I eventually ended up removing them from the site because the payments were so insufficient that it didn’t make sense to even keep them on my site. A year later they contacted me and asked me to give them another shot, now they had a new name “ImageSpaceMedia” and new platform and said the payouts were much better now. Indeed the payments were better but since the original service was so horrible, better than that just meant that it was now just mediocre. Below is a screenshot of my earnings “in total” that I made with the so called new and improved platform.

So over the space of a year and 3 months, all I have to show for my 2,810,301 impressions and 3,065 clicks is $190.29. That’s ridiculous, how are these guys even in business? I laid the platform to rest a month ago and I’m never working with them again. I make $190.29 per day just with InfoLinks so for me to work with these guys would be a step backwards, it’s just a waste of time.

This now brings us to GumGum.com

GumGum.com claims they are the leaders of In-Image Advertising and with their client list they just might be, clients include sites like InternetBrands, TMZ, Glam and AskMen. They contacted me about a month ago and wanted me to become a publisher, of course I was skeptical and was just about over In-Image advertising and it being a reliable income source. We spoke about ImageSpaceMedia and GumGum assured me that they would pay better. It’s only been a month but I’ve already received payment from them, as soon as the month is done they pay you for that month which is cool. It was only $111 which is chump change but measuring it by ImageSpaceMedia standards I’m rich right now.

There reporting isn’t bad and the payout is about $ 4 dollars per day, no big deal but hey – I remember a time when I use to get $300 monthly payments from InfoLinks and look at me now. The one thing that ImageSpaceMedia has over them though is that ImageSpaceMedia had image reporting that showed what images were generating the most money, and they had a very useful option that enabled users to choose what images they didn’t want to display ads on. I’ll give these guys the benefit of the doubt and see what happens in the coming months. In-Image advertising still pays like crap but at least GumGum pays just enough to make me stick around to see what happens, the benefit of this type of monetization is that it doesn’t affect your other income sources – you know the real money makers.

If your a blog or website has more than 100 images on it, you might want to consider working with GumGum.com

Check them out.

9 months into 2008 Kontera contacts me talking about joining there program unaware that I was already affiliated with them. I told them I already tried the program and the results were less than mediocre. They told me that there ad inventory had grown drastically since the previous year and that they had a special promotion going on. I decided to give them a shot to see what was up and I must admit the ads were most certainly performing better than before. I was averaging about 300 clicks daily and that’s along side my Google Adsense earnings which were not affected, From October going into December of 2008 the earnings were really good and started to think well maybe Kontera could become a long term income stream.

So When Did Kontera Start to Suck?

It started in January of 2009, as soon as the new year came around the earnings tanked, and when I say tanked I mean “TANKED!!”, I’m talking about getting an average of 200 + clicks per day and only having a $1.28 to show for it. What? That’s a waste of time to say the least, I decided to run the ads for a couple more months which was a big mistake, I should have removed them as soon as they were no longer profitable. So in May I had enough and decided to kick Kontera’s ass to the curve. I wasted 5 months of valuable ad space hoping that the program would come around and it never did. I was like a drug addict that experienced drugs for the first time and keeps on taking the drug trying to relive that first time experience.

So What Am I Using Now?

Well after browsing through a couple threads on the Digital Point forum I ran into InfoLinks, It turns out that I already had an account with them for quite some time but completely forgot about them. Most of the discussions in the forums side with InfoLinks as being a better In Text ad network. So on June 1^st I decided to give them a shot, it’s only been 3 days so I can’t give you a real estimate of how well they perform but the first 3 days are far better than Kontera’s daily average. I’m going to test them out for thirty days to see if there program is worth the time.

What If Info Links Sucks As Well?

Well earlier I mentioned that I was rejected by Vibrant Media, well they have now approved me so if InfoLinks turns out to be Kontera’s retarded little brother then I guess I’ll give them a shot but then again I’m not a fan of Vibrant Media just for the simple fact that I had to apply 4 times before I was accepted, Nothing had changed with Hip Hop Music Dot Com so why was I rejected in the first place?

Is In-text Advertising Even Worth It?

From my personal experience, hell no, But maybe your topic or niche will do better with this type of advertising. To be honest it’s one of the most intrusive forms of advertising there is and it also goes against the principles of web usability. How do I know this? Well I just remember my wife browsing the web one time and I’m not sure what site she was on but the site had in-text ads and I remember her saying “these pop up links are so annoying”. I didn’t know she was referring to in-text ads at the time but that got me thinking, if I’m getting over 20,000 daily visitors to Hip Hop Music Dot Com how many of them are saying these ads are so annoying? So with that thought after this month I most likely will be done with In-Text advertising all together. You will never know if users are clicking on the ads because of relevance or because they just think it’s a link on your site. This type of advertising could hurt your site’s credibility and the only reason why my traffic hasn’t decreased on that site is because of the reputation I’ve built with my readers. That being said I might have lost future visitors forever using this type of advertising.

In Conclusion

So not only does Kontera suck but in-text advertising sucks all together, don’t waste your time on in text advertising there are much better monetization methods available…..Stay Tuned.