The Real Ryan J. Parker

If you’re running Kontera’s ContentLink service on a Wordpress blog or website then you’ll want to tell Kontera where to place the in-text advertisements so that the advertisements only show up in the content of your posts and pages.

You must ensure you do this because there’s nothing worse than visiting a website with in-text advertising in non-content portions of the site like headers, navigation menus, and footers. By using the tip below you can ensure your website is free from this irritating eyesore.

To tell Kontera where to place in-text ads you can surround your content with a <div> HTML tag with the class name of KonaBody, and by modifying your Wordpress template you can quickly integrate this tag into your blog or website.

Integrating this tag into your Wordpress template is easy: simply place all calls to the_content() in your Wordpress template between <div class=KonaBody> and </div> tags. Make sure you modify all calls to the_content() in your index.php, single.php, and/or page.php template files to ensure your in-text advertisements show up in only the appropriate places.

Once you’re done modifying your template you won’t have to worry about seeing in-text advertising in non-content portions of your website ever again. As a side bonus, Kontera will also have an easier time of optimizing their advertisements for the portions of your website that matter the most: the content.

Oh, and if you haven’t done so already, make sure you sign up for Kontera’s ContentLink service.

Tags: kontera, contentlink, konabody, wordpress, template, optimize

During the first week of February Kontera made their in-text advertising service, ContentLink, available to all publishers that meet their content requirements.

You might not have heard of this, though, as only people that signed up as a friend of Joel Comm were given this special deal.

I don’t have a website that has 500,000 pageviews per month, and I doubt you do either. I have, however, been using ContentLink for almost a month now, and while the website I’m using it on is still growing I can already see the potential revenue their service can provide.

It seems that once Google changed their terms of service to allow publishers to use other contextual advertising on the same pages as AdSense ads, so long as they don’t look like AdSense ads, Kontera wanted to get their product into a broader market, something their relationship with Joel Comm has allowed them to do.

In the month of February Kontera claims to have signed up 2,000 new publishers, but it seems some publishers haven’t started using their service yet. This is their loss, but it might also be your gain.

Kontera is going to be giving away a $1,000 Visa card to one lucky publisher at the end of March that is using their service and has made at least $60 in revenue for the month of March.

Barring my website hitting the front page of Digg during every week in March it’s likely that I won’t qualify for this reward.

With that said, why aren’t you using Kontera yet? Maybe your website is like mine and it’s not big enough to make $60 in March, but if you’ve got quality content then you’re missing a piece of the in-text advertising pie.

Go on; sign up for Kontera today (you’ll probably want to tell them Joel Comm sent you). What do you have to lose?

Have you been using Kontera already? If so, I’d love to hear your experience with their service.

Tags: kontera, content link, joel comm, march, giveaway

There are two books every blogger should read, and I reveal them to you soon in this post below.

I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no: these aren’t books that talk about the secrets to making lots of money blogging or the optimal way to place AdSense ads on your blog.

These are older books whose first edition was written well before the age of the Internet. They are, however, still very relevant to every blogger, as blogging is all about writing and connecting to your reader through words.

As you might have already guessed these are books about writing: On Writing Well and The Elements of Style.

On Writing Well

On Writing Well

On Writing Well, written by William K. Zinsser, should be required reading for all serious bloggers, as it will help you with your writing no matter what audience you target.

Zinsser makes a strong argument for writers to cut out clutter, and he provides classic examples of how clutter confuses the reader. My favorite examples are ones from the political arena that are written to confuse the general population than to mean anything.

The advice in this book is directly applicable to the blogging community, as it’s best to remove clutter from your posts. There are, after all, plenty of other feeds the reader could be reading.

The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

The other book that should be in every blogger’s list of required reading should be The Elements of Style. Originally written by William Strunk, Jr. for his students, The Elements of Style was prepared for public consumption by one of his students, E.B. White.

The Elements of Style will help you make everything you write mean something. The author stresses that “every word tell”, and this book will help you get more out of every word you write (or give you the right words to help you along the way).

Cost

Combined these books will cost you a whopping $20.12 plus shipping at Amazon, so there’s no reason not to have these books in your library.

Once you’ve read these books it’s a good idea to have them handy as a reference or re-read them from time to time. The advice is classic and will help make all your posts as great as this one*.

Get these books and use them. Your readers will thank you for it.

*Disclaimer: It’s been awhile since I’ve actually read these books, so I can’t guarantee this post is as good as it could be. You be the judge.

Tags: blogging, required reading, on writing well, the elements of style

Pop-under ads, an advertising method I thought had all but died out, seem to be making a comeback on a few websites I frequent.

These aren’t renegade websites selling cheap Viagra or offering online roulette, either. They’re high-traffic sites like ESPN.com and others like it.

It’s these advertisements that fueled the creation of the pop-up blocker, and they surely helped fuel the adoption of the Mozilla family of web browsers.

Even with pop-up blockers these advertisements are becoming a more prevalent part of my web browsing experience. Publishers place pop-under advertisement code in their pages so that a pop-under ad is created when a user clicks a link on the page (or in some cases anywhere on the page), thus circumventing the pop-up blocker, as it appears the browser requested the new window.

Large advertising networks like Undertone and Tribal Fusion offer a pop-under service, and some publishers are reaping the benefits of this annoying method of advertising.

One publisher that is profiting from pop-unders and loving it is MySanAntonio.com. See this quote from Undertone’s testimonial page:

We have a long-standing partnership with Undertone Networks. As our top pop-under partner, Undertone provides us with reliable revenue every month that helps our bottom line. We enjoy the top advertisers Undertone brings to our website and the exceptional customer service they provide.

Now to the main point of this post: Why are publishers still using these types of advertisements? They go against web usability, they offer no functional value to the visitor, and they get in the way of the visitor more than any other type of advertisement.

If, however, you’re the manager of a large corporate website you see the $$ signs and overlook the fact that it makes your users unhappy. You’re only concerned about the website’s bottom line (you don’t want to lose your job, after all).

Most of these large sites aren’t going to lose visitors as the result of using pop-unders because of the unique content they provide, and advertisers must see some benefit from the ads or they wouldn’t pay for them.

I’ve got no special analytics to help my cause here, mostly because it’s not really something you can measure.

You can’t measure the affect a pop-under has on your entire business, because it’s not something clear cut like a click-through ratio.

It’s like a shipping company with a bad truck driver. If I don’t call the 1-800-bad-driver number to report how much the trucker’s bad driving causes me to despise their shipping company then I simply vow never to use the service and hope they notice.

Now equate this to pop-unders. I’ll never use Vonage. I’ll never take a class at Southern Wesleyan. I associate Vonage and Southern Wesleyan with annoyance, but I can’t easily tell them this, so I simply vow to never use their services.

I wonder if these practices affect a business’ bottom line, and I wonder if they even know or care.

They’ve got a click-through ratio to backup their ad spending, something that will surely impress the boss, but is it hurting them as a company?

We may never know, but I’d like to hear your thoughts. Do you vow to never use a service because of annoying pop-unders? Do you think these businesses care more about you or their fancy stats?

Tags: pop-under, ads, annoying, undertone, tribal fusion, vonage, southern wesleyan

MyBlogLog has come under fire during recent weeks due to numerous hacks and exploits found with their software, and now another issue is being raised by popular blogger ShoeMoney in regards to MyBlogLog tracking ad clicks.

At first glance this appears to be another black eye for MyBlogLog–or is it? MyBlogLog has a pro service in which you can pay to get real time stats about your site, and one of these stats is user clicks.

This service leads me to why I feel this is an overreaction by the general blogging community: bloggers want their hands on as many statistics as possible, and advertisement clicks are one of these high priority statistics. MyBlogLog is simply serving this need.

Conspiracy theorists, however, argue that MyBlogLog can take the advertisement statistics and use them for their own evil plans. This conspiracy theory is further increased due to the fact that MyBlogLog is owned by Yahoo!, whose YPN service is a direct competitor to Google’s AdSense.

With that said, it seems like now it’s in MyBlogLog’s best interests to give users the option to turn off advertisement tracking if they so please. I’ve got no problem with them tracking my data, but all conspiracy theories can be put to rest with them giving users this option.

For more details about the ad tracking see ShoeMoney’s post: MyBlogLog Tracks Your Visitors Ad Clicks.

Tags: mybloglog, ad, tracking, ypn, adsense, shoemoney