My Chitika Experiment -- Seems to be Working...

First of all, let me say that I haven't experimented with Chitika nearly enough to be an expert or anything on it. I've put it on a few sites, and have done okay but not great (somewhere around $100 last month).

So I decided to put it to a test: instead of grouping a lot of keywords together (as I had originally done), I simply focused on three, for what I thought would be high-ticket items. They were "lcd tv", "plasma tv", "hdtv". That's basically all the keywords I gave it, so of course all the ads are for costly TVs.

So, the first day I did this, I got only 6 clicks -- but they were for .50-cents (on average) each! Basically that comes out to $3, and I had only put the codes on 10% of this particular site. Needless to say, I've now put Adsense codes on more of this site, to see if higher impressions translate into higher earnings.

Just thought I'd share. Let me know if anyone wants me to keep up to date on this via this thread and I'll do so.

 

Thanks for the tip!

 

Great tip, thanks jackburton!

 

Hey JB. Yes I would like to monitor your progress... your findings...
thank you in advance

 

What I do is I only use one keyword per ad unit, then I channel that add using the name of my keyword (also use categories just in case nothing is found). I have about 20 different ads in 20 different channels so when I check the stats and the CPC of one keyword falls I replace it with the ad that gives the higher CPC at the time. The products I use are all similar so by changing them I don't get any big changes in CTR. Hope that makes sense

 

nice tip ... me too gonna do that thanks

 

JB I would also be interested in the follow up. I have not joined chitika yet but considering it.

 

would chitika non-contextual ads be a viable option for a blog where the adsense contextual ads only ever bring up 'blog' type ads? I'm loving adsense but there is no harm in diversifying

 

Yes, but...

Before you give up on AdSense, you should try section targeting to see if that will get rid of your off-topic ads.

 

Give it a try. Why not? Just allot a space for it.

 

Jack is right. Instead of "before", I should have recommended doing these concurrently.

 

Will, I'm actually using section targeting at present on the entire content column, I'm thinking that might not be working, but this seems to be the wrong thread to discuss that, if you have any advice on how I could improve it I'd be happy to hear it.

Getting back to Chitika, I've emailed them to to see if they think my content would appeal to any of their advertisers. I know I might get a standard reply, but on the other hand they might take some interest in my activities. You never know where your next really solid business relationship will come from.

 

So you cannot use Chitika WITH adsense ?

 

Yes, you can, but only if you use the default setting, which is non-contextual. If you set the Chitika code to contextual, then you can't use it with Adsense.

 

Quality information here, I'll be applying today.

 

I've also used a group of popular keywards like "digital cameras".
But CTR is aiming to zero. Best ones are Adsense and Adbrite for me.

 

I've had decent luck w/ it. My click through rate is fairly low,but the ads are buried on a low traffic page(but growing). I am pleased w/ the pay rate though. All in all, it's hard to beat Adwords through.

 

there is no way to alter the code to make it contextual. so it is always adsense compatible.
Chitika only offers contextual targeting to users with 10,000,000 page views a mth.

 

CPC will be high with LCD, but CTR absolute crap. They kind of balance each other out

 

Thanks for the tip!