Considering monetizing your website? Want to add advertising revenue? Two of many possible choices are Google AdSense and Kontera. Kontera is heavilly promoted by several web marketing ‘gurus’ and Google is well, Google. I tested these two systems to determine: how easy they were to put in place, how well they work, how they affect your traffic and lastly, which is the better revenue generator.
Years ago, I placed Google code into just a few select pages of my website. That placement of less than a dozen pages earns enough each month to cover the cost of web hosting and the domain name. I decided to look into a second possible revenue stream and all the ‘website millionaires’ were recommending the Kontera ad system. Curious about just how well Kontera worked, I signed up, followed Kontera’s instructions and added Kontera’s cut-and-paste JavaScript code to my website. I wanted to see what an average person who doesn’t know anything about marketing, ad placement or web development might earn with the system from Kontera’s system so I pasted the Kontera JavaScript code into ALL 800 pages of the website as suggested. Actually, I use Dreamweaver so I didn’t have to touch all 800 pages, I added it to the template I use and let dreamweaver update all the pages. I left the Google and Kontera ad systems alone for 2 months to monitor for any changes in traffic. The results didn’t suprise me and it was very educational. I discovered something and went surfing the web to find out if my discovery was unique to my website, or was merely the way the advertising systems worked. As you will see, there is a huge difference between the two systems. It was how the advertising systems interpret and utilize the context of the information in your website, not the placement or quantity of ads that had the greatest impact on the revenue generated.
AdSense by Google is a ‘contextual’, pay-per-click advertising system. Google has no mimimum traffic level requirement to sign up. Anybody can place Google AdSense ads in their pages. Google AdSense uses JavaScript to display ads within your page, either as a video, image or text link. Google ads will contain offerings and products similar to the content of the page. Google’s search engine analyzes the content of your page, figures out what your website and your web page is about and places an ad that is appropriate (in context with) your page. The ads take up space on your page, but they don’t obscure your content. The downside is that you do have to know a little about HTML to know where to paste in the Google code as the Google ad only appears in the precise location on the page where you place the JavaScript code. The upside is that you have almost complete control over where the ad appears.