It would be nice if they would be at least more "open", and explain exactly what "curiosity clicks" are, and in general keep us, the publishers, in the loop, since we are like beta testers for them.
You can send your replies to the above blog post by chitika. I sent them my recommendation for improving the new format. I agree that they are now getting more valuable "clickers", but I told them I disagreed that a curious clicker was worth nothing. I suggested they try making different areas of the ad worth more per clicks than others. For instance, if a visitor clicks on the vendor name next to the price options, then that should be worth more than a general click around the image. But the curious click around the image should be worth something! I like their program, and hopefully they will improve it. But right now I can make more with TribalFusion banners, so I'm going back to them.
did any of you not see this coming? I have seen this occur from a number of ad agencies for years now.. back in the day doubleclick.net was one of the agencies who gave out tonnes of cash for ads.. webmasters in the late 90s were rolling in it and were quitting their full time jobs to become professional webmasters.. and to make things better webmasters were PAID by impressions!! not by clicks! how sweet was that? the ad revenues quickly diluted when more and more people caught on to this way of making money when revenues dilute the pay out to the individual is less. the same thing is happneing with eMiniMalls hence, ad revenues are a poor business model
Slightly off topic from this thread - but that's the most inaccurate statement I've read here in awhile. Look at all the major companies out there making serious $ off ad revenue.
Google's revenue was about $1.6 billion dollars last quarter. Gross profit about $920 million. That's almost 60% gross margin. Definitely not a good business model. We should all quit this nonsense and apply for jobs at Walmart. That's where the real money is. Cheers, Gary
That's good stuff Gary...=) The internet ad market is just starting to boom. 5 years from now when no one is watching commercials on tv (due to fast forwarding tivos), companies will be dropping more money into the one place everyone is spending more and more time every year, the web.
In regards to "seeing this coming". We've all seen hundreds of ad serving companies come and go. I get spam from a new startup every day wanting to run ads on my site. 90% don't have the customer base to make any money. That's where chitika is now. They don't have the luxury google or yahoo has of exposure with web properties and search engines, so they are basically just another small timer trying to make it.... Doesn't mean we won't give them a chance, but it does mean that they need to be competitive with their payouts in the "market" and not just competitve with their small set of advertisers. Long story short.... I don't think anyone banked on chitika being the next google. We tried them out, and are now just posting our results so others can learn from our experiences. We all still make excellent money with the big ad network companies....
Chitika have updated their blog to explain the curiousity clicks issue. It does appear that a lot of people misunderstood it.
My Chitika earnings have increase a bit. It is now about twice what I got during the first day that they changed the ad format. But it is still much, much lower that what I was getting before the BIG change. I hope with all these tweakings, Chitika would come up with a winning formula that would satisfy both publishers and advertisers.
It just keeps dropping. 4000 impressions on 11/7 paid 6.08 on 11/21 it paid 1.67 ... Forget it. It leeches from my adsense. If someone leaves my site I expect to be paid for it, period. Has anyone noticed that AdSense CTR drops significantly when you put Chitika on and then if you remove it your AdSense CTR does NOT improve? Looks like someone's being a bully. LOL.
I am currently running both Chitika and Google on my website and couldn't be happier. I actually just had my highest Chitika day yesterday.
I'm actually considering showing a bit more chitika again, I run 75% adsense and 25% chitika currently, and chitika brings in 90% of what adsense does. Just for the record if google is listening - I am _so_ tired of 1 and 3 cent clicks!
I had yesterday my best revenue for Chitika. But i spended a lot of time to test eminimall. Now, after I structured it, I'm able to personalized every eminimall with my post best keywords so I've a very targetted ads and my revenue is increased. Bye Fabio
Making the easy money from Chitika is gone I will admit. Now we have to start to really optimise our ads like everyone has with Google Adsense. With a little hard work and trial and error I am sure most of us can increase our Chitika earnings. I know that my site is still doing fine with Chitika. And I would never take the Chitika ads off of my pages.
Me neither. Except oddly enough the Chitika FAQ I choose not to put Chitika ads there...I just use pictures of them (One of the reasons is I don't know how to make it in Wordpress and am too lazy )
svz, I'm surprised somebody of your caliber doesn't know about the Chitika plugin for Wordpress available at http://x74.org/index.php/2005/10/02/eminimall-plugin-for-wordpress/ If you're too lazy with it, how much easier can adding <eminimalls/> at the end of the post be? You even get a button that does it for you!
I'm aware of the wordpress plugin I was trying to get it to work in PHPAdsnew I just didn't think it was right to put working ads on a chitika site so..I put adsense instead lol but....BUTTON?!!!? where!?!?!! i'll make an entry about it thanks!
This one. Highlighted in red by my superior graphic design skills Ignore the other one. It's for another plugin I was trying out but didn't like in the end.