Forum Moderators: skibum
Chitika just announced that they are eliminating "curiosity clicks" from our revenues. Great. Who gets to decide what differentiates a "curiosity click" from an advertiser whose site just sucks and can't convert? Not us, that's for sure.
I spent probably a hundred hours putting up highly targeted ads on most of my pages. CTR and revenues were building nicely, then this. Whack! CTR cut in half, revenues by more than that. And just a casual blog post from them to announce it. Ho hum. Just another scam. Back to YPN!
The "business" who tried to compete with Google and lured a lot of publishers with competitive EPC, gives them 20-30% of their earnings because they (publishers) were not competent!?
Only webmasters who don't know any better or are incompetent get lured (or those that know better but are driven by short term greed.
For those of us who have been around a long time, (or even a short time), we know that everything is always changing, often not for the good. Screaming and yelling and whining (and accusing companies of fraud) is really a waste of time.
Let's see. Recently:
Fastclick changed their referral payout retroactively.
Adsense introduced smart pricing (and changes things constantly)
Search engines change all the time (algos)
If people haven't figured that out, and can't handle that reality, perhaps they should be doing something else, because succeeding in this business requires fast response to constant change.
Almost EVERY program, in or out of beta, changes. If you don't expect a beta program to change, then you are lacking in experience.
I was really suspicious about the business who's domain's whois shows hotmail as registrant's contact address, but still gave them a try.
Anybody seen a decent analysis of Chikita as a company, I don't seem to be able to find much of substance
Sure, It used to be easier to make money using Adsense before smart pricing was about. But when it appeared at least web publishers knew about it - even if they didn't understand its inner workings.
The reason people are complaining right now is because Chitika's whole business model seemed to rely on deceiving web publishers for as long as they possibly could. Even the audited stats were pushed right to the last possible hour.
Are we driven by greed? Perhaps, I have days were I will only be getting less than $200 for days which were in 4 figures. With no reasoning behind it. But I'm not shocked; I was prepared for something like this. It seems Chitika won here, made a lot of money and will probably bail out soon.
By the way - does anybody mentioned that EPC is dropping in Chitika?
The reason people are complaining right now is because Chitika's whole business model seemed to rely on deceiving web publishers for as long as they possibly could. Even the audited stats were pushed right to the last possible hour.
You weren't decieved by anyone but yourself. You knew the deal going in. If you feel deceived it's you that made assumptions.
I'm mailing the cheese and a rattle out in the morning to all complainers.
PS. Noticed that there seems to be a tendency for a person who complains and yells fraud about one program, to also have complained and yelled about fraud in the past on this board, about OTHER programs.
PPS. I'm fine with people expressing their frustration, but calling a company "suckers", or accusing them of fraud (can you spell slander and libel) are the marks of an amateur, and a childish one at that.
Anyhow, that's it for me on this topic.
If we're here, we're greedy - we enjoy making money. A smart person doesn't keep all their eggs in one basket and takes a little risk every once in a while. It almost seems like you minimized your risk just so you could hang out here w/ your "told you so" attitude... If you're here, you're either greedy (and a hypocrite), or you're a troll.
Anybody seen a decent analysis of Chikita as a company, I don't seem to be able to find much of substance.
Now, for anyone interested in setting up similar business practices, I would suggest the folowing scenario. You don't need Shopping.com's database as the backbone at all.
- Sign up as an affiliate with CJ, LS and other marketing networks and/or directly with the merchants.
- Make a database of all products you want to deal with based on different datafeeds or make a software which could access the datafeeds on the fly.
- Make a simple banner with a few tabs (description, best price, etc) which would pull the data from different merchants.
- At this point you already have advertisers, so your efforts should be directed towards publishers; lure them with some beta program which shows them high earnings on either ppc or comission basis.
- At the end of the month, calculate how much each of the publishers has brought in and split the profit at whatever ratio you want.
Of course, make the offical corrections in earnings using whatever excuse you want as you were not entitled to explain anything to anybody.
- Attack those filthy whining publishers complaining about your business model in different forums or just wait; there is always some kid playing around and talking business who will do it for you.
Well. this will surely last not too long, but you'll make good money in short period of time.
And maybe, you'll even have some satisfied successfull publishers, praising you and staying with you forever.
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Only intermediar company like Chitika.
Now let's think - do we need Chitika at all?
This is pure CPA CPL models which is distributed by means of CPC model.
If your site is earning decent money with
adsense or chitika finally means your site is converting.
We all could do it directly. I will think about it.
My adsense compain brings only under 10Cents clicks.
Even direct advertising could bring more.
Anybody seen a decent analysis of Chikita as a company, I don't seem to be able to find much of substance.
Thanks for that link. Not much there about them - it talks about the ads, not the company.
When you think about it, its quite weird that there is virtually nothing about them as a company available, except for a hotmail address on Whois.
It would appear that perhaps publishers have put their faith in a chimera.
It would appear that perhaps publishers have put their faith in a chimera.
Or Cheatika?
I was really suspicious about the business who's domain's whois shows hotmail as registrant's contact address, but still gave them a try.
Check the whois information on domains they've registered recently, such as eminimalls.com, for more corporate/non-hotmail.com registrant information.
Long story - short, AdSense does not work for me as I maxed out the 200 url block and YPN displays "loans" ads on my gadgit site...
I will be testing Chitika in the next few weeks and was wondering if anyone had some input as to how they perform on forum sites?
I do not think that bad IP's will be an issue, as I can display a different ad.
Any thoughts? Chitika on forums?
I used Chit exclusively on forums, and up until their Curiosity Click adjustment it was handily outperforming the next best ad program I'd found, AdSense. But after that adjustment Chit went way downhill -- well below AdSense levels -- so I returned to AdSense.
Then I got my Chitika audit and lost 38% of earnings, which is better than many fared. Try to get into the YPN beta.
Has anyone received their payment yet?
Received my payment on 12/1/2005.
Check Chitika's Blog for detailed information about their auditing and related Chitika processes.
