The move was not easy at the beginning as we strive to have long term relationships with Internet advertising providers even if it means to miss opportunities. We did ran into some invoicing issues with Vibrant Media which definitely fueled the decision to move. We were contacted by one of Kontera’s business development managers who convinced us that Kontera would be able to monetize the website better which essentially meant more revenue for us.

We did not run blindly into this though as we have been burned quite a few times in the past by Internet advertising agencies who claimed to up the revenue but failed to deliver. Kontera was easy to setup on the blog as they provided access to a Wordpress plugin. Took a couple of minutes to install and configure the plugin and everything was set to go. One of the differences between Kontera and Intellitxt is that the former allows to change the color of the links while the latter does not. Kontera managed to reach the same level of revenue that Intellitxt provided but managed to surpass that after the first week. We are now at about 150% of the Intellitxt revenue.

Every website on the other hand is different and performance can therefor vary quite a bit depending on your site’s niche, language and other factors.

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The Inside Adsense blog made an announcement today that changes this restriction. Adsense users can now switch from the default Google Adsense font selection to either Arial, Verdana or Times. This makes it easier to use the same font for the display of Adsense units that is being used on the rest of the website. It is most likely that using the same font to display the Adsense unit and the content on the website will yield higher revenue.

It is probably a good idea to test all three new font combinations on the website to find the one with the best results. Fonts can be changed for single ad units or globally in the Adsense account. A click on the My Account link in the top menu and a selection of Ad Display Preference will open the menu where the font setting can be edited globally. Individual ad units can be changed by clicking on Adsense Setup > Manage Ads > Edit Ad Settings.

Being able to change the default font face is definitely a step in the right direction. Premium publishers have still an advantage as they can change the font size and other settings as well which are still locked for non-premium users.

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We all know that eBay has an affiliate program that rewards you if you drive traffic to their site that either signs up with eBay or purchases articles. The more articles they buy the higher your provision. Shoemoney decided to create a community of webmasters that would all use one “connection” to eBay to get the highest possible payouts. This means that all sales from all webmasters count towards the payout rate. Take a look at the examples below to see what I mean.

If you work on your own and get 5 users to sign up for eBay and use the system actively you earn $60. If you would use Auction Ads you could earn up to $22 per sign up because the sign ups from all other webmasters that use Auction Ads may get everyone in a tier level that has higher payouts.

The same effect holds true if referred users buy items on eBay. If your referred users buy items for $500 in total you get 50% of the earnings that eBay made from the sales. The combined force at Auction Ads could very well earn up to 65% of that amount.

That was the theory behind Auction Ads. The basic principle should also be clear. You display ads on your website that show auctions that are currently running at eBay. If a user clicks on the link he gets redirected to eBay where he could purchase the item or bid on it. If he buys it, either immediately or after the auction runs out, you get a share of the revenue that eBay made from the auction.

You are free to display auctions with keywords that you think would fit nicely into your theme. If you have a site about music you could create keywords for bands, albums, collections or merchandise and see how this would work out. It is possible to exclude items as well. Let us say you only want to sell hdtv TVs. If you perform the search for hdtv TVs you will soon see that there are lots of cables appearing which would also be shown on your website. If you use the keyword “hdtv -cable” you would only display hdtv links and none with cables for hdtv TVs.

You can choose between several ad forms which are mostly known from Adsense. Rectangles, banners, leaderboard and skyscrapers are all there and can be used. Takes a little bit of experimenting before you know which one works best for your website. It is also possible to change the appearance of the ads. I would suggest not to blend them because you do not get paid for clicks but only for purchases from those users. Does not make much sense to blend the ads perfectly and get lots of click throughs but no revenue at all because the users did not want to go there.

You can run Auction Ads and Adsense on the same pages which is another good feature. I think Auction Ads work best with blogs and websites that deal with products that one can buy on eBay.

Are you already using Auction Ads ? How is it working out for you ?

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