Chitika: Don’t Blame Them

by Paul on December 2nd, 2005

If you keep up with the web world you should know by now the commotion that has been stirred up for people who use Chitika on their sites and all I have to say is nobody out there should really be mad at them. Why? Well because the warning signs of something shady have been out there since day one, but most people were so quick to jump on the numbers bandwagon that they didn’t take the time to think of what might happen to them in the future.

Sit back and think about it for a second. Chitika from my understanding put affiliate ads up for sites like Amazon and Buy.com. If these companies weren’t paying Chitika to get their ads up there then Chitika was simply looking to make some affiliate cash from it. How many people clicking on those ads do you think actually bought an item and therefore giving Chitika the kickback they needed to cover their publishers? (Again I could be totally wrong about their business model and if so my apologies)

Since Chitika’s services are on-demand services, as soon as you implement one of them on your web pages and your users start clicking, you start earning revenue (it’s a Pay-Per-Click program.) Chitika will pay you 60% of Chitika’s revenue.

So maybe that just means you only earn 60% of what Chitika actually makes from the ad and not 60% of what the clicks produce. Now I definitely could be wrong and these companies are actually paying Chitika to have their products in the system, but nothing that I have read or seen on the Chitika site would leave me to believe that.

The Website

(Love when companies don’t update their Copyright statemen, especially when 2006 is almost here)

Have seen the website? The backend? How can you have any trust in something with a backend designed like that and running on PostNuke? When someone is dealing with my paychecks I like to see a bit more professionalism put into their presentation to garner some trust from me and I expect many of you are the same way.

On the topic of the website does anyone see a place for Advertisers to signup? What kind of ad company doesn’t have a place where Advertisers can signup? Oh, the type that just run affiliate ads I suppose.

The Audit System

How this wasn’t a red flag to 99% of the people out there from the beginning is beyond me. Sure they say their audit system is meant to kill clicks from duplicate IPs and Asian countries, but what is to say they aren’t auditing other things like who makes a lot of money and who doesn’t?

Conspiracy Time: What is to stop them from making sure that Darren’s account doesn’t see that much of a drop because he is a big advocate of the service and writes about it extensively?

At most I will give you a day to figure out my earnings. Amazon does it so I have no problem with Chitika doing it. However, I don’t want to wait a day to figure out one set of earnings and then 30 days to figure out another set. That just screws with one’s business too much.

Too Fast, Too Furious

Did anyone else notice how fast these ads popped up on people’s sites? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to do an invite program or something instead of letting the whole web jump on instantly? Unless you know the company has the immediate funds to cover all those people you had to be a little suspicious.

When people start talking about $200-$700 days how long do you think that would last? The web fooled itself and then turned around to blame Chitika for taking away their magic numbers. I’m not saying Chitika shouldn’t take the fall for this, but they also didn’t hide anything from Publishers that I know of. Everyone knew about audits. Everyone could see shady dealings happening. The signs were right there in front of everybody.

Take the time to understand what you are getting into without simply relying on what others are saying. If you are trying to make money from your site then be more subjective and scrutinize every company that wants to help you make money. Maybe you will be less disappointed next time.

Jennifer Grucza
Dec 2, 2005 at 3:47 pm

I was under the impression that their back-end tied into shopping.com or dealtime.com. I’m pretty sure these sites (and others like them) have deals with partners for pay-per-click advertising (not commission-based). I don’t see why Chitika wouldn’t have gone for some sort of pay-per-click model, where they just skim off a portion for themsevles from each click. If that’s the case, I have no idea why they’re auditing out so many clicks. Maybe their partner(s) are driving it, but I wouldn’t have thought it would be so excessive.
Cowboy
Dec 2, 2005 at 3:58 pm

Just seems like a get rich quick scheme put on by some kid in basement who is now planning his exit strategy as we speak.
Scrivs
Dec 2, 2005 at 4:36 pm

Well it’s tough to say what will happen, but I don’t think I have ever seen people drop a program so quickly. If they do have a partnership for CPC ads then I would think the companies controlling the backend would be able to do the auditing. Of course I’m not a backend type of guy so I am just speculating.
Ara Pehlivanian
Dec 2, 2005 at 5:46 pm

Hah, now I’m glad they rejected me as a candidate. :-)

Doesn’t say much for me though, but hey, whatever. Screw’em, I always thought their tabbed ads looked like crap. ;-)
Chuck Lawson
Dec 2, 2005 at 7:57 pm

So far, I guess I’m one of the more gruntled. I put them up as a supplement to my existing adsense, and while they didn’t exceed my adsense revenue, they did fairly well.

I got nicked 19% or so in the audit, which I wasn’t pleased about, but it was better than a lot of others got.

Last but not least, I got paid.

Since I didn’t displace anything else, that’s pretty much found money.

I’d like to see them do a lot of things differently (real time “audited” stats, faster payment), but I’m willing to keep them up until they don’t pay, or the payout drops more — or somebody else pays better in the same piece of ad inventory.

It looks to me like their biggest problem is setting expectations — if they showed just the “audited” stats (in near realtime, preferably, but even on the day after like they do now), everyone would have known where they stood, and we’d have all been relieved to see that they paid.

The way it stands now, everybody expected X, and got a percent of X. That’s going to inevitably lead to some unhappiness.
Darren
Dec 2, 2005 at 9:32 pm

I’m just running out the door but I’ll make some brief comments:

1. yes you’re wrong with the business model. They don’t earn affiliate commissions from what I know of them but rather get paid from advertisers per click. The ads are served via feeds.

2. yep they are small and have limited resources to throw at their backend and reports. Valid points though - they need to work harder on their site design etc. But remember eMiniMalls are only a few months old and if you compare a lot of their back end to how they started they are improving.

3. Their Audit system does suck - waiting a month is crazy. I’ve told them this and they’ve said they are working on it.

4. Your conspiracy theory could be applied to any ad network. Google’s performance is so up and down but no one knows why. Sometimes we just have to trust companies - if we don’t we’ll never get anywhere. I know of quite a few other chitika publishers who earn very good money with the product but don’t talk about it so I really doubt this.

5. An invite system would have been a good idea. They’ve grown very quickly which is both good and bad.

6. Spot on about them not hiding anything. People should read terms and conditions, FAQ, support area before signing up and see what is and isnt excluded.

7. how long can the big figures last? Who knows - but all I know is that I earn a lot more from them still even after all the ‘problems’ than I used to and more than double any other program that I’ve used. I don’t think this is because I get a ‘deal’ but because I’ve worked my butt off to optimize the ads and work out where they work best (something that I see many publishers have not done - ie so many use default settings that it’s no wonder they don’t earn much. I saw one guy on a pet website complaining about their poor performance - he was showing ipod ads…go figure).

8. Yep they’ve got some problems and need to sort out their auditing system - but for a fairly new product I think they’ve come a long way and have real potential.

shit - now I’m late….
Mike
Dec 2, 2005 at 10:02 pm

I put their ads in places that were doing zilch with AdSense and got back more than AdSense ever paid.

Their clicks paid me 7-10X more than a click from AdSense and they paid me. I have no complaints, BUT I will say this:

I get more from ads that pay me monthly stipends than I do from PPC driven ads and I get paid BEFORE they go on my site and IRREGARDLESS of whether or not people click on them. That, my friend, is da stuff of dreams.
Robb (RIMarkable)
Dec 2, 2005 at 11:33 pm

I find it very odd that on some of my my Chitika channels that get only one or two clicks per day, on every day that there is one click, that days revenue was untouched, however, every day that had two clicks was audited 30% to 50%.

One one channel in particular I had thirteen days with just one click and fourteen days with two clicks. None of the days with one click were audited, every day with two clicks was.

That doesn’t seem very random to me. Maybe I should go to Vegas…
Darren
Dec 3, 2005 at 7:49 am

Robb - sounds to me like you had someone on that channel clicking twice from the same IP very quickly. I’ve been told Adsense filters that type of clicking too.
Thame
Dec 3, 2005 at 1:32 pm

I’ve decided to take my Chitika ads down. I only had them up for a single day when I received my audited figures for October, and that number went down form 6 clicks to 2 clicks.

I’ll be trying out YPN for December and will decide whether or not to go back to Chitika after I see my November numbers.
Lyndoman
Dec 4, 2005 at 12:36 pm

I just don’t know about Chitika. If they had told everyone the average audit reduction, would people have rushed to sign up. I was audited about 50% and that is a chunk. Fair doos if it’s one guy in his skivvies in the basement. But I would like to know who is behind Chitika.

I was burnt way back in 2000 with a company called startpath, so I am always suspicious when stuff like this happens and there is explanation after the fact.
Jody
Dec 4, 2005 at 12:46 pm

I’ve seen dealtime.com and other comparison site tracking URLs in their dynamic links.

Their audit doesn’t bother me much, mostly because I’m using the eminimalls in page space that wasn’t doing well with Adsense but is doing great now.

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