The time has come to officially announce the winners of our MVP Awards contest for the best blog posts describing Kontera success stories. We are excited to announce the winners who will each receive an Amazon Kindle: Randy Brown from Grownupgeek.com and Jason Caetano from techsquirt.com.

Randy is a “veteran” Kontera publisher and shares some great tips from his extensive experience; Jason is a new Kontera publisher who shared his outlook on starting out in the blogosphere and why Kontera is a natural fit for techsquirt.com.

Randy made a great point in how Adsense and Kontera make a good match: “Over the last 2.5 years… Kontera has earned right up with, and some times better than Adsense. Kontera has also performed better than other In-Text ad networks I have tested over the years. Those solid earnings combined with my own dedicated Kontera account manager that answers my questions and deals with any problems that arise (something you won’t get from Adsense) has kept Kontera on my “Best ad network” list.” Read Randy’s post>>

Jason described the importance of engagement and relevancy in online advertising and emphasized the added value Kontera In-Text brings to user experience: “Kontera helped me obtain my goals of earning revenue for my blog, not just by providing in-text advertising but providing relevant and engaging information… If you’re looking for simple and easy to use In-Text advertising program that is relevant to your content and users – I would look no-further then Kontera.” Read Jason’s post>>

Thanks everyone for your submissions, we enjoyed reading your success stories and congratulations to our winners. Enjoy your Kindles! If you didn’t win this time around check out our Triple Play program running until the end of the year.

We’re working on some great new offers for our publisher partners so be sure to stay tuned here, or by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

Have you heard?  Kontera is giving away Amazon Kindles through our MVP Rewards Program!
We wanted to take an opportunity to re-introduce our latest promotion:

Entering is simple and only requires presenting some of your Kontera In Text Advertising successes in a post on your site, and then shooting us an e-mail with the link to the post. You can be rewarded with a great prize!  Find all the details here.

We look forward to reading your post and shipping out your new Kindle. 

Hurry up and enter this contest as the deadline is October 31st – increase your chances to get a special Halloween treat from Kontera!

We are nearing the end of the year, and the fall season is when we traditionally see very strong revenues and some great campaigns across our network.

We want both our large and small publishers to benefit and win as well.

Kontera “Triple Play” — Three new ways for publishers to gain extra revenues between now and the end of the year.

1. Optimize for Revenues – Take Advantage of the biggest ad spending quarter of the year. Increase your revenues by implementing our Tips and Tricks to optimize Kontera across your sites. We provide some proven techniques that will help you maximize your earnings during the end of the year and holiday season.

   Learn More ->

2. MVP Rewards – Tell Us Your Kontera Success, Win a Kindle

   We want to hear from you! We’re always interested to learn more about the publishers in our network, their experience with Kontera In Text ads, and how Kontera is helping them. Send us a link to your post or story about your successes with Kontera and you will be entered to win one of several Amazon Kindles and gift certificates that we are giving away for the best submissions. All Our MVP winners will also be featured in Kontera’s all-star gallery series of blog posts.

   Learn More ->

3. Heavy-Hitters’ Special – If you regularly receive Kontera earnings of more than $1500 per month, then we should talk! Kontera can significantly increase your In Text Advertising earnings for the October through December timeframe. There is no better way to get additional end- of- year revenues. Simply send us an email to support@kontera.com with “Heavy Hitters Bonus” in the subject line, and our team members will follow-up to get you into this exciting program.

WIN A KINDLE!

We’re always interested to learn more about the publishers in our network, their experience with Kontera, and how Kontera is helping them.

Send us a link to your post or story about your successes with Kontera and you will be entered to win one of several Amazon Kindles and gift certificates that we are giving away for the best submissions.

All Our MVP winners will also be featured in Kontera’s all-star gallery series of blog posts.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What inspired you to start your website, blog, or latest initiative?
• How did you come up with the idea?
• When did you start using Kontera?
• How has Kontera helped you to attain your goals?
• What words of wisdom do you have for other web publishers or bloggers?
• What do you see for the future of your site or blog?

Send a link to your post to support@kontera.com with the subject line: “Kontera MVP”.

Deadline for entry is October 31st. Winners will be drawn by November 3rd and will be contacted via email and featured in an upcoming Kontera blog post. For more information visit the T&Cs page

Enter Today!

The biggest ad spending quarter is here! Increase your revenues by implementing our Tips and Tricks to optimize Kontera across your sites.  Follow these tips and tricks which will help you maximize your earnings during the end of the year and holiday season.

• More Page Views Yield Greater Revenues: Add Kontera tags to all pages and as many sections of your site as possible, to earn maximum revenues.
• Seasonal Relevance Wins: Having interesting content that is relevant for through October-December advertising pay dividends. Keep in mind the type of advertisers that spend during this time of year. For example, a holiday season shopping guide or thoughtful opinions on the latest automotive models will probably yield greater results than planning for next summer’s vacation. Having seasonally relevant and fresh content will increase coverage, CPC, and CTRs resulting in record busting eCPMs.
• Consider Changing Link Color: New color usually makes In Text links more prominent to your users resulting in higher CTRs and greater revenues.
• Use Zone or Filter Tags: Keep our analysis and links targeted to your content and away from outlying areas like headers, sidebars, footers, etc.
• Keep it Clean: Avoid producing content with profanity or sensitive topics as quality brands avoid this type of content and our technology screens the content.
• Revisit Maximum Link Parameters: Limiting links to 1, 2, or 3 per page can hinder CTR and prevent you from monetizing to your sites’ full potential.
• More Sites: The easiest way to make more money is to add more sites to the Kontera program.   If you have more sites then let us know and we will get you additional tags.

Holidays are the best time to slow down the fast pace of life and to appreciate the moment.  We’ve had a great year at Kontera and we’d like to take this moment to thank all of our partners who’ve been with us along the way.  Our partners have contributed greatly to our network as your voices have been heard, helping us continuously shape and improve our products and service.  We’re anticipating a great upcoming year of 2009, with many exciting additions and developments within our network.

For those of you who haven’t joined Kontera yet, we’re kicking off the new year with a great bonus offer:

Reach $75 in earnings, and we’ll round your balance up to $100!

Click to Join
Find out more about the bonus offer.

Happy Holidays from the Kontera Team!

We all know that images add much value to our websites and blogs; images enhance visual appearance and promote readership. Still, quite honestly, looking for the right image can be time consuming… and then there is the cost and the issue of copyrights—all of which often translates to “forget it- too much headache.”

This is why we like PicApp.

PicApp is an application that enables online publishers to add the best stock photos to their content for free without the copyright or licensing worries.

Here are a few great things PicApp enables you to do:

• Access an inventory of over 20 million images, in every imaginable content category, with 10K images being updated by the minute.

• Get free and legal use of the most recent editorial images from top content providers.

• Get images already tagged with keywords and to promote indexing and SEO.

• Register your search term on PicApp RSS feeder (for example- Brad Pitt, red roses, babies, NFL, etc..) and receive notifications on your RSS tool reader whenever PicApp gets new images that match the search term.

And last but definitely not least:

• You can now download the PicApp WordPress plug-in and use it to search and easily add premium, free and legal images straight from your editor into your post!

With the plug-in, PicApp will be fully integrated into your editing flow, so you will no longer be required to open new browser and look for images.

The PicApp plugin is a quick and easy way to add images to posts, Just take a look at the demo.

PicApp is available to answer any questions and welcomes any feedback at discover@picapp.com

The holiday season is the best time to try out new things.  If you’ve been considering joining Kontera, there’s no time like the present.

To help get the ball rolling, we have a new holiday sign-up offer for you:

Reach $75 in earnings, and we’ll round your balance up to $100

That’s an extra $25 on us!

How to do it?
1.    Join Kontera by Jan 15th.
2.    Sit back and relax.
3.    Reach $75 in your account, and we’ll send you a check for $100!

As a Kontera publisher you’ll benefit from:

• Quick and easy integration;
• Higher CTR & revenues;
• Adsense compatible ads;
• Multiple payment possibilities.

This offer is available for sign-ups through Jan 15th 2009. So, the sooner you sign-up with Kontera the sooner you can start earning.

Happy Holidays!

Become a Kontera Publisher Now!

* You must register through the sign up link on this page in order to be eligible for the bonus.

*Terms & Conditions

You can still join the party and get a $25 bonus for each friend you bring. Kontera’s “Invite a Friend” program was launched last April and has proven to be a great success. We’d like to thank the many Kontera partners who have taken part in the program.

So, what are you waiting for? Invite your friends and receive a $25 bonus from us for each friend who becomes an active Kontera publisher. Inviting your friends is now easier than ever:

1. Log into Kontera’s Publisher Center using your user name and password.
2. Click on the “Invite a Friend” button on the right.



3. Type in your friends’ names and send away. Your friends will sign up through the link on your email.
4. Make sure your friends sign up using the same email address to which you sent the message.

-To learn more about the “Invite a Friend” Program please visit our Knowledgebase.

-“Invite a Friend” Terms & Conditions

We all like to recommend our favorite websites, articles we find interesting or other attention-grabbing news stories.  In fact, social networking largely thrives on the idea that we love to share our web findings with our online friends.  Today, some of us at Kontera gathered to give recommendations of our favorite sites.  Thought you’d be interested in paying a visit:

Adi Elimelech, a Kontera Ruby Developer, recommends www.tripit.com. “Tripit is a site that helps you to quickly organize all your travel plans, and saves you the job by creating an actual itinerary of your trip.  I discovered it after some of my friends used it to plan their trip.  It’s a great website and an original utility- like having a personal automated travel agent”.

Gabi Peles, Kontera’s Director, Product & Operations browses through a relatively new engine, www.mahalo.com. “I discovered Mahalo not long ago and I have come to appreciate it. Mahalo is a kind of a user generated search-engine, where each page provides a rich description of the keyword sought”.

Ariel Gluckson, Publisher Support Coordinator tells about Woot.com. “Woot.com is a site I visit often to see what’s today’s buy. I think it takes a creative edge to blow-out sales tactics. Every day Woot lists one product for a 24 hour time period and sells it at a price well under the retail.  I’d totally recommend anyone to at least have a look”.

Mika Tal, Publisher Services Manager recommends  k21st.wordpress.com.  “K21 is a blog that aggregates all the best of new thought innovation in practically every known field. It includes everything that goes under the conception of futurism, bringing the latest advancements in various fields and incorporating them into one accessible arsenal of knowledge”.

Barak Levi, a QA team member spends his free time learning Ruby (a true programming devotee). His recommendations are all Ruby related. “I recommend www.ruby-lang.org and railscasts.com to anyone interested in getting into the world of Ruby.  These sites contain documentation and guides and screencasts that tell you how to start from zero and build your way up to becoming a top Ruby on Rails programmer.”