got on. Afterall, I have heard that people can achieve $5+ per 10000 page views.
   
   It was a complete failure, although my primary concern was the effect on my AdSense income. I enabled Kontera on all hubs for the duration of March, I will point out that 8000-10000 page views per day was a bit more normal for most of that period.
   
   So I wanted to get my $5 per day, naturally, as long as AdSense didn't bottom out as a result.
   
   I earnt a paltry $6.60 for the whole of March. By the way, I never make less than this on AdSense in ONE DAY now, with the exception of 2 awful days early this month and 1 in March. $6.60 would be a very poor day for me on AdSense, I would at least double this to call a day 'ok', a good day would be at least triple, probably quadruple.
   
   Admittedly my AdSense CTR did not fall, if it did it was insignificant. But 'insignificant' is likely to be at least $6.60 worth of activity, I would only need to lose 22 cents per day for that the effects of Kontera to be officially 'negative'. Whilst 22 cents per day for that much traffic is negative enough.
   
   Despite this, because I didn't realise any effect on my AdSense, I left it running for April. I had a very bad first week of April, although I initially attributed this to bad traffic caused by the Easter Holidays.
   
   Once traffic got back to normal my earnings were still a bit down, about 20%, so I decided to delve a little deeper. I found that my CTR on Hubpages was lower this month than for last month, so out curiosity disabled Kontera on... I think... the 11th April.
   
   In the days since I disabled my AdSense CTR has returned to its normal rate, and as a result of increased traffic, means that I am now earning more than March.
   
   Effectively Kontera reduced my AdSense earnings by a minimum of 20%, probably - in relation to traffic increases - anything up to 35%.
   
   In my humble opinion, others may disagree, Kontera is not only a waste of time but also a liability. My Kontera earnings for the first 11 days of April were about $2 by the way (even less than March).
   
   So I have effectively been paid (well, I wont get paid now of course, below threshold unless I keep it on) $8.60 to give up 20%+ of my AdSense earnings.
   
   I should probably have written a hub about this, but I would encourage any Kontera user to see what happens if you take it off for 14 days.
   
   Anyway, must shoot off to work, take care everybody....

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      LarasMamaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I was thinking that maybe if I used adsense, kontera and amazon on my hubs I might make more so I read some hubs on the topic - I didn't like what I found. I'd much rather keep my adsense.

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         ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Dont let that stop you from using Amazon though, I consider Amazon to be fully worthwhile.

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   sunforgedposted 14 years ago

   w/o a long response - I concur, kontera dont bother, i tested it long ago on my sites and saw no benefits.
   
   I have insulted Kontera everytime Ive seen it mentioned in the forums.
   
   Kontera- you suck! and I think Ryans test and description will now be my favorite thing to link to when I see the vile name of "Kontera" mentioned here

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I might stick this all in a hub some time, so you can link to that
      
      I would say one thing in defence of Kontera, there is a hubber who sometimes makes in region of $200 a month from Kontera at certain times of the year. I won't name as that could be inappropriate.
      
      The problem is that there is no insight into how to crack it. If there was a "Kontera Keyword Tool" then great, I'd find my Kontera optimised niches, but there isn't.... I don't want Kontera to pay me 2 cents for a click on a hubpage which can earn me $2 a click from another source.
      
      That really is the reason that it sucks. I got a 50 cents click one day from Kontera, but no way of knowing how the hell it happened or what hub it came from, if I did.... and the hub was a non-earner from other sources.... then I would leave it on that hub.
      
      Until the "kontera keyword tool" comes out, its not worth it, in fact as you lose money.... its almost fraud!

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      RKHenryposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I'm with you here, it's bogus.

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   viryaboposted 14 years ago

   When i first started out at HP, i had kontera enabled and for over a month, i didn't earn a dime from Adsense, and maybe about 5 cents from kontera.
   
   Then i read somewhere on the forums (cant remember which one), that kontera is 'full of nonsense', so i disabled it. Lo and behold, i earned my first £0.16p within 24hrs. And subsequently started earning regularly.
   
   So i totally agree that 'kontera sucks'.

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   Anamika Sposted 14 years ago

   You are not all alone. Kontera was a disappointment for me too. I saw a drop in my adsense earniings.

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   CrystalStarWomanposted 14 years ago

   I have been thinking about disabling Kontera on here and my blog for quite some time and now, after reading all the comments above I have just done exactly that! Thanks guys

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   rmcrayneposted 14 years ago

   Dag!  I just enabled Kontera last night to 3 of my hub groupings.  Total coincidence I'm sure, but interesting:  I have 20 red up arrows right now, with 14 of them hubs I enabled Kontera on.

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   IzzyMposted 14 years ago

   Yeah me too. I had kontera enabled on all my hubs, but my total earnings from them amounts to something like 50cents!!
   So a while back I disabled it from all new hubs, but it is still on some of my hubs which I make a point of disabling if I ever have reason to look at them. My adsense earnings are starting to climb, but I don't want them held back and I'm not convinced kontera didn't hold them back in the past.
   Thanks for posting this Ryan. I would have thought it might work at the page views you get, but I wouldn't have known it doesn't if you hadn't posted.

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   rmcrayneposted 14 years ago

   I just applied for Kontera a week ago, because I signed up for several bookmarking sites, including Snipsly, which uses Kontera.  I think I recall the HP instructions/help files saying Kontera did not favor the "enable on all hubs" approach.  I selected a few of my fun groupings, but definitely nothing health related. Didn't want a "junk" ad to appear on a health topic and a reader to misconstrue that I was endorsing it.

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   Money Glitchposted 14 years ago

   Thanks for sharing such valuable info, ryankett!
   Personally, I've never liked the idea of dedicating the entire hub/hubs to Kontera, so I've never attempted to do so. With this info I definitely will NOT be using Kontera 'cause I'm no where near 10,000 page views a day. Probably wouldn't make 5 cents a day. Thanks again.

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    Sally's Troveposted 14 years ago

    Kontera is simply annoying to a reader. If a reader happens to accidentally mouse over Kontera-enhanced text, up comes a pop-up with garbage in it.  I think Kontera fails because readers hate it. I wonder when the whole company/concept will fail?

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       BumblePagesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       I guess advertisers like it... I dont think i have ever clicked through to a kontera ad on purpose.

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          Sally's Troveposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          Exactly.

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    Paradise7posted 14 years ago

    I agree so much with Sally.  It's annoying to the reader...I wouldn't sacrifice the reader's attention, anyway, if I cared about what I wrote about...

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    TerryGlposted 14 years ago

    It has been my experience that Kontera is brilliant. Let me explain.
    
    I joined this program many years ago, before Hubpages started with this service. I use Kontera two places only. One is here on hubpages, about 33% and the other is on Search Warp.
    
    Search Warp for those who do not know is an article directory (http://searchwarp.com). It is my mainstay in article marketing as it gets me more views then Ezine Articles funnily enough.
    
    Now on Search Warp, my Kontera ads are showing throughout my articles, there are a quite few of them, and I enjoy a payment through PayPal every month, if not every second month.
    
    Search Warp pays an extra 20% when your code is shown on their pages. It must be a deal they made with Kontera. My ctr's are often quite healthy.
    
    If your not satisified with the program here on HP then try adding your code to Search Warp as well.

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       ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       I would happily give Kontera a fair chance on this 'searchwarp' site that you are on about, but doing so isn't going to increase my Kontera earnings on hubpages is it? I make 20-35% more on AdSense here without it, and my AdSense earnings really aren't that shoddy.... the equivalent of perhaps 15 Kontera payouts per month, if the payout is $25?
       
       So if I earnt one Kontera payout per month on Hubpages, I would lose the equivalent of 3 or 4 Kontera payouts from AdSense. That is putting aside the fact that I was actually losing the equivalent of 3 or 4 Kontera payouts and actually earning about 25% of a Kontera payout. I don't think that anybody could really argue with my decision when I put it like that.

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    DGS Choudhuryposted 14 years ago

    thanks for the heads up! Kontera ads are not showing on my hu8bs yet. Maybe I have to wait till they accept me! I think its not worth taking the risk of dropping your adsense income!
    Kontera would be 'ok' for those who have been banned by adsense! They still get like...a few peanuts!!

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    ethel smithposted 14 years ago

    My Kontera has been a bit pathetic. I mught try a spell without it. Especially if its affecting adsense

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    tobey100posted 14 years ago

    The only way I can express how I feel about kontera results....
    
    

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    Shil1978posted 14 years ago

    Agree - just not worth it!

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    rmcrayneposted 14 years ago

    Either Kontera did negatively impact my AdSense earnings, or this is one giant coincidence.  But the drop in AdSense was not immediate. 
    
    I started my AdSense acct about mid-Nov.  My CTR and earnings have steadily climbed each month until now. 
    
    I put Kontera on my music, gift and recipe hubs on 16 April.  That amounted to 40 hubs, about 1/3 of my total at that time.  April AdSense earnings remained strong.  Early May dropped off a tad.  The last 10 days tanked. 
    
    I ran a few stats.  I compared the last 30 days (27 Apr-26 May) with the 30 days before that (27 Mar-26 Apr).  My earnings are down by 42%!  My CTR is down 18%. 
    
    I was actually thinking about emailing HP staff to take a look at my account and see if my AdSense somehow got reduced from the 60% show time or something.  Then I remembered this thread.  I’ve definitely disabled Kontera for HubPages.

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18. 95

    rmcrayneposted 14 years ago

    Since I turned off Kontera tonight, my hub scores dropped.  Usually I have several starting at 97-99, and then down from there.  Now I have one at 95, then one at 94, one at 93…  My score distribution has not been this low in months.  Lots of coincidence.

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    DanPowersposted 14 years ago

    I've turned off Kontera as well. They were giving my $0.01 for clicks Adsense would pay $0.40 for.
    
    I like their stats page though, and maybe it's a great place to advertise products, $0.01 clicks are a bargain.

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