Most of the time in text links pay by either click throughs and impressions. You may have noticed that this blog had been using in text links through infolinks as one source of income. With a decent amount of traffic, in-txt link advertising can provide a good source of income.
Recently, however, I’ve found an in-text link advertising service that looks to have great potential for a source of income for a blogger. Intentclick is a performance network established by Kontera Technologies.
This service caught my eye since it specifically targets the niche for income growth, saving money, and making money online. It seemed to fit right into the niche for my blog.
This seemed advantageous over infolinks as the in-text links would be more targeted and relevant for my audience. I think most people wouldn’t mind ads if they are relevant and non-intrusive.
However, it’s always an annoyance when I see an ad that’s completely unrelated to the topic that I’m reading. I’m not interested in a better garden advertisement when I’m reading about affiliate marketing.
The other thing that was intriguing about intent click is that they pay on a performance based RPC model. This means that they pay out per click, but they also pay a percentage afterwards if the click converts to a lead or a sale. In this way, they’ve combined the benefits of affiliate marketing with the benefits of ppc advertising and gives you the best of both worlds.
Based on what I read, I decided to try out the intentclick in-text links service to see how it performs.
The first thing is they do screen their blogs to ensure that you meet their minimum requirements. It seems like a fairly low threshold at 1000 page views a month requirement and that your blog is within the money making/saving niche. I was approved quickly within 24 hours. In my approval email, I was informed that I would be getting a minimum of $0.07 per click (for U.S. Clicks). This is slightly better than most other in text links CPC payouts, so that’s a bonus.
Once I was approved, I logged into their publisher dashboard and installed their plugin. They offer a really easy to install wordpress plugin. You just upload their wordpress plugin and activate it. then you just fill in your publisher ID and you’re ready to go.
A couple of things that I noticed right away.
The plugin added a check box to the publishing section of my post editor that allowed me to chose not to display ads on certain posts. I liked this option a lot, infolinks did not provide this integration which I feel is sorely missed. I liked being able to simply check a box to exclude the post from advertising.
The other option that I liked is the ability to choose not to display ads for a certain amount of time after a post has been published. This up to each blogger’s personal preferences, but I can see that some bloggers may want to not display any ads on their new articles for a day or two. This seemed like a rather thoughtful feature.
Beyond that, the publisher dashboard appears to provide quite a bite of in depth information. You have access to summary reports, detailed reports, as well as keyword reports. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing the data on the keyword reports which show you the weeks highest traffic words. This seems to be a really good feature for seo.
Overall, I’m looking forward to using this service. They seem to have the right focus for bloggers in the money niche and a good combination of features.