http://chitika.com/blog/?p=30 Yes, it has changed but the original design had non paying clickable elements in the ad! Who would design a PPC ad that has non paying elements in the first place? That really bothers me. Yes, it could be said that it is good they changed it, but what kind of thinking designed it that way in the first place? Edited for clairity (I hope).
Perhaps you are correct. The quote from Chitika is ambiguous though and could be interpreted either way. Originally you were paid for clicks on the title. So the remaining question is how much time were you not getting paid for those clicks while they were still on the ads. I don't think either of us will be able to answer that question. And thankfully that part is behind us anyway. Thanks for providing the additional clarification.
I'm still undecided on whether Chitika will come through or not. Personally, I can't see what the fact that it's run/owned by an indian has to do with anything. I know quite a few Indians (ie people originating in India not people that live in teepee's) and they are some of the hardest working and sharpest business people I know - I mean sharp in a good way. I don't like the way of disregarding clicks from certain countries - you gotta get smarter at detecting fraud than that. At the moment I'm standing at about $200 unaudited - not much, but using it hasn't caused adsense to drop in anyway. Be interesting to see what the audited out come is.
I could be wrong, but I'm not sure fraud is 100% of the reason they don't accept traffic from certain countries. I think it has more to do with the advertisers. Since many of the advertisers do not ship to those countries they don't want to pay for advertising to people in those countries. This goes along with items in Chitika's blog where they talk about supporting clicks from more countries now that they have secured advertisers in those countries. I don't think it is because they realized people from those countries were okay. http://chitika.com/blog/?p=27 But I've been wrong before!
The idea that an advertiser won't ship to a certain country is complete and utter bollox. hmmm, on second thoughts perhaps it's not. I tend to forget about embargoes and such like. But I've yet to come across a seller that won't ship using fedex - esp' if I specify it's shipped on my account number - and I've had stuff shipped to numerous countries around the world.
Even without embargoes, looking at the stores who have ads with Chitika (at least on my sites) I know many of them only ship to the USA, Canada, and some the UK. Some don't ship outside of the USA. Again, this is where Google's automation comes through. Advertisers can pick what countries they want their ads displayed in. Chitika is just getting started with geo-targeting.
I've experimented with the ad on Chitika's front page to see if any of the advertisers ship out of the US and I've yet to find one except for the few French ads I've found which are starting to increase. Mostly though at the moment it's very insular. Anyway, who cares about embargos. If someone from say, Syria or Cuba wanted my product and paid for the shipping, I'd send it to them. How can your business grow if you restrict your customer base?
me too This thread reminded me I still need to take down a couple chitika recruitment links. I may not have much faith in chitika, but I have faith in the market. One thing chitika proved is; there are a lot of webmasters ready to jump on a program with high hopes. Does it really take a management team from the likes of google, msn or yahoo for a new ppc program to succeed? I think the time is still ripe for an enterprising team to skyrocket from nowhere. The demand is strong enough chitika almost made it. (maybe they still will) Will another company see this and make the changes needed to catch this wave? Then again, I don't really know the numbers. I don't know the programming, the marketing budget needed, the hardware overhead...come to think of it, I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about! Maybe it does take big corporate resources and bucks to pull something off like that. But the dreamer in me says two clever teenagers can do it in their garage with computers they pulled out of the high school dumpster. They just have to be really clever.
The problem with chitika is that it cant pay that much...but to come in limelight and in competition of google and yahoo it shows more money/click than actually it can pay..for a newcomer like chitika advertisers are not going to pay that much..so first chitika counts clicks from few countries(which many ppc are doing nothing new)..after that to balance its budget it starts to sing the song of audit and non-audit...and in the end if ur avg ppc was 1$ it would become 0.3 or 0.35$...so all the dramas of audit and non-audit takes place..however chitika still have chance..this time it can audit less to stay competitive in market for next 3 months..lets see what happens
I am sorry i have hurt some of the member with my comment.Actually i was not meaning what it actually meant by comments above . Sorry.