Found this article on ezinearticles... Its a shame that something that started out so well has more or less bombed. Well, maybe not bombed, but I'm certain there are many publishers going back to their pre-Chitika ad schemes... - Will
I posted a comment to the entry that Will linked to above. There is probably a good chance my comment won't be approved or will be deleted, so I will post some of it here. People can have their own opinions about the product, however when the facts listed are completely false I tend to disregard the opinion. As has been said time and time again, Chitika works very well on some sites, very poorly on others. It depends on the topic of your site and where your traffic comes from. Don't put all of your eggs into one advertising basket. Test. If the ads don't work well, move on or go back to something that does.
Chitika has been good to me as a supplement to Adsense. If a page can benefit from some of the product-specific ads that Chitika runs, it's worth adding. For the right page, Chitika is worthwhile.
I removed adsense ads from one of my sites and implement Chitika fully... That worked fine... But after 2 months...at the time of payment Banned without reasons... I lost much dollars (pre-audit) My another site gives me more than $4000 (2 months) thro adsense... return back to adsense.. -------------------------- Lesson I learned from chitika : Dont fully trust a progarm which is in beta...
Its has been approved and very good answered by Dan. Your comments were very bad in my opinion: - You told that his is blamming Chitika and he still recommend the product - Based in what? - You told that the month is wrong - base in what? - You told that they should know that they would lost up to 90% of they revenue if they read their TOS. Nice Article, bad comments.
big mistake is displaying numbers and than cut those numbers . you feel like someone took that money from your pocket
I had read the TOS and contract and I was pushing my Chitika aff link. Took it off my sig here this AM. While I had expected audits and changes, that's not what I'm PO'd about. "Curiosity Clicks"? That was not in the contract or TOS - as long as a click is not fraud, the whole point of running a CPC ad is to be paid for every legal click, curiosity or not. Heck, AdSense encourages finding ways to make the ad interesting enough to take a look - but you can't suggest a click - just serve it up in an delicious way. "Chargebacks to merchants"? Read their own blog, they talk about audits relating to merchant chargebacks. Where in the TOS or contract are we publishers supposed to bear the burden of a merchant accepting a bad purchase? This is a CPC contract, not CPA. Their support completely sucks too. Incomplete or arrogant responses to e-mails. No responses to requests. Click fraud ain't the problem, Chitika fraud may be.
My experience with Chitika was not enjoyable...they booted me out for "fraudulant clicks". Which is shocking to me, no explanation of dates of occurrences, nothing. Money gone. I emailed them back to see if they could be more specific...no response and that's over a month ago. Some people report good experiences with Chitika, others like me poor. Maybe they have to boot a few people out each month, so they can meet payment for the rest of the group. Probably shouldn't have said that....but I'm still PO'd that I never got a response back as to what my "fraudulant activity" was or where it came from. I try to be honest and ethical with anything that I do...I guess that's what ticks me the most, that I've been accused of being a "bad boy". The concept of Chitika is great and I hope that most publishers find success with the program.
Although this is no consolation, other networks (like Google) don't discuss explanations, dates, or occurrences either.
I have been surprised by my Chitika experience, to say the least. I started using product-specific links (as I use Adwords contextual links) on my site, and I did receive payment for my first month's advertising on 1st December 2005. Unfortunately, January came around, and no payment. On 12th Jan I received the following email from Chitika:- We are sending this message to inform you that your account ID: xxxx has been suspended. Traffic analysis for your account highlighted plausible fraudulent activity or a breach of our terms and conditions and we are suspending your account until we resolve this issue. We are also working with our ad partners to reject all fraudulent clicks and refund the amounts. Please remove our code from your web pages immediately. You will not be paid for any fraudulent traffic or for any traffic going forward. --- To say I was perturbed is to put it mildy. I had not been engaged in any activity that could be considered fraudulent. My click through figures were pretty much in line with the previous month's. And before anyone starts to wonder how many thousands of dollars I must have been making from Chitika...my first month's earnings were in the region of $50! The figures I were being being shown on my Chitika account for impressions etc all looked sensible to me and tied in with the numbers I was getting both from Adsense and the stats counter I used. Something was wrong. So I tried to log in to my Chitika account to check things. Suspension really did mean suspension, though. I could no longer get into my account to verify my numbers. I emailed Chitika, asking for further explaination. It's now 2 weeks later, and Chitika's customer support has not seen seen fit to reply to any of my 3 emails, nor to explain what they think may be fraudulent about my figures. If Chitika are going to throw claims of "possible fraudulent activity" at people, they should at least have the professionalism to respond to queries I have regarding such claims. The Chitika honeymoon is over for me.
Yesterday I sent Chitika another request for follow-up on a support item open since November. It seems pretty arrogant for them to shut an account down with the modest activity you describe without a willingness to engage you in why they reached that conclusion given their record of getting so very much wrong. I'm no fan of either AdSense or AdWords support either - but if you are an AdWords customer, you can track a phone number down and sometimes find someone who will "own" your issue until it gets resolved. Might I suggest calling Chitika's advertising telephone number and trying to run it to ground that way? Good luck - and while I've not been "whacked" by either firm, I feel your pain. It would not surprise me in the least if at some point in the future one or both firms are subjected to class action lawsuits from publishers. Perhaps with the aid of some state's attorney general. I'm all for them protecting themselves and their advertisers from fraud - I use AdWords and stayed away from "content" inventory 100% out of this very concern, but they also have an affirmative obligation to treat publishers fairly by first "noticing" and then trying to work what they perceive to be a problem out.
Makes me real glad I didn't give in to the hype on this thing. All the affiliates were really pimping this thing up. Though honestly I lucked out, because the main reason I didn't bother to test it out was laziness I can only imagine the frustration and headaches and lost time I would've experienced if I bothered to try these bums out.
This practice of Google is as fair as the one of chasing a bad guy and burning down a building with all occupants in it in order to eliminate him. Luckily for those kicked out Google Adsense, the latter ones don't have the right and the power to send you to Guantanamo for fraudulent clicks. Time for some regulations on this issue in this business I think.