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PayPal: Back in Action for Publishers in India

Attention publishers in India: Rejoice! PayPal is no longer restricted for payments above $500 in India.

Chitika Audits – A Thing of the Past?

Many publishers have expressed frustration with our “audits” process (at the end of the month, we discount the invalid clicks from reports – you can read more about this here.)

Well we have good news – with our new Chitika | Premium ads, audits are pretty much a thing of the past!  Chitika | Premium is set up differently than our old eMiniMall/MPU units, and audits on Premium units are usually less than 1% of total earnings.

• In most cases, there are zero audits on Chitika | Premium ads – meaning that “what you see is what you get” from your daily reports.

If you have not tried Chitika | Premium yet, you can grab your code here, or to see more about how Chitika | Premium works you can check out this quick video.

Making sense of my Audited vs. Unaudited stats

As you may know, all advertising programs like Chitika take proper measures to maintain the quality of their networks using a process of eliminating “fraudulent traffic” from your stats or reports. But something you might not know is that Chitika is the only company that does something a bit different than all of your other affiliate programs: every day, we show you your raw traffic stats so you are aware of the quality of your own traffic. Then, at the end of the month, traffic is removed from your reports that our advertisers will not pay for – clicks from scrapers, automated bots, obvious multiple clicking, etc.- this is a process we call “Auditing”.

There are many names for this process used by other companies that they routinely run as their filtering process, such as, “smart pricing”. Chitika calls this “audits“. Nothing fancy, just self explanatory so you can better understand what it is.

Here are some answers to your most asked questions:

I am a new publisher to Chitika, how do I view my earnings and how often are they updated? You can view your “unaudited” or raw traffic stats daily (before 10:00 AM US Eastern Time) by clicking on the “Reports” tab when you log in to your account.

What is the difference between “audited” and “unaudited” traffic? Your unaudited stats are your raw traffic stats and audits reflect exactly what you will be paid at the end of each month.

When will my audited stats be ready for me to see and how do I view them? You can see your unaudited stats daily (see above). You can view your audited stats by the last day of each month for the previous months earnings. Example: On June 30th you will see audited stats for your earnings from the month of May. View your audited stats by changing your Report Type under “Report Metrics/Settings” after you click on your “Reports” tab in your account:

Why are audits done only once a month?
We do as much filtering as possible on a daily basis. However, not all cases can be filtered on a daily basis so we still have to rely on a monthly process.

When do I get paid? After the auditing process is complete at the last day of each month, those who prefer to be paid from paypal receive a payment if they have reached $10.00, and a check will go out once you’ve reached $50.00.

You can read more about our auditing process here or contact our customer support if you have any questions.

By Karla Escolas – Chitika Customer Relationship Management

It Pay$ to use Chitika

With billions of ads served, thousands of payments sent, how do we get any sleep?
We don’t.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

We are just as excited as you are about your earnings, so why wait! At Chitika, you receive money into your paypal account as soon as you reach $10.00! And when you accumulate $50.00 by check.

For this very reason, paypal is our default payment method. If you are not sure which method you are using, login and update your payment status by clicking on Account, then Payee Information. Here you can also select our Payment Hold Option up to $1000.00.

You keep it, we insist.
We know that service fees can really add up, that is why Chitika doesn’t charge our users a fee for paypal. We believe more money in our clients pocket, makes a happy publisher.
Payments are processed on a net 30 basis. This means, if you sign up on May 10th and accumulate a minimum of $10.00 by May 30th, you will receive your payment at the end of June. And check payments are sent soon after.

Before payments go out for May’s revenue. Lets ensure a timely & hassle free delivery.

Double check: Have you put your paypal email address or your mailing address in your profile for us to send your payment to?
Don’t have paypal? Sign up today.

Your payment questions answered:

“I received a paypal notification in my email but I do not have a paypal account.”

If you have received a paypal notification, this is because you did not sign up to receive a check payment instead of paypal. Remember, paypal is our default payment method. Login and update your profile by clicking on Account, then Payee Information. Your balance will be rolled onto your next check.

“What will happen if I choose not to accept the paypal payment?”

If you decide to decline the paypal payment because you do not have a paypal account, your balance will be forwarded onto next months payment.

“How long before the end of the month do I have to update my profile before my payment is already processed?”

You can update your profile at any time. But if you need to make changes for the current cycle, be sure to update this information before the 28th of the month.

Karla Escolas- Chitika CRM Manager

Chitika eMiniMalls Payday

We completed processing the monthly payments for February. PayPal payments and checks are on their way. Here’s to all Chitika affiliates. Thank you!

We are very excited to see in our network thousands of web publishers from 126 countries across the world, as plotted in the map below.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Chitika eMiniMalls Jan 2006 payments are in the mail.

Payments for January 2006 have been processed and are in the mail.

• If you opted for Paypal, you should have received the Paypal payment notice in your email
• If you opted for check payment, the checks have been processed and are in the mail
• Notable Exception: If we requested a W8 or W9 tax form from you and we have not yet received the form, your payment is on hold and will be processed immediately after the form has been received

Interested in increasing your earnings?
Check out our categories feature. Some of our publishers who are using the category feature are seeing a boost in earnings. For example, a publisher with content about digital cameras was able to quickly add eMiniMalls units displaying the most popular digital cameras.

Interested in testing multiple categories to see what works best for your site?
Use our channel-tracking feature to track earnings from units with different categories.

eMiniMalls PayPal payments – no processing fee

There seems to be a misconception that Chitika eMiniMalls users who opted for PayPal based payments will incur a processing fee from PayPal. This is not true. PayPal will directly charge Chitika for the processing fee. To reiterate, publishers do not get charged a fee to receive their eMiniMalls earnings via PayPal.

By the way, PayPal payments for November have gone out. Checks are also going out this week.

Chitika eMiniMalls earnings for November and December

November and December final earnings reports are ready. Please log in to your accounts to see the final audited reports for both November and December.

Difference between the daily raw click reports and the monthly audited earnings:
In early December we completed releasing updates to our daily reports and hence the difference between the raw click reports and the audited reports for December is significantly lower than the difference between the raw click reports and the audited reports for the month of November. We are continuing to work on updating our reporting system to minimize the difference between our daily raw clicks reports and the monthly audited earnings reports. However, we do highly recommend that the daily click reports be used only for directional purposes.

November payments:
Now that we completed our audits, we will start processing November payments. Clients who opted for PayPal based payment can expect to see the PayPal payments in email and clients who opted for checks can expect to receive the payments in mail over the next few days.

December payments:
December payments will be processed at the end of January.

A few clarifications:

• Clients with significant click traffic from countries not currently supported by our program, can expect to see a large difference between the unaudited daily click reports and the final audited earnings for November. For more details please read our earlier blog post on audited stats.
• For December you can expect to see a smaller difference between the daily raw click stats and the final audited revenue reports, when compared to November, because in December we completed releasing an update to our daily reporting system so that clicks from unsupported countries are dynamically filtered from the daily raw click reports.
• Although we did start filtering clicks (from unsupported countries) on a daily basis, we still do need to rely on our end of the month audit process to compute and finalize the earned revenue. The final revenues are calculated after the audit process that takes into consideration factors like click fraud, merchant feedback, merchant chargebacks, etc. Hence you can expect to see a difference between the daily and the final audited numbers. Our goal is to continue enhancing the reporting process as much as possible and decrease the differences between the daily and monthly (post audit) stats.
• Why not process both November and December payments at once? Although we did complete the audits for both November and December, we are only able to process payments for November this week. December payments will be processed at the end of January.
• November bonus: Earlier in November we issued a 10 percent bonus. As a gesture of goodwill we actually continued the 10 percent bonus for December as well. The bonus amount is already reflected in the daily and the final monthly audited earnings numbers for November and December.

Again, we apologize for the delay in completing out November audits . We thank you all for your patience and support.

Over the next few weeks we are gunning for significant enhancements to our eMiniMalls program. Stay tuned!

Chitika Reporting System and Monthly Audits Update

We are working on upgrading our back-end filtering and fraud detection systems to dynamically detect and prevent fraud, improve the quality of the overall network and help minimize the difference between the daily raw click reports and the final monthly post-audit earned revenue reports. Earlier this month, we released a couple of enhancements to our reporting systems. At the same time we also started expanding the service to several European countries introducing international merchant listings into the program.

However, we are currently running into unexpected delays in our monthly audits for November. We are aggressively working on completing the audit process as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay and we are hoping that we will be able to complete and finalize the November audits over the next two weeks. In fact, we are trying to complete both November and December audits by January 15th. While we are working on ironing out the kinks in our beta program, we thank all our clients for the continued support. We do not expect the delay in audits to become a recurring issue going forward, because we are focusing on putting in place robust systems that will help streamline the reporting and auditing processes.

Unlike traditional pay-per-click advertising programs, our eMiniMalls service is based on the novel impulse-merchandising model that is new to all parties. We are confident that our eMiniMalls program will continue to evolve and offer a significant incremental revenue stream that will complement, not cannibalize, web publishers’ existing revenue from traditional branding-based advertising programs. Although eMiniMalls is based on the CPC model, the program is able to command relatively higher CPC bid amounts from merchants, because it is predicated by the implicit assumption that leads from our interactive units tend to be highly pre-qualified and hence will result in higher click to sales conversions. Initial feedback from our merchant partners is very positive.

We are continuing to introduce several enhancements to maintain and grow a very high quality network that will continue to evolve into a valuable sales/marketing channel for our merchant partners. We are also working on better understanding the overall performance of our eMiniMalls service, across a variety of content destinations, so that we can identify areas where the program is able to deliver the value to our publisher clients without cannibalizing existing revenue from traditional advertising programs.

We apologize for the current delay and we want to assure you that we are making all efforts to help speed up the reporting and auditing processes. Again, we thank you for your patience and support.

Updated Daily Reports and Ongoing Chitika Expansion into Europe

Updated reporting process: During the first week of December, we made some enhancements to our daily reporting system. Key changes:

1. Daily filtering of clicks from countries currently not supported in the eMiniMalls program: Instead of waiting till the end of the month for the audit process to filter out non-revenue earning clicks from unsupported countries, we are now filtering out those clicks from the daily reports. Please note though that daily reports are for directional purposes only. The final revenues are calculated after the audit process that takes into consideration factors like click fraud, merchant feedback, merchant chargebacks, etc. Our goal is to continue enhancing the reporting process as much as possible and decrease the differences between the daily and monthly (post audit) stats.
2. Faster daily updates: You can expect to see a faster turn around time for the daily reports.

Expansion into Europe:
Following our expansion into UK, we have now begun phased testing of regional merchants listings in the following countries: France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, and Netherlands. With geo-targeting in place, we are now able to display regional promotions and offers to visitors from Europe.