Kontera Launch Referral Program – Kontera have now finally launched an email based referral program that pays a one off payment of US$25 for each new publisher to the Kontera ContentLink program.

So if you want to get started inviting friends, simply login to the Kontera Publisher Center, click the My Account tab, then select Invite a Friend, you will be presented with the Kontera invite a friend form as shown in figure 1 below, allowing you to enter your friends email addresses and customize your welcome message to them.

Figure 1 Kontera’s Invite a Friend Referral signup forum

The new Kontera referral program is a welcome addition for publishers that earn less than US$100 but having said that I have some concern over how Kontera have setup and operate this new program, my concerns listed below:

• The referral fee is only payed out if your friend reaches 50,000 impressions within 60 days of joining.

Granted most serious bloggers should easily achieve the 50,000 impressions within 60 days, but as with most things I have friends and readers that are just staring and might take a little more than 60 day to achieve the required 50,000 impressions, I also know of some that will sign up but take their time in implementing either because they are assessing other solutions or  

• No URL tracking referral tracking code, tracking is performed based on the email you enter into the Invite a Friend form that is pictured above.

This system makes it near impossible to refer readers of blogs and websites, unless you operate and your readers are subscribed to a mailing list.  

This is a big failing point of Kontera’s Invite a Friend email based referral program, one example is if two different publishers invite the same friend via the same email address. Which referrer gets the $25.

Now it’s a little known fact that Kontera already have a referral program but it was targeted at high traffic publishers, earning at least US$100 every month from the Kontera program, but it uses a URL based tracking code allowing publishers to promote Kontera directly from their blog or website.

It’s good that Kontera are now opening referrals to all of its publishers but I think they seriously need to fix the two points above by  firstly implementing a referral system that allows a referral commission to be earned for refered users who might take longer than 60 day to achieve the 50,000 required impressions. Finally Kontera's email based referal system needs to be changed to a URL based referral tracking code system.

If you would like to join the kontera program, use the following URL to go to the Kontera signup page, Kontera's ContentLink program is one of my favorite money making programs, one that I have implamented across the majority of my sites.