Note: This review is not paid for. Just my honest opinion of the intext advertising solution provided by Kontera.

This is Part 3 in my case study on in text advertising. Be sure to InfoLinks Review for Part 1 and my Vibrant Media Review from Part 2.

Kontera is the third in text advertising solution I've tested out with InfoLinks and Vibrant Media being the previous two. Kontera is a company I covered way back in 2008 but I was running the ads on a different website. A lot can change in 2 years so I wanted to try them out again. The data below is from the same website that I ran InfoLinks and Vibrant Media on in the previous two case studies so that I could show an apples to apples data comparison between the in text advertising solutions.

Income Results for 10 Days:

Yes you read that heading right. I ran the ads from Kontera for only 10 days and you can see why below:

Yah, that isn't a misprint. From 177 clicks I earned only $4.38! It's laughable how bad that is. After discovering how well Vibrant Media was performing on my test technology blog I had to stop the test short with only 10 days of data and switch back to them. Funny enough when I switched the ad code back to Vibrant Media in the afternoon on April 12th I still earned $5.48! I earned more money from an afternoon with Vibrant Media than I did over a 10 day period with Kontera. Of the three in text advertising solutions I've tested out Kontera has performed the worst.

Kontera Ad Targeting:

Kontera's ad targeting is very similar to InfoLinks - terrible. Although I never found any missing images (I couldn't find any with images either) I saw numerous completely irrelevant ads. Just look at the one above where 'Call of Duty' serves an advertisement for used Honda Civic Coupes - wtf? This was just one of many perfect examples of terrible ad results.

Wrap Up:

Kontera is so bad I'm not even going to suggest you try them out. It's astonishing just how bad they are. I don't know how else I can convey how terrible they are than by restating how bad they are three times in a row. Of the three in text advertising solutions I've tested out so far Kontera earned the least which is the most important factor in my mind. The next key factor is ad relevance / targeting which they are about on par with Infolinks, but meanwhile Vibrant Media is way ahead of the other two providers in this area and income earning potential.

In my past reviews I suggested that you test out each provider to see what works best for you, but with Kontera I suggest you don't waste the time. If you do try them only run their ads for a week at most. Perhaps they'll work better for you, but in my case they were the worst of all. No wonder they have the best affiliate program of the three solutions.

If after reading this review you still want to try out their in text advertising solution you can do so by visiting Kontera.com to sign up.
(Yah, I'm going to make you type that into the browser yourself)

UPDATE 5/2/2010: A Kontera rep contacted me and he's told me that the results I've seen below are skewed because my website was not receiving ads from their premium partners due to a technical error. I've agreed to retest their solution and in the past few days I'm seeing much higher revenues (better than Infolinks but still lower than Vibrant). There is not enough data for a conclusive decision but I will post an updated review at a later date.

I've got data from another network I want to share as the fourth and final part of this case study, but their code is causing issues with the free WordPress theme I'm using on my test technology blog so there is a chance I may have to leave them out. If you like seeing more real life case studies from someone earning a living online than you should subscribe to my blog.

Has anyone had better luck with Kontera than me? Are there any other in text advertising solutions I should document on this blog that I may have missed?

This is part 3 in my case study on the Five Figure Niche Network. I will cover how to outsource content creation in this segment. Be sure to read Part 1 Here and Part 2 Here.

Now that I've purchased some domain names after researching them appropriately it's time to move onto the next stage of my niche network five figure case study - content creation.

Why Outsource Content Creation?

The primary reason why I have started to outsource content creation comes down to the time I have available in the day to work. It's convenient to simply pay for someone else to write the content, but I also have domain names in niches where I know little about the subject matter or where I have no interest in learning enough to write about them. These make ideal candidates for outsourcing, especially when I am trying to target search traffic only. I believe the requirement for quality writing is only truly needed when you're trying to build a website as an authority AND drive repeat readers. i.e. I would never outsource articles on this blog because I believe that I'm speaking from a position of authority (well at least some authority lol) and the people that re read my blog every time I post a new article do so because they want to hear the unique perspective I can put into the articles that I write. But if you're searching for information on cotton candy machines do you really need to have a leading authority and unique voice behind the writing to get the information that you need? No of course not, and this is precisely why I've gone the outsourcing route for content creation on my niche websites.

Where I Outsource Content Creation

I'm still in the process of evaluating multiple methods of outsourced content creation, but I started first with TextBroker.com. I paid for 6 articles to go on 2 of the mini sites I was building out. Text Broker allows you to pick the quality of writing that you want and pay accordingly so I decided to go with one step up from the good which comes out to $1.60 per 100 words. I placed the order Friday night before I left for a spring snowboarding trip that would keep me away from my computer on Saturday and Sunday. When I got on my computer Monday I had all 6 articles complete and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Some of the writing I thought was better than mine lol (note to self: never become a freelance writer) and I didn't have to send any back for revisions. This could be a fluke because other reviews of their service I've read required revisions but the articles I got were just what I needed.

The other two places I would suggest looking for inexpensive writers include Odesk.com and Elance.com (I'll do follow up posts if I find one works better than the other). Finally, the more risky but potentially more rewarding place to look is on Craigslist Manilla and try to hire full time workers from the Philippines. If you go this route you should approach it like a traditional job application process to weed out the least qualified cantidates. I have a few internet marketing friends that have had success with this method although I've yet to try it out (don't have enough workload yet).

Closing Thoughts

I believe content creation has slowly transitioned towards a commodity especially where the web property the content is being published to is targeting search traffic. Just look at eHow, Mahalo etc. all of these websites have terrible content for the most part but they don't care because if you search for a phrase in Google there is a good chance you might land one one of these content farms. I still believe quality content has a place online, but if you're looking to build out minimal effort niche websites I wouldn't bother writing the content yourself.

In the next update to this case study I will look at link building strategies and monetization methods. If you like what you've seen so far be sure to subscribe to my blog.

Note: This review is not paid for. Just my honest opinion of the intext advertising solution provided by Vibrant Media.

This Part 2 in my case study on in text advertising. Be sure to read my review of InfoLinks in Part 1.

Like InfoLinks, Vibrant Media is also a provider of in text advertising and the subject of this review. I ran VibrantMedia text link ads on my test technology related website for one month. This is the same website that I ran InfoLinks on so that I could show an apples to apples data comparison between the two in text advertising solutions.

Income Results for 1 Month:

In 31 days I was able to earn $134.34 which translates to about $4.33 per day. This is nearly quadruple what I earned running ads on the exact same blog with InfoLinks.

Vibrant Media does not offer data for impressions so if you really wanted to calculate an eCPM the best way to do that would be to simply use your data from Google Analytics or another tracking software. I compared the traffic from the previous months to what I had in March and the difference was negligible which further solidifies Vibrant Media's dominance over InfoLinks in terms of payout.

Vibrant Media Ad Targeting is Great:

Contrary to InfoLinks, Vibrant Media's ad targeting is much better. This ad was displayed after hovering over the word Dell. I never found an ad without a picture or with a worthless description. I did find a few odd ads for a Verizon small business pack under words that I didn't think were related, but that was about the only result I would consider poor.

Wrap Up:

Vibrant Media is the clear winner so far in my case study on in text advertising. I earned nearly 4 times as much running their ads over what I did from InfoLinks. Their ad targeting is better as well as the actual ads that they display. I'm sure the overall quality of their network is due to their size in the marketplace (I believe they're the largest... someone correct me if I'm wrong).

I highly suggest that if you're looking at using in text advertising on your blog or website that you give Vibrant Media a look. I suggest you test all networks to see what works best for you, but the fact that they performed nearly 4 times better than Info Links makes me think their dominance would continue across all niches.

Sign up for Vibrant Media here
(Note, the above is not an affiliate link. If you think the research I performed is worth rewarding me than you can sign up for Vibrant Media using this link. Include MakeMoneyontheInternet.com in the "other notes" section and I'll get credit for the referral)

I've got data from Kontera to share later this month and I have one other network I've been testing out that I will include in this case study as well. If you like seeing more real life case studies from someone earning a living online than you should subscribe to my blog.

What do you think of this case study so far? Is this stuff valuable or would you prefer to read some list on '7 Steps to get more followers on Twitter' where I could regurgitate info found from around the web?

I've been trying to make money as an entrepreneur for most of my life now ever since my first adventure in junior high school when I began buying Pokemon card packs and reselling them on eBay to people for triple the $3 price I paid (see my about me story). My best sale was for $25 on a pack I bought for $3 at the card game store. I still can't comprehend how that worked but knowing there were so many idiots out in the world struck a chord deep within me - How do I extract as much money from idiots willing to part with their money? And with this guiding principle in hand I set out on more money making journeys. Not everything has worked out as well as I had anticipated and what follows are my top 7 worst websites ever created:

1. Investing in Drugstore.com stock

Like George from Seinfeld I set out to "make a big score," but not by investing my library money in art - instead I reinvested the money I made selling Pokemon card packs in Drugstore.com stock at $43 a share. I lost a couple thousand dollars when the stock fell to a few dollars a share as the rest of the internet stocks crashed. While this isn't quite a website I created in an attempt to make money online it is what helped to lead me down the path to try earning money online by making websites and not investing in them on the stock market.

Lesson 1: Don't invest in the stock market unless you know what you're doing. Extra Credit: If everyone in the country is talking about how you should jump in on a trend right now you know the bubble is about to burst.

More failures and lessons learned are continued after the break...

2. ClassicNES.com

This was the very first website I tried creating back in 2003. It's done entirely in HTML and tables. This is the best version of it so you can see the crap I created. I learned a valuable lesson with this website because not only was it my first attempt to make a website I also bought the hosting for 12 months and got the domain for free. Little did I know that when the hosting company fell apart 9 months later they took my domain name as well.

Lesson 2: Buy domain names through a reputable company apart from your web hosting provider.

3. NESGaming.com

After losing my ClassicNES.com domain name I decided to buy another one and try again with NESgaming.com. I didn't learn my lesson with improving the quality when I first rebuilt the site as evidenced by this old version. Yes if you wait long enough for it to load that's a character from Mike Tyson's punchout saying "When I'm not tanning I'm at NESgaming.com." Soon after this fail I decided that I needed to improve the quality of the website. I moved to vBulletin and paid for a professional skin and the result was this. After about 6 months (maybe more) I realized that this was not going to be the best way to make money online.

Lesson 3: In order to make money online a website needs to look better than a circa 1997 GeoCities web page. Extra Credit: People don't care enough about an old video game system from the 1980's to bother talking about it in a forum.

4. GamingVidz.com

Based on the lessons I learned from my first website creations I decided that I should try a forum in an area that would be ever changing - current generation video games. As I've shared in my about page this was one of the first websites where I got a taste for earning money online, but even at it's height of 500,000 page views a month I was only earning $500 a month at best. I also spent a lot of time every day managing the forum and dealing with trouble makers.

Lesson 4: If I'm not earning enough money from one website, then I should start more websites.

5. WorldofWarcraftBoard.com, XboxLiveArcade.com, HaloBoards.com

Even though I was only earning $500 per month at the peak of popularity for GamingVidz.com I decided what I needed was more video game forums so that I could earn more money on other websites at the same time. So I set out to create more video game forums. The problem I faced now was that managing even more forums in a niche where members are always getting into arguments and causing trouble due to their maturity level. So instead of making more money I just buckled under the work load and the communities slowly suffered.

Lesson 5: More websites is not always the answer, especially if you stay in the same general low paying niche.

6. BestArcade.info

Not content to try earning money off video game forums I decided to branch out and try a video game arcade. I liked the idea of setting up the website once and the only time I'd have to spend on it later would be promotion. The problems I faced were all too familiar - video games are a low paying niche and despite the fact that I didn't have to work on the website daily it still didn't earn enough money to warrant the effort.

Lesson 6: As much as I love video games, it's time to branch outside of my bubble if I want to try and earn a solid income online

7. ChrisGuthrie.net

After spending a lot of time researching how to make money online I came across the internet marketing niche. I figured that although I wasn't making a full time income online I have a lot of experience building websites and trying to earn money from them that I should start a blog about my adventures of earning money online. I spent about a year and a half blogging on this domain name and never earned more than a few hundred dollars per month.

Lesson 7: Just because someone else can make money blogging about how much money they make online doesn't mean I can.

Conclusion:

Most of my early time spent building websites was more about having fun and learning. As this desire for having fun transitioned towards making money I took too long to venture out of the comfort of the over saturated niche I knew so well: video games. It wasn't until a year of blogging on ChrisGuthrie.net later that I started truly branching out into other niches on the web and only after doing that I started earning good money. As the money I earned from these websites grew I started to blog less and less on ChrisGuthrie.net. Then in late 2009 after losing my job and already earning enough money from my websites to support my family, I decided that I wanted to return to the internet marketing niche offering the perspective of a full time internet entrepreneur so that I could share all that I learned. So I bought a new domain name that more accurately described the purpose of my blog and started writing again in early 2010. My goal for this blog is to cut through the misinformation that is spread all over the web on how to make money online and to teach you through examples how I make several thousand dollars per month. I hope you come along for the journey.

Note: This review is not paid for. Just my honest and - in this situation - harsh opinion of an intext advertising solution.

InfoLinks is an in text advertising solution, similar to what Kontera and Vibrant Media provide. In fact, I shared my experiences using both of their solutions on my old video game forum GamingVidz.com back in 2008 here: Kontera vs Vibrant Media (spoiler alert: they both performed miserably). Last year I decided to give in text advertising another go around and decided to go with InfoLinks this time. I then proceeded to install the code on a limited number of my websites / blogs. This time I decided to steer clear of using them on forums, which are notorious for performing poorly with advertisements.

Income Results for 9 months:

For the past 9 months I've used them on a technology blog where I earned $328.81 off of 414,525 impressions (about $1.20 per day):

My average eCPM was $.75 and I'll be the first to admit that I'd like to see a MUCH higher number than that for something as intrusive as in text advertising; however, in text advertising solutions like InfoLinks are designed to be a supplemental income stream - not the primary solution. Of the three I've tried InfoLinks has shown the most promise, but I'm basing this on my experience with Kontera and Vibrant Media from back in 2008. So I'm currently in the process of reusing both of their intext advertising solutions for a month each on the same website to provide you an apples to apples data comparison (I'll do a follow up post when I have enough data to show solid numbers).

InfoLinks ad targeting and display is very poor

InfoLinks appears to have a lot of directories / small search engines that advertise with them because I'll frequently see ads that simply use the double underlined ads like this: "Search insert advertising phrase on randomdirectory.org" and there are often several times that the images on the ads are not displayed for ads either. I'm sure if they improved the quality of the ads that were displayed through improved tracking and acquired more premium advertisers the publishers would make more money and in turn use the ads on more of their websites.

Wrap Up

InfoLinks is a decent supplemental income stream but it should never be used as the only way to make money from a website. I suggest you use it more on informational style websites and less on websites that do well with affiliate marketing. I believe the clicks on websites that do well with affiliate marketing are worth more than websites more focused on providing information. You don't want a potential $25 commission leaving on a 5 cent intrusive click. In fact, I suggest that you analyze your bounce rate after implementing an in text advertising solution to see if it drops. Even if it drops a couple percentage points it's probably not worth using an in text advertising solution. I'll provide more data from other in text advertising solutions before I crown a champion, but so far InfoLinks has performed better than the dismal displays I saw by Kontera and Vibrant Media back in 2008.

What experiences have you had with in text advertising?

Note: I wrote this review at the end of February and already have nearly a full month's data using Vibrant Media's in text advertising solution. I'll share my results with them in the beginning of April and then in May I'll share stats from Kontera. If you'd like to see more case studies like this be sure to subscribe to my blog.

This is part 2 in my case study on the Five Figure Niche Network. I will cover how I research and buy keyword domain names in this segment. See Part 1 Here.

Finding the right domain name:

In my attempt to build a network of niche websites that earn five figures of income every month I need to first start by buying domain names based on specific niches I wish to build websites around. I prefer to only choose topics that I care to research and write about so that if I decided to write the content it will be more enjoyable; however, this time around I want to try and outsource most of the writing (which I'll cover in a later part to the case study). In either case I prefer to buy keyword rich domain names if I'm going for niche websites as my goal will be to rank for the keyword that is within the domain name. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

If I want to build a website that focused on Cotton Candy Machines what do you think would be the best domain name to build a website on for that topic? How about cottoncandymachines.com or cottoncandymachine.com? Duh. The reason for this strategy is because search engines give a ranking bonus to exact match keyword domains (Main TLD's only so don't go buy .mobi and other worthless crap extensions). Now before I get too far ahead of myself let me determine first if people on the internet actually search for cotton candy machines to see if it's a worthwhile niche to pursue...

Keyword Research:

There are paid tools available that offer more advanced features for determining search traffic, but I because I got my start using the free ones I'll show you those instead:

The first one is offered by SEOBook which is run by Aaron Wall and found here. He has a paid monthly training program which I've been a member of in the past, but fortunately his keyword research tool is still free (you do need to register for a free account though)

So what I'd search is simply "Cotton Candy Machine" and "Cotton Candy Machines". The number of estimated searches for these terms is shown below:

I like to go after keywords that are searched around 100 times per day or more (when possible) so based on the data things look good so far. I then like to use Google's free Adwords tool next to ensure the numbers appear to be around the same level and just to get an extra data point:

Make sure you use the drop down menu on the right and change it from the default "Broad" to "Exact" as this will give you an accurate estimate of the number of people who searched that exact phrase which is all I want to know at this stage of my research.

Looking at the above data it should be obvious which is the better domain to go after - the singular phrase Cotton Candy Machine because there is considerably more search traffic for that term. Again, before we get too far ahead of ourselves let's look at the competition for that keyword. The trick here is to go after keywords that not only receive a lot of search volume, but that also happen to have very little competition for (this is often a difficult thing to do).

Keyword Competition Analysis

Doing a quick search of Cotton Candy Machine on Google yields the following results:

(Click to expand)

These are your primary competitors. Now what you need to do is determine how many links these websites have. This will give you a better understanding of how many links you'd need to get pointing to your cotton candy machine website to outrank them (just remember it isn't an exact science). I'll turn to SEOBook again and this time I use the SEO for Firefox plugin.

CottonCandyExpress.com is the current #1 rank so I simply install the plugin, restart firefox and visit the domain name. Here is the data we find:

So they have only 379 links via Yahoo's site explorer, 3 DMOZ Links and 1 Yahoo Directory link which isn't that many links. The domain and presumably the website have been around since 2005 (based on the copyright info in the footer). I believe Google has established a lot of trust for the domain name, but the number of links pointing to the site is so low it is possible that I could outrank them. Keep in mind that any domain name I buy may be put into the sandbox by Google temporarily which means it would be unable to rank for any keyword until after a period of time lapses (many people believe 6 months). So what I'm saying is that even if I were able to buy cottoncandymachine.com which was also registered in 2005, it could still take some time before ranking for that keyword. Well, now that we have researched a keyword determined the competition isn't insurmountable let's go back and see if we can buy it.

Acquiring the domain name:

As expected the domain name cottoncandymachine.com is already registered. Sadly (for myself and you) most keyword laden domain names with any substantial search traffic have all already been registered years ago by visionary domainers. After searching the WHOIS information I can see cottoncandymachine.com is registered to a business called Name Administration based in the Cayman Islands. Based on my domain hunting experience I know this is a domain name owned by the legendary domain name investor Frank Schilling who happens to be notorious for not selling domain names unless he is given an excellent deal. Even then good luck ever getting in touch with someone at Name Administration unless you lead with an email offer of a very high price. So in this case we'd need to look at the .net or .org extension instead or perhaps go for another cotton candy related keyword.

Wrap Up:

So as you can tell there are a variety of steps I like to take while researching keyword domain names to buy. Some people prefer to buy brandable domain names like cottoncandyexpress.com instead and build a business from there. I don't think this is a bad strategy and in fact in the long run it can be better, but just remember it is more difficult to rank for a keyword that isn't your domain name than it is to rank for a keyword that matches the domain name i.e. cottoncandymachine.com. So if you're trying to build a ton of niche websites like me then the more help you can get from a quality domain name the better. The downside obviously is that as I mentioned before many of these keyword rich search phrase domain names are already registered, so you have to be prepared to pay out good money to domainers for these types of names.

What do you think of my tips for researching domain names?

This is just the second of many parts to come. If you learned something be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed (or email updates) and you should also follow me on Twitter. Also, quick reminder to follow me on Twitter because I'll be posting the contest giveaway for the PHPzon plugin shortly.

Over the past several months I've been acquiring a plethora of domain names with the intent to develop them into various niche websites. During the course of this domain acquisition period I never focused on buying names for one specific niche - instead I just focused on buying names when I knew I was getting a good deal AND when I could see there wasn't too much competition. What I want to do is to build a network of highly targeted niche websites that are able to collectively generate over $10,000 per month on a consistent basis. I believe this will be a very difficult goal to accomplish, but if I can break $10,000 per month with websites I rarely need to update (or never) it will be another way to diversify my earnings and generate more much needed capital to further grow my business.

I have several parts planned for this case study and will share details as to how I buy domain names, pick niches, build websites, outsource content creation, do link building etc. along with the challenges I've faced with each facet of building a profitable website. I will also share income figures and more specifics so that it will help provide some context into what I'm doing. Moving forward as the income level for my niche network of websites begins to grow I'll separate it out on my monthly income reports so that you can see what income is generated from the blogs, websites, forums etc. that I actively work on and contrast that with the more passive income.

I'll have the first part of the case study next week which will cover domain acquisition strategies. Hopefully this sounds good to you, and if it does be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed (or email updates) and you should also follow me on Twitter

In early January I shared that moving forward in the new year I was moving domains from ChrisGuthrie.net to my new home here at MakeMoneyontheInternet.com. Some people are afraid to move their blogs because they aren't aware of what might happen to their rankings and traffic. If you garner significant amounts of search traffic to your blog it may not be worth the risk to move (feel free to contact me email and I'd be happy to share some advice if you're contemplating a move). In my case the search traffic I was receiving was from just a few key phrases and people searching for the name Chris Guthrie which is not searched very often so I decided it would be worth it to make the move to my $X,XXX domain purchase of MakeMoneyontheInternet.com.

Results:

I was very surprised that after only 2 weeks my rankings in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) had entirely recovered for the few keywords I ranked for such as my name Chris Guthrie and free private registration. I meant to write this post earlier in fact, but I wanted to be sure the rankings had fully recovered before sharing the data that my blog move did in fact work:

It's laughable that I couldn't surpass the Vanderbilt professor Chris Guthrie who ranked first, but 3rd position was the highest I was at before. It's also funny that about the only other keyword phrase I ranked for was free private registration, which was based on an article I wrote showing a loophole in GoDaddy's private registration system. I've already recovered my 1st place position for that keyword:

I had just a few keyword phrases I was watching, but the fact that I've already recovered for these two keyword phrases should indicate the move went smoothly in Google's eyes. Keep in mind I used a different computer / browser to search these phrases to avoid Google's personalized results but I may still be seeing different data than you are so feel free to comment below on what you see.

How I Moved My Blog:

I mentioned this in the first post, but for the lazy readers I'll just tell you here to save you the click. Basically I just followed the steps on this excellent guide by Yoast; however, the 8th step didn't work in his guide for me so I used the .htaccess code mentioned in this guide to complete the move.

Note: You can't change the URL of your Feedburner address. If you do, that requires everyone to resubscribe to your blog which obviously would be one of the worst things you could possibly do. So that's why my Feedburner URL is still like this.

Wrap Up:

Have you ever moved a blog before? If so how did you do it and how long did it take for you to regain your place in the SERPs? I'll be sharing more case studies on blogs, forums and websites I own so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed (or RSS email) and follow me on Twitter