I regularly follow some bloggers and their blogs for latest news, updates and lessons. One post from famous blog amitbhawani regarding ‘Why you should avoid Infolinks and other in text ads from a blog’ read the post here and another post from technicstoday made me to ask this question to my self. Is Infolinks really that much bad?, from my point of view the answer is ‘NO’. Keep reading for the reasons.
Infolinks is an in-text ad network which doesn’t take space from your blog like contextual ads or banner ads, like Google adsense and CPM. Therefore do not expect the same result from these two types of networks.
The answer for subjected question can be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ based on the purpose of your blogging.
For example,
If you are blogging to make some extra money, then Infolinks is a good choice to make additional income, at least to cover your hosting charges.
If you are not blogging for money or you are happy with the current earnings, then you can leave Infolinks. Because your purpose of blogging is different, may be an ads free blog, fast loading blog and non money making blog.
Is Infolinks really makes money?
Yes, it makes. but it can’t be your main income source or do not compare it with your main income source. Its just an additional ad network which can make few bucks.
It works well for good traffic sites. Since their pay out per click is very less compare to adsense, you will be making few cents only if your blog is getting less traffic and finally you will end up by hating Infolinks.
Other important fact is, Infolinks CTR (Click Through Rate) is higher than other contextual or banner ads, because they seem like links in your web pages. So, visitors clicks these ads and leave your pages which impacts your blog. But, again this depends on the traffic and purpose of a blog.
For example, if you need to make money, then obviously you should allow your visitors to click ads and leave your blog pages, because advertisers want your visitors.
Second, lets say that you get daily 50 visitors and 5 Infolinks clicks, so percentage of losing visitors is – (5/50)*100 = 10%
When you have more traffic, like 6500 daily visitors and 130 clicks (my current figures), then my rate is – (130/6500)*100= 2%
What I’m trying to say is , when you have good traffic, then this ratio will be less and not effect your blog much. In my case, I do not worry about 130 daily visitors out of 6500 who are leaving by Infolinks ads.
One more point !, a user searched something and reached your blog for particular content, then clicked the Infolinks ad and left your blog. Do you think he/she will forget your blog or the purpose reached your blog? No. If you content is great, useful and what he/she searched for, then definitely they will press the ‘Back’ button in internet browser and come back to your blog post again. So, do not worry too much about losing visitors.
CPC (Cost Per Click) is very Low
Yes, the CPC in Infolinks is very low compare to Google Adsense. Google Adsense is the best ad network pays well for bloggers according to my knowledge and experience. In my case, I’m getting $2.7 daily from 130 clicks, which means (2.7/130=0.021) 0.021 cents per click. Its really bad, but better than other in-text ad networks. Finally, at the end of each day I make $2.7 and monthly (30×2.7=81$) $81 which can pay my two months hosting bills (VPS – Virtual Private Server).
If I can get these 130 daily clicks on Google adsense, then I would be making huge money from Adsense. 😉
How about eCPM?
Its acceptable compare to other networks (except Google adsense). 0.30$ to 0.40$ eCPM globally is not bad at all. I have joined several ad networks including in text and CPM networks, compare to them Infolinks’ eCPM is OK. Again, do not compare with Adsense, they pay much better.
Page Loading Slow?
Its normal. The good thing is, if Infolinks cant load the ads on a page, then its not going to break your blog pages like how banner ads affect. Because its an in-text ad and a visitor can’t see the any distraction in a page.
Yes, it slows down the blog. Because like other ad networks you have add a java script in your blog theme files. When it loads, it make several http and DNS lookups which we can’t avoid in any ad networks.
Again it depends on your blogging purpose, if you want to make some extra bucks, then you should be ready to bear these all.
What you Get and Lose?
You get;
- Additional income
- Ad space in your blog because it doesn’t take any space
- Reasonable Support from Infolinks support staff
- Payments on time
- Some new and additional ways to increase the earnings. They keep on promoting and introducing new methods.
You Lose
- Visitors ( It will not effect if your blog is experiencing good traffic)
- Page loading speed
What’s your Opinion?
Have you used Infolinks in your blog any time? how it performed? If you removed it after using this product, can you share the reason?
Is Infolinks Really Bad? What’s Your Opinion?
Don’t worry, I’m not working for Infolinks or this is their sponsored post, I’m just sharing my thoughts. Feel free to leave some comments.
Yes, they are really bad network. you will not get more money for conversions. they really sucks. if you are not using them can make more from Adsense.
for after removing their code, me got 10-20% extra hits, more page views, reduced bounce rate.
Hi Anish,
Thanks for the comment from your point of view.
Good luck.
Considering the pros and cons, this seems to be not a very good method!? Once the loading speed decreases, others advantages will be affects strongly.
Thanks for the Dolphin.
Its all about balancing everything in your blog. As I mentioned in this post, ‘you will not get something if you don’t lose something’.
although i dont have any ads on my blog till now….but i think infolinks loads slower than kontera……when pointing mouse to the link infolinks takes more time to load…..and indeed text link ads are a huge turnoff….similarly the sites who use floating banner ads….irritating stuff 🙄
Great Post,
thanks for sharing.
I also tend to think that InfoLinks is not my cup of tea. It slows down my blog and I it is irritating sometimes. I’m currently running it for testing purposes and soon will decide whether keep it or not.
Cheers,
Togrul
Thanks for your experience Togrul and welcome to my blog.
I feel as long as you get good traffic, this will not affect your blog much. But, you are the decider, because its your blog.
I wouldn’t say they’re bad; you really need to have an immense amount of traffic to your blog to warrant using it. However one of the griping things about using Infolinks is that I’ve been told by my own readers that it can become annoying when they’re trying to read an article and their mouse happens to hover over an ad link. I’ve since removed Infolinks and I’ve seen big improvements to the overall time spent on my site and of course my AdSense revenue too.
Fabrizio,
That’s a good real example. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Dinesh I have read ur blog at shoutmeloud of Simple Mistakes on a Blog without Knowing the Impact – Must Be Avoided. I really impress with ur article so I came here and got another interesting article
u r doing awsome job
thnks dude
Ifham,
Thanks for visiting my blog.
Keep visiting, there will be more useful articles here in future. Its all about sharing knowledge and experience.
hi dinesh…i have a question….yesterday i got 23 clicks so 0.23$ , today i got 93 clicks and impressions were also quadrupled, earning went down to 0.16 $ ….whats wrong ? 🙁
For some reasons, on Saturday and Sunday we get good clicks (higher CTR) but less CPC earnings.
Again, I suggest to do not tell your adsense clicks and earnings publicly, its against Google Adsense TOS.
Nothing wrong, just be patient. Make sure you and your friends are not clicking your adsense ads 🙂
its infolinks not adsense 😛 anyways u have a point there abt weekends..it back to normal now 🙂
Infolinks is Good, but a few things that are disappointing are:
1- The ads may annoy your visitors, since the ads pop up when a user is reading your blog.
2- It slows up the speed at which your blog loads.
3-as you mentioned you loose visitors.
Sagar,
for your first point- ads don’t pop up just like that if a user doesn’t move the cursor top of the ad.
I agree with your other two points, but these all are fair and unavoidable when you make some money from it.
Thanks for your comment. 🙂
I am using infolinks in my blogs and I really get few cents from it . I get around 0.09 cents for 7 clicks unlike with Google Adsense so I decided to leave Infolinks ..I would like to test on Kontera but I have no idea if it will works for me
I’m sure you will have tough time with Kontera also.
i recently register in infolinks but i never got some emails regarding about my application 🙁
It takes atleast 48 hrs to approe your app
thanks
Infolinks is another abomination in the long list of abominates that secretly and systematically steals your money from you. I recently disabled Infolinks from all my sites and begged them to close my account while keeping the whole shebang I earned and shamelessly they did so!
It began when I started receiving relentless emails from them saying I need to declare my Taxation through Infolinks through W8-BEN. I do submit them from year to year and after sending them copies of my W8-BEN forms repeatedly all I got was SQUAT! No Reply! No reasonable answer! instead I get same email for going down the memory lane again and again following the same steps….
This time I thought they better shut me down for good! Since they are not financially or most importantly not a bit morally backed up, they did the same without shame! So, The dime and time I lost don’t matter they proved themselves shamelessly to be ignorant and money laundering leeches!
STAY AWAY FROM INFOLINKS !!!
Hi everybody, nice article, last month I removed infolinks script from my website ( http://www.royalloops.com ) but after requesting from infolinks support to help in increasing my revenue by some changes to my website, now again I out it back for testing .
In the mean time I feel my visitors and adsense revenue is increased and after enabling infolinks again decreased. May be I will again remove it after one week of testing as nothing is improved after implement modifications suggested by infolinks team.
Very nice and informative information. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Infolinks is really bad when you don’t have good traffic. I only earn one cent for five or six clicks. 🙁
This post is really informative. Yesterday I activated infolinks. I hated the way they looks and seen links everywhere. Any way removing the infolinks ads. Thanks for the pros & cons section.
Hi Dinesh,
From my Experience I feel like Using infolink is a good option for making some extra bucks. Its pay rate is low when compared to adsense. I agree on what you said about increase in visitors will reduce the lose of visitors through infolink link ads. My blog have below 2000 hit and i get an average of 15 to 30 cents daily. one day i got 1.25$ when i received more than 80 link clicks. Infolink can be turned to a good income source if we get a lot of visitors. so i think increasing the visitos is important for the success of any monetizing technique.
Thanks
HI
One thing i feel when using Inflinks on websites are
1. the links are annoying to the user
2. Income rate is low
3. sometimes page side bars seems to be loading status ..trying to fetch infolinks JS file
thanks for share such a useful imformation about infolink.
Info links is contextual. If you have a good amount of writing on your site… lets say for example about loans or banks you can get $0.50 per click.
It’s all about keywords. If your site is full of keywords that are competitive like they pay $0.01 per click then you wont earn much.
You need like 20k page views per month in a high paying niche and you will earn well.