Bye-Bye Chitika!

Wow, I got more clicks than what I got before they did this update. Thats really weird.

 

Just noticed a RED BOX next to my post... can someone please offer me why this has happened... I don't believe I post enough to warrant such a reaction... and by whom????

 

Somebody disagreed with you and negatively voted your post, if the comment was blank then it's pretty pointless IMO. I think you'll find you're back in the green now

 

So terrible!
I just submit a account of Chitika.

 

I'm giving them a few more days before I completely pull the plug. I don't know about most of you, but I trust short term stats (4-5 days) just as much as long term stats. I watched my earnings go from steady xx.xx/day to low x.xx a day immediately following this change. They have until Tuesday with my site(s). I can make more with cheap banner CPMs from tribal fusion.

 

I'm thinking of dropping Chitika as well, but not because of this change. Any change in CTR is hard to gauge accurately for me, since my best day ever might have been 3 clicks. I don't have a huge amount of traffic to any of my sites, but my best CTR has been in the range of 0.3%, while AdSense has hit 10% or more on some days. Chitika CTR just seems bad to me overall, regardless of any changes they made to what part of the ad unit can be clicked on.

Everyone talks about how Chitika pays more per click, but I haven't seen it. Maybe I just have good topics for AdSense or something, but my AdSense clicks average maybe twice what I get for Chitika.

Oh well, guess I'll wait around a little while longer and see what happens.

 

While we're ranting about Chitika, another thing I've noticed is that, at least for my Playstation blog, their "Best Deals" are usually horrible deals. I guess you take the advertisers you can get, but I think CTR (and probably their conversions) would go up sharply if I weren't advertising a PSP for nearly $300. Sheesh.

 

Good point, Gary.

We publishers do not have any control over the sale process. The ads may not convert because the deals are awfully bad or because the ordering process is not smooth or because this advertiser does not have a good reputation. There could be 1000+ reasons why they do not convert, and that should not be taken as a factor that affects payments to publishers.

I personally think that Chitika owes publishers a pretty darn good explanation of how exactly they define those “curiosity clicks”. If it is what it sounds like now, this program has no future.

 

I'm starting to think the only way this program is gonna work is if you actually create a Chitika scraper page!
No limit on ads, right?

So in essence, someone could turn this into an Amazon type products page, with categories of product and the like.
Takes care of curiosity clicks, as your visitors are there to find something specific- and the advertiser wins.

Makes me wonder how many ChitScrapers are out there- must be many, because nobody else is doing squat with it.

 

Yeah only problem with your trust level is one thing is much more statistically accurate than the other.

 

Of course that statement is not true.. but feel free to throw it around if you like.

 

OK- you're right, some are getting visitors to click.
However, in reading numerous forums it's obvious there are many that are disgruntled.

 

I think everyone should relax a bit. They are still tweaking it. I myself made the suggestion they should make the clickable part more obvious by css style hover highlights on mouseover or something.
I don't know if they'll get back to me on that but at least I tried.

 

I think the whole "curiosity" issue is a bad one. Advertisements are supposed to make people curious. The advertisement brings the person in to see the sales letter or the merchandise..

Don't feel bad. I had 65778 impressions yesterday and received 20 clicks... I do much better with Adsense...

 

Is that you in your avatar? You're freaking huge!

 

That's very true. If there's too much control or too much filtering of supposedly "curiosity clicks" it's inevitable many other "interested clicks" would be lost.

 

I noticed a decrease in CTR in the stats for a day following their announcement but they've sinced made a few more changes to ad units which have seen my CTR increase to just under what is was before.

I personally think that we all need to remember that eMiniMalls are still in the early phases and that they are obviously still in tweaking mode. While I was disappointed with the drop in CTR I had to remind myself that the results for me were still much better than any other ad system that I use.

I also had to remind myself that while I want them to look after publishers first (because that means they are looking after me) that they have to look after advertisers also. If they don't - advertisers will leave - click values will fall - ad relelvancy will drop and we all suffer.

As much as it sucks - I'm willing to take a bit of a hit now so that they can build a longer term more sustainable system in the long term.

 

There are so many other programs out there that perform much better. The only reason they are still out there is because of their referral program; many participants push the program hoping to get a referral click but do not really believe in the program.

 

I am taking a wait and see approach to this. I have decided to keep my Chitika ads in the same placement as before all the changes. Although CTR has decreased I am still making more with Chitika than I was with Adsense.

I have found that Chitika works especially well on forums as well.

 

I think that that statement is a bit of a generalisation. As Usedmac says - I have some sites where eMiniMalls completely out perform anything else that I've ever found. There are some where it doesn't work so well - but I wouldn't want to make such a sweeping statment.