Chitika Loses Some Credibility in My Book

There latest blog entry promotes Joel Comm's Chitika E-Book. I don't care if they like it. Their promoting of it makes them less credible in my book. I know they are trying to pump up their own service, but this is not the kind of association you trumpet.

 

Agreed ... but at least they aren't linking to the ebook with an affiliate id!

 

What they need to do is get a rep on here early and evolve much faster

 

Geez...can't help but agree. It looks so spammy!

 

Sometime back, I received an email from Chitika linking to one post on Darren's blog.

After the recent changes to Chitika eMinimalls, it looks like Chitika is fighting a lost battle to win back subscribers.

 

They lost me before ever getting the ads put up on my site.

 

Not for nuth'in....

BUT maybe they should try improving their "site approval" time.

I have applied and have been waiting days to hear if approved or not.

Certainly, if there is that much backlog of people applying to run their ads they hardly need to push for exponentially more requests that they cannot process in a timely fashion.

This is a credibility issue in and of itself.

Cart/Horse thing!

Caryl

 

With their site running on PostNuke, and their blog a WordPress generic template, do you get the feeling Chitika is run by a few young kids?

 

Caryl,

Have you followed up with them with no success? Initially they seemed to be responding to applications fairly quickly. Perhaps they are over-whelmed, but I know some people who followed up managed to wrangle an approval out of them.

By the way, I sent an e-mail to chitika with my feelings on this issue and I got into a bit more detail than I got into here. Suffice it to say that it does send the wrong message and it is not terribly useful. I would much more appreciate their blog being used to provide us publishers with tips and techniques to help improve our revenue than being an ad for some third-party trying to make a quick buck.

 

No, I have not emailed them to ask what is taking so long.

Regarding them pushing that e-book - to me it is just a lazy way to promote their product.

Maybe they will at least get an affiliates commission from sales of his book.

I did a "who is" look up to see if the two sites were affiliated but found nothing.

I did see some info regarding the author's site I find disconcerting, though.

tisk-tisk...

 

IMHO - its not really worth it. Personally, I like dealing with google as a publicly traded company instead of a start up I didn't hear of until a month or so ago.

My problem with Chikita is that it seems to use a dealtime (shopping.com) feed to serve the ads, so payouts are completely at the whim of shopping.com. If one day, shopping wants to lower bids to a section (which does happen) or they want to give chitika a smaller share of the bid, then can. There is no competition influence as there is in adsense - where advertisers choose the bids for the ads. Its totally at shopping.com's whim.

 

mcdar et al,

I got it in quickly but like with most new companies that get rave reviews in the beginning I join early just to establish an account then sit back and see what unfolds before I put them on larger sites. It's a good strategy and saves me days of waiting. When I am ready to use them my account is right there waiting for me.

 

It actually only took them a few days to approve my app (mid Oct I think)...but I've exchanged about a dozen e-mails with them trying to get contextual mode turned on. They told me on Oct 28 it would only take a day or two...still waiting. It's to the point now they don't even reply to my e-mails anymore.

I don't have much good to say about them at this point - very, very unprofessional.

 

They really have dropped the ball on the support front.

Sent them e-mail over a month ago, no reply.

Sent another one on a different topic about a week ago, no reply still, Open ticket untouched in their eSupport system...

I wish they'd get some extra staff to help out Michelle.

Unaudited revenue is looking good though.

 

In my opinion... Chitika = Game Over.

I think the person who stated that it may be run by a group of teenie boppers is correct. Postnuke... better have a good backup.

I'm patiently awaiting my 2nd audit, and my second to last check. They made too many extremely significant changes to the ads on my site without giving forewarning. They've made bad move after bad move from the very beginning, and I firmly believe that Chitika will disappear into the mist just as quickly as it came to light.

The EPC was way too high at first... we all knew it, but enjoyed it while it lasted. Where they dropped the ball was when the made changes to decrease the CTR of their ad. That's a no-no. I think that if they would have made changes to the payout per click rather than the CTR and overall clickability of the ad - they would have been much better off.

Just like a site in the Google SERPS... on top today, supplimental tomorrow

 

While we're speculating, I have a strong feeling that Chitika is looking to sell, sell, sell. And someone from G, Y! or MSN is likely to buy, buy, buy. Educated guess, take it FWIW.

 

I don't see what Chitika has that Google, Yahoo or MSN doesn't already have or could create themselves. What would they be buying?

Publishers ran to them because of all the high payout hype...which is dwindling away as fast as it surfaced.

 

Or eBay. They seem to be buying companies recently...

 

I don't see anyone buying them.

I think they are starting to die a slow death.

 

Judging from my referral revenue, I'd say Chitika is in good form. At least one of my referrals at least is earning $xxx per day with Chitika (how? Please tell )
I'm also getting things together on my end and experiencing growth. Chitika is doing much better for me than Google ever was or ever could.