When it comes to monetizing a web site or blog, you have a lot of options. In the last monetization post I wrote, I covered a few different methods, which ranged from promoting yourself as a brand, selling your own product and also through contextual advertising. Contextual advertising is a hot trend lately, as site owners are moving away from the idea of adding banners to their sites that will take up more web site, and potentially lower the user experience. One contextual network that has been on the rise and making a name for themselves is INTENTclick.
How Contextual Advertising Works
As you read this post, you will truly appreciate the power of contextual advertising. Right now your focus is within the text of this article, and should there be any links within this text, they would be much more likely to grab your attention versus any banners or text links outside of the main content. The concept of contextual advertising is to create text advertising links within your content, which means they are right in the face of your readers, but also relevant at the same time.
Think about the success Google Adsense has had over the years, but instead of taking up the big banner ad space that Adsense requires, contextual advertising is placed within your content, allowing site owners to maximize their site space. When someone clicks on a banner or link from Google Adsense, the visitor will leave your web site. This is not true with contextual advertising, as the link will usually spawn in a new window. Which not only means you will keep your current site visitors at your site, but you will also be making additional revenue at the same time.
Just like Google Adsense, most contextual advertising networks will pay their site partners on a cpc (cost per click) basis. Some networks also back out their earnings on a commission basis, but in the end, you still see a cpc average in your earnings report.
While all of this may sound amazing and complex (and it is…), it’s actually quite easy for any web site or blog to get setup and running with contextual advertising. Many of the contextual networks will provide you with a simple line of code that you can add to your web site, or a nice wordpress plugin for any blog owners. You will also have access to a wide selection of options which include changing contextual links colors, underlining, how many links to display, and more. This way you don’t have to worry about people confusing regular site links versus contextual ad links.
What Sites Will Contextual Advertising Work on Best?
As much as I would like to say contextual advertising solutions will flood your pockets with a nice monthly recurring income, that simply isn’t the case. Depending on the type of web site and visitors you have, you will see a big difference in click through rates and earnings. Here are three examples:
An education or technology web site will earn more revenue per click with contextual advertising, versus a recipe or cooking based web site. This is simply due to the fact that education and technology advertisements are higher end and they are spending a lot more money per click.- A web site or blog with a webmaster or internet marketing audience will most likely experience a much lower click through rate, as the readers are already familiar with how advertising works on web sites, and will know a contextual link versus a regular link.
- Review, resource and shopping web sites will experience the highest click through rates and overall ecpm earnings, simply because the visitors to these web sites are already in a buying and researching mode. These site visitors are looking for relevant links and looking to click.
What is INTENTclick, and Why Do They Matter?
Now that you have a good understanding on what contextual advertising is, and how it may work with your web site traffic, let’s get back to INTENTclick and how they can improve the revenue generation on your web site.
If you asked a bunch of online marketers bout contextual advertising, many of them would probably be familiar with the name “Kontera“. INTENTclick is actually an exclusive performance network driven by the Kontera brand network. Kontera has established themselves as one of the premier advertising companies online, and have exposure across millions of web sites, many of which you already know.
So why does INTENTclick matter and how are they any different from Kontera?
If you’ve ever worked with Kontera or contextual advertising, you already know how their content based advertising works. INTENTclick is run off that same concept, except they are focused on higher end advertisers and content rich web sites that can drive high volume and results. If you’ve ever found success with contextual advertising or simply looking for a new revenue source for your web site or blog, you will want to give INTENTclick a try.
When you are a big fan of a blog or web site, personal recommendations go a long way. Using this blog as an example, I’ve used 
This last point is more for established blogs and brands versus a regular web site. When people are coming to a blog to read what someone has to say, or learn from them, they are truly interested and passionate about the topic and person running the web site. It takes a lot of time and trust to build up a loyal following, which eventually turns into a “brand”. Through that branding, you can then brand out and start creating your own high end products and consulting services. Since the blog is all about you and what you do, there is nothing wrong with offering your services and products through out the site, an your visitors will actually be more interested in your actual promotions, then seeing you promote/offer someone else’s services.
Through the use of mailing list services like 
Think about it for a second… is there anyone from your past, maybe a client, friend or even someone who is jealous of your success, that could potentially damage your name or brand online? In the end, all it really takes it a few high end and well established web sites to start posting negative reviews and content, that can rank really high in the search results and do some damage.
Now that you have an idea how reputation management services can improve rankings, search results and how people can search for relevant information on a company, the best question to ask is “Do reputation management services really work?“. As you can see from the case studies mentioned above, they clearly do work, as the average person is most likely going to look through the first page of results to make a quick decision on whether or not they want to use a recommended service or company.
