Monetize Your Website Program Reviews 16: Infolinks Review

[Clinton]

This Infolinks Review page covers the details of the program and its pros and cons.

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INFOLINKS REVIEW & FEEDBACK

Quick Facts:

1. Program name: Infolinks
2. URL: http://www.infolinks.com/
3. Country: US
4. Ad types: In-text links
5. Ad formats/sizes: N/A
6. Commission types / Payment Model: CPC, CPM
7. Rate per click/lead/etc: Variable rates
8. Payment methods: PayPal, Wire, ACH, Infolinks Prepaid Mastercard (powered by Payoneer) and more
9. Minimum payout: $100
10. Payout percentage share with publishers: 70% revenue share of the gross revenue
11. Payment frequency: NET 45
12. Auto-accepts ads / option for manual ad approval: Option to customize ad frequency and display available
13. Setup method: Manual code insertion, plugin installation for sites running WordPress, Blogger, Joomla and Drupal
14. Skills and effort required to setup and manage: Basic skills and effort to install and enable, plugins available for publishers using WordPress, Blogger, Joomla and Drupal
15. Time until relevant ads appear on website after signup/installation: N/A
16. Conflict with other programs and/or exclusivity: No exclusivity
17. Requirements / Restrictions: no questionable content of any kind
18. Coverage and Geographic focus: Global coverage, no specific focus
19. Support/troubleshooting: Support team that answers all queries personally within 24 hours, Comprehensive help center here
20. Contact info: Online contact form available here

Established in 2007, Infolinks has grown to be one of the most popular in-text link advertising networks with more than 50,000 premium sites working exclusively with them. Full review of Infolinks.

Have you used the program? Any tips or suggestions you have? Would you like to add your own review of the program below? Any questions you have about this program?

[Kay]

I'm going to test-drive InfoLinks on one of my sites.

Background

AdSense has nosedived and I've already looked for alternatives to monetise that site. Back in May, we tried AdBrite but it wasn't a success so we went back to AS. The site is powered by WordPress but not in blog format. I really don't like in-text links (yuk!) but that site is there to make money so let's get on with the show and try it.

G hit that site badly a few years ago for using TLA, so I'll be keeping an eye on how it reacts to this site once it has InfoLinks on it.

Some site stats for June 2012

Traffic - on a downward trend due to neglect - over 4.5k UVs for the month
AdSense - about £12 (erk!)

Signing up with InfoLinks

This is one of the quickest, least painful sign up pages I've ever experienced. They wanted the URL, my name, email address and password. Easy!

Then I was taken to a page where they said they would review the site within 48 hours. To speed up the process, you can add their code and click a "Yes" button to say you've done it. It took Dave only a couple of minutes to add the code to our site. I hit the button. This resulted in an automated email telling me my application is in the review process and they'll get back to me within two business days. I've taken a note of the time, so let's see how long it takes.

I'll let you know how we get on.

[Kay]

I've double-checked the AS T&C's to make sure we're not breaking any rules.

Competitive ads and services

In order to prevent user confusion, publishers may not display Google ads or search boxes on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colours as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure that these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

Source: https://support.google.com/adsense/b...n&answer=48182

However, allowing and liking are quite different. G didn't forbid the use of TLA but they sure as heck kicked that site hard for using it.

More info: apparently InfoLinks works best for US traffic. The ratios for the site are approximately 5:USA, 2:UK, 1:Germany, plus a lot of also-rans. Currently it gets about 23% of its traffic from SEs - overwhelmingly from G.

[Kay]

I've not got off to a great start with this but perhaps we'll be able to get there with a bit of tweaking.

I was waiting (not very patiently) for an email to tell me whether the site had been accepted or rejected for their service. Nothing. And, yes, I did check the junk mail box. 48 hours later, I hit on the idea of trying to log in anyway to see if that worked. Sure enough it did. So, I went to our site and the Infolinks ads are there.

Yuk! They're a horrible colour. No worries, we can change that. There are also far too many of them - but we can change that too. Unfortunately, the ads are all geographically targeted to the country we happen to be in right now. Grrr. Maybe we can change that too.

I don't mind these little teething troubles but if they'd done me the courtesy of sending me an email to let me know we'd been approved, then I could have fixed them two days ago, from when it looks as though our account was approved. The way it looks is that our site has looked like a dog's dinner for the last two days.

Another thing I really don't like and which I doubt if we can change is the way their algo selects the keywords to target to place their ads on. Thus we are running ads for 'keywords' such as "category", "most important", "task", "no wonder", "especially" etc. There's a lot more stupid ones but you'll have got the picture by now. I'd expected them to pick up on proper keywords such as "widgets" or whatever the particular page happened to be about.

The stats don't appear to be in real time either. I looked at a report about our impressions, clicks, and earnings, but the report was last updated two days ago so there's no useful info there at all.

I'll persevere and see if we can sort out these problems.

I'm really quite disappointed with this as they have a really nice site with a good community feel to it - helpful articles, competitions, etc. I was enthusiastic about getting stuck into this. Now I feel a bit let down. Oh well, onwards and upwards.

[Clinton]

I'm not trying to defend Infolinks here, but webmasters who've monetised mainly with Adsense over a long period of time tend to expect things to work like Adsense when they are with other networks. But it's not so. It pays to be a bit patient and to lower one's expectations. Stats delays etc., are quite common (and was with Adsense as well in the early days).

[Kay]

OK, I'll relax.

I'm not exactly delighted with AS right now anyway. And I'm not all that bothered about stats either. Gimme the money!

BTW, Infolinks isn't really an alternative to AS, it's more of a supplement. Mind you, there's a limit to how many adverts you can place on a page before it looks really naff, so if this works then I might remove the AS. That would be another step in the right direction of getting me off my G dependency.

[kharrison]

I signed up with Infolinks as a result of reading Clinton's ebook (thank you) 101 Adsense Alternatives. Signup was easy, they accepted all my sites...and same as Kay, they are targeting some funny keywords. It hasn't been very long so I will also be patient.

[Kay]

Yes, please do let us know how you get on with it.

After getting my first site set up to my satisfaction, except for the problem about them targeting stupid keywords, I added another couple of sites. They were also approved fairly quickly and this time they did send emails telling me the two sites had been approved, so that was a bit more helpful.

I've not done much about Infolinks as my eyes hurt a lot when using the computer. However, I went to check my stats just now and I've made the grand total of 33 cents. I knew you'd be impressed!

I guess a site in a good niche with enough traffic could make as much on this as via AdSense, but my big gripe about the thing is how they 'target' totally stupid keywords.

[Kay]

Just had another look at this and although I've not had any problems dealing with these people, they are still continuing to target really stupid keywords. For example, who is going to click on a link for "something about"?

Despite this fault, the CTR is quite reasonable but the EPC is appalling. Here are some figures.

Site 1: CTR 3.19% EPC $0.015

Site 2: CTR 3.53% EPC $0.01

Site 3: CTR 6.45% EPC $0.0043

IMO, Site 1 is the most "useful" so perhaps that explains the lowest CTR and highest EPC and vice versa for site 3. But I can't see how it's beneficial to make the site look like a dog's dinner of in-text links just for a cent a click. You'd need a heap of traffic to make it worthwhile. Maybe it would work better on sites that were built on high-cost keywords. (These ones weren't.)

Dunno what to do next.

- get shot of it
- try making a few pages built around what I know to be high value keywords
- keep tinkering with it to see if I can improve the results

But for as long as they're making stupid links I don't see how I can win with this. BTW, I just noticed, they've made a link out of the word message and linked to a spa. Presumably their targeting software can't tell the difference between a message and a massage.

[Jamesc]

From an novice's point of view, I find this type of advertising most annoying (bar things that pop up). Especially when there is a large amount of good quality content that has been dashed with these infolinks.

The appearance of these links degrades my perception of the entire website. In turn I don't read the information I had come for and leave promptly, whether it is good quality of not! Any else feel like this or am I being an idiot?!