Hey here’s a smart idea you thought.
Why don’t I register as my own affiliate, and put up both ads on my site? Then I’d make an extra 10%!
Firstly this is immoral and wrong, secondly it’s against their Terms of Service for the affiliate program.
“Affiliates may not refer other websites that they own in full or in part.”
Don’t do it.
Add comment November 22nd, 2005
As some of you maye have seen on some forums and web master sites, Chitika recently redesigned their ads to lower the amounts of “Curiosity Clicks”
What really happened?
The format of the displayed Chitika ads was changed. That’s it. Auditing policy is still the same.
What exactly changed?
The entire banner is now no longer a link, the description of the product is no longer a link, and the image is no longer a link. All other features have remained the same
Will I lose money because of this?
Most likely you’ll lose a bit. It’s ‘harder’ to click since the window is now smaller, but if your viewers are genuinely interested in the clicks, they’ll still click. It’s the accidents and the ‘Woah, what’s this?’ clicks that will be reduced.
This might change in the future - Remember Chitika is still in beta, they’re still ironing out problems.
At the end of the day, Chitika caters to the advertisers, not the publishers. Just like all the other ad networks.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
In terms of raw potential, Chitika has the most at the moment. It’s still a medium sized network, hasn’t had a lot of publicity and isn’t backed by a larger entity.
Google Adsense currently has the lowest rates, and also has the Smart Pricing feature - which reduces your pay cheque based on how well your site converts. They have the most ads, and the best contextual targeting. This means higher click through rate usually.
Yahoo Publisher Network is still in it’s beta phase and is currently only available to those from the United States. Your ads are slightly customizable, but their targeting isn’t as good. Your click through rate will most likely be lower than Google Adsense, but each click is worth more.
Chitika is extremely new and word is just spreading about it. Chitika’s ads come mainly from Amazon and other large online merchant networks. Each of your clicks is usually worth a lot, 3-4 times more than Google and Yahoo. The problem is that they’ve introduced a different ad banner. Click through is low unless your site is optimized towards it.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
This is a design choice which is up to you.
However, you may notice Chitika has some beveling and detailing on their ads, which looks bad and sloppy when the ad background is the same as the website’s background.
It needs a little bit of definition for the design effect Chitika created to look attractive and not cheap.
How can this be applied without making it a completely contrasting color?
Make the background just a few shades lighter (preferable) or darker than your background.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
Chitika allows you to customize which fonts you’d like to display their ads with.
You can use this to blend the ads even more seamlessly with your site’s text.
To begin, input these two lines in to your Chitika ad code.
ch_font_text ="";
ch_font_title = "";
Type in the name of the font which you’d like to use within the quotations.
The font text, and the font title can be set independently.
You can also list multiple fonts by placing a , comma between them. For example: “Arial, Arial Black, Microsoft Sans Serif”
This will allow an optional font in case others are not available on the user’s computer. If none of them are available it will display Chitika’s default font.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
One of Chitika’s cool features is that it has mouse over tags, which switch and provide extra information to the user.
You’ll need to add this ch_default_tab = ""; line of code in to your Chitika ad code.
Of course fill in the “” with which tab you want it to default with.
Best Deals, Search - For 160 x 160 ad units
Specs, Deals, Search - For smaller ad units
Descriptions, Best Deals, Reviews, Search - For larger ad units
Add comment November 21st, 2005
This is up to you, try doing both with a rotation and seeing which one works better for you. In my opinion, yes, it looks more attractive and gives you more information about where the ad is coming from. If it’s from a site like Amazon, people are more likely to trust it. Sally’s Jewerly Shack? Maybe just leave it on the default.
Related Posts:
How do I make another tab the default?
Add comment November 21st, 2005
Don’t bother, not very effective and you can pick better high paying keywords by putting in some time. Imagine if Adsense or YPN let you do that.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
Or does your site suck for Chitika? What kind of sites do well with Chitika? Review sites, product blogs. News sites, and scrapers don’t work well. Neither do SEO and webmaster forums either.
If you got a product to hock or talk about, Chitika will do well for you if you optimize.
3 comments November 21st, 2005
Rotate them. Create a list of 2-3 keywords that you can use, you can use a randomizing script to create a unique keyword list. Replace them about every 2 weeks.
Add comment November 21st, 2005
