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Mini Chitika Update
Felicia | Oct 11, 2012 | Comments 7
I usually don’t like to share updates on experiments in progress because I’ve found initial results aren’t always the same as final results, but I was so surprised at the initial results I decided to share my findings so far.
Keep in mind this experiment is very young.
What I did:
- On a couple of my blogs, I moved the Chitika ads from second or third position in the right-hand column to top billing. It’s still in the right-hand column but now it’s the first of all my widgets (I did this on 3 blogs).
- At the encouragement of the Chitika team (after reading my last blog post), I implemented Chitika’s new app called Chitika Hover. They also have another app called Chitika Highlight that works when readers highlight text from your blog post for copy and pasting, but I didn’t implement that. I’ve disabled text copying on those particular blogs.
Conditions out of My Control
As I’ve said before, my traffic is plummeting, partially because of Google algorithm changes and partially because I haven’t added any new content to my blogs in months. So, with plummeting traffic I would expect income to plummet too. My traffic is much lower this month than it was last month this time.
Early Results
My Chitika income for the first 10 days of this month is 59% higher than it was for the first 10 days of last month. No matter how you slice the pie, those are nice results. The best part about this is I did precious little to see such dramatic results. I’m hoping the trend continues.
Related Topics
Filed Under: Chitika • Earning Money
Hi Felicia,
I’m so glad to read that you’re having a great experiment with Chitika thus far. We will be released our Chitika Linx ad units soon, which are in-text ad units that hyperlink targeted words in your text to CPC ads. Keep an eye out for them – since you have a lot of text on your sites, they could work great for you! Email me at srios@chitika.com if you ever have any questions.
Sarah
Thanks Sarah. I’ll keep an eye out.
Congrats on your early Chitika-experiment success, Felicia. I think I’m already signed up for an account. Maybe I need to actually add the ads to my blogs now.:) There’s just so much to do…
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You are so wise Felicia. I come to you for wisdom and am never disappointed.
Take care,
Joni
Hi Felicia,
I’m actually in the middle of a Chitika experiment myself. Surprisingly to me, many of the ads that show are relevant to my Android site. However, I find a lot of the time the ads are just “lost”. Like your page here for instance. Since I didn’t come here via a search term, the Chitika ad is based off basically ONLY the post title, and since “mini” is in the title it’s showing an ad for Minicoops. LOL… At other times on my site it is just really bad. With titles like (for instance) “My 5 Favorite Peaches: the Chitika ad will be “Find MY 5 FAVORITE PEACHES at”…blah blah blah.
I do look forward to linx, though. Infolinks doesn’t really work well on the site and I’m hoping that Chitika’s rep for handling tech type sites well proves true.
Ken
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Hey Ken,
I don’t know why, but you ended up in my spam folder.
It’s funny, when I implement an ad program, I usually check to make sure the ads are family friendly. If they fit that criteria, I set it and forget it. Every so often I check to make sure they haven’t slipped into the gutter, but that’s about it.
I don’t sell any products on my sites, just information. I’m always surprised when folks click on ads from my sites. I try to provide all the information they need in my content but I guess they still want more so they find what they want (hopefully) by going to advertisers sites.
Some ad programs work better with certain sites (although they all seem to work well on tech and financial sites). As far as I’m concerned, no advertisers work well with NJFM. I have a few other sites where I’ve placed ads and if I ever earn a dime from them I’m surprised, but I leave the ads there for those “just in case” times.
As far as Infolinks, they’ve been holding steady too. My biggest fluctuation is Google AdSense (YIKES—I just sat on a pair of my reading glasses and broke them into 3 pieces. Fortunately, just like advertisers, I have several other pair…I digress). My AdSense income is a fraction of what it was before and still dropping. I’m glad I stuck with Infolinks and Chitika.
Felicia,
Thanks for the update. Those are very encouraging results.