Update: AllForGirls.net is no longer in relationship with Chitika
A Chitika | Select Success Story
Gao, being a long-time fan of online games, one day decided to start his own online game site. “I noticed girl names were incredibly popular, so I registered domain: AllForGirls.net November 6, 2007”. The website features free online games for girls in which he is able to include his own created games. With the help of his great production team, they often include new games to keep the site fresh and fun.
One year later, Gao started using Chitika ads on the site. He always customized his Chitika ads very nicely to match the color scheme of his very colorful website, and has had a steady income stream from Chitika for 2 years.
Before Chitika launched Select ads at the beginning of last month, Gao along with the remaining Chitika publisher network relied on Chitika Premium (search-targeted ads) for revenue. However, many including Gao were missing out on potential revenue from their non-search traffic.
With the addition of Chitika | Select ads, which display to some non-search traffic (see below for more), AllForGirls.net experienced a 97% increase in revenue. Gao did not have to make any updates to his existing Chitika ad units; if you are using Premium on your site, Select ads will automatically start to display.
So why don’t we display ads 100% of the time for maximum revenue?
User experience plays a major role in the way Chitika chooses to show ads. Striking the right balance between both user experience and revenue, is what we believe to be very important to publishers. While displaying ads 100% of the time can give a publisher a higher revenue, it can have a negative impact on your visitors. This is why Chitika Select ads, will display to your search traffic as well as a “select” portion of your non-search.
The “select” portion of your non-search is the key. How we determine this portion is how we were able to take it a step further using our click-prediction technology. Explaining to a publisher that we don’t just focus on the revenue earning aspect of the spectrum is what makes Chitika different; we are the only advertising network to provide this technology. You can read more on this here.
Are Chitika Select ads on my site(s)?
We have been rolling out Select ads slowly across the Chitika Network. Once Select ads start to appear on your site, you will see an increase in impressions as well as a new Select/Premium comparison stats graph when you login.
Submit your testimonial or story to be featured here.
The Chitika Team is excited to be working with Squidoo because they are a model publisher for our network.
Chitika has always been a publisher centric advertising network, working with publishers to maximize advertising revenue and giving them choices about how to do that.
We understand that all publishers have an inner dialogue about how to maximize revenue and grow the business, but also create the greatest user experience possible. Often times strategies to maximize revenue are perceived to be the worse options for ensuring high user experience. Take for example putting up another ad unit. More ads means a worse user experience, right? Well hold on.
Squidoo is uber concerned with visitor experience. So adding a Chitika | Select ad to their page would seem to go against their philosophy of creating the highest quality user experience. Turns out that wasn’t the case. Here’s why:
Chitika and Squidoo worked together to customize the look and feel of Chitika’s ads to perfectly integrate with Squidoo’s themes. We worked on a custom title and colors that fit both Squidoo’s metrics of quality but also ensuring performance and revenue.
Chitika’s targeting technology can decide when to show an ad or when to disappear. Yup that’s right, we don’t show ads all the time risking your visitors experience. We think smart impressions is more revenue and user experience. Based upon a number of metrics our ads show selectively and that helps protect Squidoo’s most loyal visitors by insuring that we won’t show them ads.
The end result is that Squidoo is enjoying additional revenue while protecting their impressive brand and high user experience. How could Chitika help your site increase revenue and user experience?
Isabel Isidro and her husband, Nach Maravilla, reached what Isidro calls a “turning point” for their website, PowerHomeBiz.com, in the summer of 2009. That’s when they found out about Chitika’s newest ad unit, the Mega Unit – an ad unit that would go on to increase their site revenues by 450% in the first month alone. We sat down and spoke with Isidro about her experiences as a web publisher, on running Chitika ads, and on how their earnings have been impacted over the past six months.
How did PowerHomeBiz.com get started?
“We started PowerHomeBiz.com in December 1999. We saw the tremendous growth potential of the Web and knew that we wanted to start an online business. We both were scammed by work at home business opportunities advertised in magazines, and we knew that there is a huge market of people out there looking for ways to earn money from their homes. We decided to start an information resource site to help people start, run and manage a home-based business the legitimate way.”
Do you currently own any other websites?
“We have since added two other sites to our network – WomenHomeBusiness.com for women entrepreneurs; as well as Learning from the Big Boys showcasing lessons that small businesses can learn from big businesses.”
What were your first experiences with online advertising?
“We tried several CPM ad networks, but we’ve always been so disappointed with the earnings. While our traffic increased through the years, our income from these ad networks stayed at the same negligible levels – even after giving them prime “real estate” in our site.
Our mistake was in assuming that Chitika will perform just like the CPM ad networks we have joined. We joined Chitika in 2005, and we basically didn’t expect anything from it. We just joined Chitika, and promptly forgot about it. We barely displayed the Chitika ads, and if we did, we placed it in less visible pages and in less visible part of the page. As a result, income from Chitika was negligible.”
..the way Chitika emphasized that their product is compatible with Google AdSense caught our attention.”
“We were doing extremely well with Google AdSense and direct ad sales at the time we joined Chitika, and all our premium real estate were given to AdSense and to our own direct advertisers. There was no question as to which ad network we should be focusing on and giving our prime real estate.
We started thinking about Chitika when Chitika Premium was announced. Our main priority has always been Google AdSense, but the way Chitika emphasized that their product is compatible with Google AdSense caught our attention. We already know from our experience with Google Adsense that our visitors are highly responsive to ads. Plus, PowerHomeBiz.com receives a huge amount of search engine traffic. Still, Chitika remained in the backburner.”
So what changed your mind about keeping Chitika in low prominent placements?
“The turning point was when a Chitika email newsletter announced the availability of the Mega Units 500×250 and 550×250 in the summer of 2009. The newsletter also demonstrated the best practices for these new ad units, again emphasizing that these ad units are compatible with AdSense and how these units could work with AdSense on a page. I think that was the first newsletter from Chitika that I really paid attention to and read.”
The first month alone of implementing the mega units saw an increase of 450% in revenues – and that was only for a handful of our pages!”
“After reading the newsletter, we implemented the Mega Units at the bottom of a few articles to test it out. We were greatly pleased with the results. The first month alone of implementing the mega units saw an increase of 450% in revenues – and that was only for a handful of our pages! We knew that the time of ignoring Chitika was over. We are now in the process of adding the Mega Unit in all our pages.
We’re looking forward this year to seeing Chitika become a major revenue source for PowerHomeBiz.com. And we’re off to a great start – for the first half of January 2010, our unaudited earnings is already equal to what we earned from 2005 to 2008!”
Would you like to be featured as Chitika’s next Success Story? Contact us here.
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Read more Chitika Testimonials and Success Stories here.
View Chitika’s Mega Unit & other ad sizes. Login Here to get your Mega Unit Code | Sign up for Chitika
Chitika publisher Jean Harris of PopularWealth.com has been a computer fanatic since 1982 when he wrote his first program on his first machine, the Vic-20. He’s been an owner/webmaster & a designer of content-based websites since launching his first business in 1997. Starting to blog in 2007, he found it to be a challenge because he was used to digging into code & sharing statistics, not sharing his personal view on things, but found it to be a lot of fun.
Jean soon decided to take the “next step” and start using affiliate programs like Chitika to monetize the traffic to his site and earn revenue.
TESTING “I’ve tried every major affiliate ad network and service as well as most of the second tier or smaller services. I’ve been disappointed a few times and pleasantly surprised a few others. Chitika Premium has been a most welcome surprise,” says Jean.
Jean, being the “techie” that he is, likes to test and re-test every line of code on his sites for maximum results. So when he started using Chitika Premium one month ago he found it to be easier than he thought. He notes, “using the Premium code has been the best no-brainer move I’ve ever made online.”
RESULTS “My CTR reached 4.60% and eCPM peaked at 7x average AdSense levels. Which is why I feel that Chitika is in a group all it’s own, it can’t be compared to other services because of its unique delivery approach,” says Jean
The ‘unique delivery approach’ Jean is referring to is how Chitika Premium ads are ONLY displayed to his search engine traffic; which means his regular readers are not bothered by any additional ads. He notes “it doesn’t scare off the regulars while at the same time it helps search visitors a great deal. It’s a win-win-win situation.”
He believes that Premium gives the freedom to help visitors find what they want instead of forcing them to see what he wants, “this is key moving forward and Chitika Premium fits that mold perfectly”, he adds.
You can read more about Jean’s success using Chitika | Premium on his PopularWealth blog here.
Johns Wu had problems with money while in college (just like most of us). He started Bankaholic.com so that broke students (like himself) could discuss financial issues like college loans, budgeting tips, and debt.
“My site was a huge success that quickly grew to become one of the top 25 most highly trafficked personal finance websites on the web.
“Over the years, monetizing my traffic has always been one of my biggest hurdles. When I was a small website with low traffic, potential advertisers didn’t bother dealing with me. In addition, I did not have the resources to hire salespeople to help sell ads on my site. This was a problem. How was I supposed to expand my website to become a big-time player without funding to fuel my growth?
“I’ve found that advertising brokers like Chitika & Adsense that match advertisers to publishers to be invaluable in monetizing my traffic. I get highly targeted ads with high eCPMs, and I don’t have to spend my time or money selling off my ad inventory myself.
“I have been using Chitika|Premium on Bankaholic.com for about a week now. The CPCs are very fair and have experienced a leap in eCPM from Premium over others. Because most of my traffic is from search, I have no problems getting Chitika ads to display relevant ads. And I really think the small icons ext to the ads do well for CTR, and I am curious why other networks have not followed suit.
“Chitika is one of my higher revenue ad networks especially my eCPM from Chitika|Premium ad units. Overall, I’ve noticed a 300% increase in revenue over what I was using before.”
NEW! Now when you login to your Chitika account and click on your Reports, we are now providing a breakdown of how your Chitika ads are doing in different parts of the world. You will be able to see how well your ad units did for your US Traffic, All Supported Countries, and Non-US Supported Countries so YOU will know where to focus your efforts to increase your revenue:
Just a reminder, here is a list of our supported countries: (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, UK, US).
ConsumerSearch.com, one of our favorite publisher clients, was sold to About for $33m in cash, according to this post on ComparisonEngines.com (via NYTimes) announcing this deal.
Hats off to Derek, Max, and the team! It is always great to hear and share a success story.
We have invited the best of the blogosphere in house to take over the Chitika Blog for the month of April! A new post every day from 30 different guest blogging gurus!
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You will not see any boring “blogging 101″ posts! Enjoy tips and explore insights about a variety of unique and interesting topics like, “Dare to be Odd” and “Shopping and Blogging: How to make the marriage work.”
Chitika Creative Creations is a new contest we started in February, 2007 to reward all of you who have some pretty cool Chitika ad integrations! We have been shuffling through our 12,000+ publisher network on the lookout for the best integrations and in the meantime we invited everyone to submit theirs if they thought they had what it takes to be a winner. Turns out, you did!
The second winner of Chitika Creative Creations is: www.froomb.com!
Froomb.com is, “Saving the world. One deal at a time” by offering a really cool “deal of the day” directory for all of you shopping lovers!
“I have integrated a number of Chitika eMiniMalls in such a way that they appear to be part of the content rather than ads. The approach has done very well for me.”
WHAT HE DID FOR YOU ON CHITIKA SPHERE
Ryan has made it possible for any Chitika member to receive expert advice on their Chitika ad implementation for their blog/websites. “It’s simple, post your URL’s and I’ll help you make the most from eMiniMalls, RPU, ShopLinc & ShopCloud$ on your pages.” -Ryan
I then found the Chitika forum and got great site optimisation from some people on it, namely Ryan, who has been a great ambassador and extremely friendly, helpful and really knows his stuff. Hats off to him. At this stage I had optimised my eMiniMalls to earn me about 50% more. -adscorp
