Unsatisfied with Infolinks and AdSense, need an alternative for a website

Marketing
1

Hello SitePoint users,

I’ve been reading your reviews for quite a long time, however after a lot of testing I’ve realized that in the end which network best fits you depends on type of traffic I have.

The site generates 35,000 page views every day (the number of visitors increases every month, so it’s under constant expansion). The visitors are coming from all over the world, but the majority is from Europe (Poland, Germany, Finland, France, Netherlands, Belgium – in this order), then from USA, UK, Estonia, etc, and a bit from many other countries. There are around 17,000 unique visitors per month right now.

I’ve tried AdSense, but I have a feeling I’d have more luck with a CPM or InText ad network, but definitely not Infolinks because the results are horrible. They refuse to block the ads from thefreedictionary and infolinks itself. I understand those are their ads, but I’d rather not advertise them on my site than annoy my users and get $0.001 per click (yes, 0.1 cent). They told me visitors from other countries see different ads, but that is not true. I have tested the site with TOR proxy in order to get IPs from USA, UK, NL, etc, there was literally no other ad other than those two extremely low-paying from above. I’ve also asked some of my visitors from those countries and they told me the same.

This is the type of traffic I have (the search engine visitors browse the page quite a lot as well, not only the loyal returning visitors):

28.23% Direct Traffic
36.63% Referring Sites
35.14% Search Engines

P.S. The site is gaming oriented and gets more and more visitors every month as mentioned above.

Any suggestion is welcome, I am getting pretty crazy with networks such as Infolinks, had to remove them because it was nothing but annoyance for the users.

2

Hello Papun

My name is David, I am a Community Manager at Kontera.

If you are seeking a in-content ads provider, let me suggest Kontera and here is why.

Kontera is the exclusive in-content analysis and engagement platform for more than 15,000 web publishers, reaching over 140 million unique users per month.

The reason that Kontera is so effective for so many different people is thanks to our Synapse platform, an algorithm that rather than just scanning for keywords like other in-content companies do, can read your text for actual meaning. This added understanding allows us deliver relevant information and ads directly related to user intent, leading to higher CTR and better CPC.

Another advantage of Kontera is our exclusive ad inventory from some of the biggest brand names in the world including Dunkin’ Donuts, Toyota, UPS, Verizon, American Express, General Mills, Dell, Olay, Yoplait, and many more. These premium, often Rich-Media ads are the most attractive to users, offer the best possible CPC, and are only available to Kontera Publishers.

If you’d like to apply to become a Kontera Publisher, we’re currently offering new publishers a 70% revenue share and a $50 Bonus if you get at least 25,000 U.S. page views during your first 30 days on the network. Kontera also offers a low $50 minimum threshold, good across all of our payout methods.

Thanks
David Stein
Kontera Community Manager

3

Hello Papun,
This is Tammy from Infolinks. First off, I appreciate your challenging post and I’m sorry to hear that you feel that way about our company. But, I must say that I believe you jumped to conclusions very quickly. . .
Infolinks serves thousands of online publishers all around the world with premium advertisers such as: Ebay, Target, Delta and Ford to name a few. We are considered the fastest growing In-Text network and you are welcome to Google us to find that trend.
Yes, from time to time we display default ads in cases where our algorithm hasn’t allocated better ads to display, but almost always every keyword that we double underline get the highest paying ad possible. Please feel free to contact our support team to find out if your website is fully optimized for the best monetization support (at) infolinks (dot) com. We value you and thank you for your feedback.

Regards,

Tammy

4

Hi Tammy,

I have tried Infolinks on both the main site which perhaps should have more textual content, but also on the forum which has much more text. I have not ONCE seen an ad that is not thefreedictionary or infolinks’ “get search results for” regardless from which country the visit originated. This is not an “Infolinks is scam” post, I’m just stating you apparently don’t fit my type of traffic. From what I tested your ads, my average cost per click was 0.2 CENTS, and that’s average, which means some clicks “bring” even less. That’s not OK. I understand that many sites get much better revenue from you, but like I said, you probably do not fit my site and I’m unsatisfied because you don’t want to block those ads. So low CPC is extremely below standards and you should at least allow publishers to block those ads, regardless those ads being your company’s ads. Then I’d probably give Infolinks another try, but I simply don’t want to annoy users from majority of countries regardless what US visitors are supposed to see (hence supposed, US visitors see those 2 types of ads as well). The ads are damaging my traffic and I’ll feel free to say generate no revenue because what I get can’t be called revenue.

David,

I’ve registered on Kontera and will give it a try.

If anyone can suggest me a CPM network that may fit my type of traffic, I’d gladly give it a try.

5

Hi, you can try to monetize your site with affiliate products or CPA. You can find niche products from clickbank or commission junction to promote. CPA are also nice, you can get them with maxbounty or any other cpa networks.

6

I don’t know if you took a look here http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/advertising-sales-affiliate-programs-6/ad-networks-revised-719195.html
My experience: I did not found something better then Adsense.
Affiliate marketing is not in this area.

7

I agree with Shulink. I think you would stand a better chance making the big bucks with CPAs/Affiliate marketing or even better, promote your own products.

9

Thanks for all the suggestions. Last 4-5 days adsense has become more stable after 2-3 months (before earnings used to be drastically different each day) and my earnings have increased, I guess it takes time until it really fits into the website, so I’ll leave it for a few more weeks and if it becomes bad again, I’ll switch to something else.

10

I just want to add linkworth.This network gives you a wide variety of opportunists to make money from a single blog or site.