10.30.2005 | 3:41 pm | Ad Networks, Blogs, Chitika, Keywords, PPC, Tips
With Chitika eMiniMalls starting to be a high focus of webmasters who want to generate more revenue from affiliate and Pay Per Click (PPC) programs along side with Adsense. Many publishers search for “Adsense high paying ad keywords”, so you can be sure the next hot topic will be “What are the Highest Paying Keywords for Chitika eMiniMalls?”
I have only recently implemented Chitika eMiniMalls and have started a little experimenting. Traking is not yet very easily done with out the abilitiy to track “channels” or pages/ads but I do know there will be channel tracking implimented soon. When that is impemented we will certainly be able to do more accurate research and have more detailed results.
My overal findings is that initially CTR is low with Chitika eMiniMalls but a good PPC. But as time is going by and I work with them more I am finding not aiming for those I feel are “High Paying keywords” but instead finding very site topic relevant items, and including as many detailed keywords strings as I can. So far I have noticed as result a large increase in CTR as well as keep a handsome PPC so far(need more time).
Here is the List of Keywords that may have high PPC when using them in your array code of Chitika eMiniMalls to get maximum results. I am sure these keywords will pay well for a while but if diluted may pay less in the future. Keep in mind keywords that are not relavant to your site and it’s visitors it will not convert very well. It is in your best intrest to find products that are similiar to your sites topic or theme so your users are interested in these items.
High Paying Keword Arrays:
Computers, Laptops, WorkStation, Desktops, Servers, Processors, Memory Sticks, Mobile Phone, DVD Systems, Televisions, Sound Systems, Plasma TV, Projection Tv,
Even keywords that are a little more defined to your users:
blackberry, canon pixma, canon powershot, canon eos, communicator, exilim, gps, hdtv, ipod mini, ipod nano, ipod photo, ipod shuffle, lcd, lcd tv, motorola razr, nintendo, nokia n90, pda phone, plasma, pocket pc, portable, sony t7, sony w800, tablet pc, toshiba, treo, tri-band, vaio, videophone
In Short Ads with the keywords related to higher priced High Tech gadgets are going to pay higher. Pretty basic. We love our electronics. 
I suspect that the default Keywords will pay the least per click on average.
If these are keywors you use I really suggest fine tuning them to fit your site visitors for higher CTR. Examples to target your array keywords to specific models/types/colors ect like:
Nokia 6600, Sony Ericsson, W800i, Dell Laptop, Xeon Server, View Sonic LCD
The list will go on there are a lot of products in the market related to Technology. You can get more of an idea of some topics that may convert better with your site at Chitika’s Catalog
The above results with ads are totally my experience it might vary from website to website. Find out for yourself and Sign Up with Chitika Yoday!
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10.29.2005 | 2:14 am | Ad Networks, Beginners, Chitika, General, Income, PPC
Over the past few weeks I’ve been a part of a beta testing program of a new ad format for Chitika’s eMiniMalls.
Chitikais a new type of Pay Per Click ad program that many webamsters will find quite profitable for their websites. You’ve probably even seen them around the web by now , they come in a range of sizes but usually have a picture of a product and then some tabs running across the top that say ‘Description’, ‘Best Deals’, ‘Reviews’ and ‘Search’. As you hover the cursor above these tabs they change what information the ad shows.
How do they work?
- Ads pay on a per click(PPC) basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured.
- left in default mode - mini-malls are non contextual ads (this is helpful when it comes to running them in conjunction with Adsense - more information on this below).
- ads can be set to be contextual and to target site specific keywords (ie they look at your webpage and use it to find ads that are most relevant to it’s content)
How Profitable are they?
Overall - I’ve been beta testing mini-malls for 2 weeks now and am quite happy with them overall. They certainly don’t out perform Adsense for me - but my overall earnings are very promising. Especially when you take into consideration that I have yet to place them on every page I own and have not spent much time optimizing them yet and you’ll see that they have some real potential. (some say that they are outperforming Adsense for them).
Cost per Click - Very very good. The first day I added mini malls I pretty much just slapped the code up there and saw the average amount for each click was being payed I was quite amazed. They are considerably higher than my average click value on Google’s Adsense - some days they are 5 or 6 times higher. I’ve talked to a couple of other webamsters using them and they report anything from 3 times higher to 10 times higher click values than Adsense. This is the definate strength of Chitika mini-malls.
Click Through Rate - The percentage of people clicking on eMiniMalls ads is considerably lower than what I receive via Adsense. This is probably for a number of reasons.
Poor Optimization - This is partly my fault. I’ve just not had time to really optimize the ads properly. It is also partly because they are not currently offering channels to track ad performance on different blogs/categories/positions. As a result if I were to try to optimize the ads now I have no way of tracking the results. Channels are a feature that will be added shortly however so I’m expecting to be able to increase my CTR somewhat.
Average Ad matching - Chitika are still working on how they match ads with content. Ad relevancy seems to be a bit of a problem on some posts. I know this because I have seen some products that just don’t show up on pages where I’d expect them to. Hopefully they’ll continue to develop their algorithm and find ways of making ads even more relevant.
Lower Numbers of Ads - I’m suspecting that Chitika has a lower number of ads than Adsense to select from to run on sites using mini-malls. This means that sometimes ads can be a little irrelevant to your content which would decrease CTR also.
Reports - Emini-malls are in beta at present so don’t expect too much in the reporting and statistic yet. At this stage they just update at the end of each day and give you some basic stats under the four headings of - Date, Impressions, Clicks and Revenue. These stats are what they call ‘unaudited’ - which means they haven’t taken anything off the total that they suspect to be click fraud or ‘dodgy’ clicks. They ‘audit’ you at this stage once per month (they have indicated that this will happen daily at some point in the future). I was only in the system for three days of last month but the auditing brought my ‘unaudited’ figures back by about 10% of what they were. Clicks are audited by some secret process that includes multiple or repeated clicks, traffic from bots and spiders as well as traffic coming from certain countries like China or Korea.
I’m not too impressed by the auditing feature. While I understand why its there I can see that this will be the cause of some tension between Chitika and Publishers. I’m sure Adsense has some sort of system in place that does something similar - but they are big enough to build it in as a real time feature so that publishers just don’t know what they lose.
I know from my conversations with Chitika staff that the reporting system will be undergoing significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.
Ad Formats - They currently offer 10 different size formats in some pretty standard sizes. Overall the options are pretty good. They also allow you to make some changes to the design of your ads by changing colors of borders, title and text to match your page/site theme colors.
Payment - Payment is via Paypal in US Dollars at the start of every month - around 30 days after the end of the month you’re being paid for. You need to reach a minimum of $10 to get a payment.
Can Mini-Malls be used in conjunction with Adsense? - Most people I talk to about mini-malls asks this - it’s important as most publishers will want to use them in conjunction with one another.
At first Google said ‘no’ you can’t use them for two reasons:
- They look too similar to Adsense Ads
- They are contextual ads
The follow up pointed out two things.
- They actually don’t look like Adsense ads - they have a picture in them, tabs etc. I think the mistake Adsense made at first was in confusing mini-malls with Chitika’s other ads which do look very similar to Adsense ads.
- You can actually disable the contextual element of the ads and plug in code that targets a specific product.
The replysaid that they were sorry for making a mistake and that Chitika mini-mall ads can be used in conjunction with Adsense IF they are set to be non contextual.
Quoted from adsense:
“Yes, you can use the Chitika products that rely on keywords selected by
you as opposed to your site’s content, on your site in addition to Google
ads.”
I know of several who have had this same conversation with Google with the same results.
English Sites only - at this point they are in beta test and only accepting Engine sites into the program. While this is sad for non English sites I guess they have to start somewhere. Hopefully they’ll widen it later at some point.
All in all - I’m very pleased with Chitika’s mini-malls. They have loads of potential. I look forward to the future of this program.
I’ve also seen them producing very relevant ads on various websites. I’ve also heard a couple of publishers who were so impressed with mini-malls that they’ve ditched Adsense all together as they were able to earn significantly more from Chitika.
You can apply to be a part of the eMiniMalls beta test at Chitika Mini Malls Sign Up.
Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links - if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have pointed out both its benefits and weaknesses.
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10.28.2005 | 2:50 pm | Ad Networks, Beginners, Chitika, HTML, PPC
There are a variety of other pieces of code that you can include in your eMiniMalls code to change the functionality of your ads. These include:
Disable Search Tab -
If you want to disable the search tab (and remember if you use the Adsense search function you need to) - simple add the following line of code to the middle of the code that Chitika give you:
ch_nosearch = 1;
Make ‘Best Deals’ Tab the default -
Some site owners prefer to have the ‘Best Deals’ tab showing first to readers rather than the default one. To do this simple add the following code:
ch_default_tab = ‘Best Deals’;
Rotate Random Ads -
I’m not sure why anyone would use this one but if you want completely random ads use the following code. Before you do remember that this will mean you get ads that have no relevancy to your site’s content which is likely to decrease your click through rate and earnings significantly.
ch_non_contextual = 1;
ch_query = “”;
Change Fonts -
ch_font_text = “Arial”;
ch_font_text = “Arial Narrow,Verdana”;
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10.28.2005 | 2:35 pm | AdSense, Beginners, Chitika, Google, HTML, PPC
So how does one “make eMiniMalls non-contextual” and thereby able to be run on the same page as Adsense?
Default Code
Chitika has made this extremely easy - in fact they’ve made it so easy you don’t have to do anything different at all because they’ve just changed the default of their ads to be ‘non contextual’. So when you log in and click the ‘Get eMiniMalls Code’ link and design your ads they’ll supply you with the code that makes using eMiniMalls work with Adsense without you having to mess around with adding code.
The all important code in what they give you is:
ch_non_contextual = 1;
If you’ve previously inserted code into your site it might be worth checking its in it or else your ads will be contextual.
Targeting Keywords - Rotation
So the question many will no doubt ask is “If the ads are non contexual - what determines what ads will now be served?”
Good question. If you look at the code that Chitika gives you you’ll notice another new line of code that comes to you by default like this:
var ch_queries = new Array(”digital cameras”, “ipod mini”, “sony playstation”, “dell laptop”);
This is the line of code that tells Chitika what ads to serve your site. If you leave it as is it will rotate four types of ads through your pages - ads for ‘digital cameras’, ‘ipod minis’, ’sony playstations’ and ‘dell laptops’. The beauty of eMiniMalls is that while these ads might pay ok per click - they are not likely to be highly relevant ads to the topic of everyone’s site - so you’re able to change them. Simply remove the words between the “and” marks and insert relevant words to your site. If your site is about MP3 players try “MP3 Player”, “ipod mini”, “ipod photo”, “iriver” etc. You can insert as many keywords as you like. This will help to keep your site looking fresh and hopefully stop your regular readers becoming blind to your ads.
For example, on a cameras site,you might change the list to be:
var ch_queries = new Array(’Canon Powershot S2 IS’, ‘Canon Digital Rebel XT’, ‘Canon Powershot A520′, ‘Canon PowerShot A510′, ‘PowerShot SD400 Digital Camera’);
You might also like to periodically check and change the ads you rotate to help with ad blindness. I know of a couple of sites who are changing the keywords that they target once per week to keep things fresh.
Targeting One Keyword
If you just want to target ONE keyword do so by:
1. deleting this bit of the code:
var ch_queries = new Array(’phrase1′, ‘phrase2′, ‘phrase3′);
var ch_selected = Math.floor((Math.random() * ch_queries.length));
ch_query = ch_queries[ch_selected];
2. replacing it with:
ch_query = ‘ipod mini’;
Targeting Titles as Keywords:
One of the things that is done on many of sites is picking keywords that are pretty specific. ie instead of just adding “digital camera” you can add “canon eos 20d” and get ads for a specific digital camera. This is particularly useful on a page about a specific digital camera as it will increase your click through rate quite a bit.
One way of targeting specific words is to target the titles of your pages (if you use titles that include the keywords of your pages that is). How you do this will of course depend upon the system that you use to make your site or blog - but if you’re using Movable Type or WordPress you’ll find that both of these systems have title tags that will trigger the title for a particular post.
For example on a MT blog they line of code targeting keywords would look like:
ch_query = ‘< $MTEntryTitle$>‘;
In WordPress to target the title you’d use this…
‘< ?php the_title(); ?>’;
If you use another blog platform please feel free to let us know what the code would be in comments below.
Keep in mind that this will only be effective if you use titles on your site that are pretty specific to products. If you don’t you might want to consider specifying some keywords as you might end up with empty ads or very irrelevant ones.
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10.28.2005 | 2:01 pm | Ad Networks, AdSense, Beginners, Chitika, Google, Income, PPC
Many of the questions I’ve heard asked about Chitika eMiniMalls have been related to whether or not they can be used on the same page as Google Adsense ads. This was initially of major concern for a number of us when we first came across eMiniMalls. As a result, many wrote an email to Adsense for clarification some a couple times even. The final response is that it was allowable from the perspective of Adsense to use Chitika eMiniMalls on the same page as Adsense ads in the following circumstance (I’m told by a YPN publisher that this is also true with YPN):
1. eMiniMalls must be made to be NON-contexual
This is great news as it added Chitika eMiniMalls as another revenue stream to the sites of many without compromising another important source of income like Adsense.
Note: Chitika has another ad system, called RealContext, that is NOT allowed to be used in conjunction with Adsense - don’t get them mixed up.
It is worth noting that different webmasters and bloggers have seen difference results from using Adsense and Chitika’s eMiniMalls on the one page. These results have included:
A few publishers have reported small decreases in their Adsense earnings. Some have even noticed a 5-10% decrease in overall Adsense earnings since adding eMiniMalls. Of course, this is considerably less than the overall increase in earnings that the eMiniMalls have returned so many are willing to take this hit knowing that an overall considerably better financial position.
A smaller number of publishers have noticed increases in their Adsense earnings when they replaced one of multiple Adsense Ad units with a Chitika eMiniMall unit. This sounds crazy - bit it makes sense when you realise that sometimes less Adsense Ad units on a page can result in increase click value amount for some ads (thats another topic for another day)
* Some have found eMiniMalls to be so well suited to their site’s that they’ve removed Adsense altogether and are just running the Chitika ads (I wouldn’t recommend doing this straight away without testing things first).
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10.28.2005 | 1:51 pm | Ad Networks, Beginners, Chitika, PPC
In my experience so far with Chitika (and from interacting with many others who are testing it) I’ve found that it seems to work best on sites that are focused upon products. Many gadget sites have signed up for eMiniMalls already but by no means are their ads limited to consumer electronics. I’ve seen relevant ads served up on a variety of sites including some focussing upon clothes, baby strollers, washing machines, jewellery and other fashion items. From what I can see - they seem to have a large supply of ads for most of the products you’ll find on sites like Amazon and Shopping.com (which is thousands of products).
Product related sites are not the only ones reporting good returns from eMiniMalls though - I know of a variety of personal and general topic sites that are reporting better than normal earnings with eMiniMalls in comparison to other ad networks that they use.
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10.28.2005 | 1:47 pm | Ad Networks, Beginners, Chitika, PPC
Signing up for Chitika’s eMiniMall Pay Per Click Advertising Program is quite easy to do. Simply visit Chitika eMiniMall’s sign up page and fill in your details. You will want to read thru their Terms and Conditions of being a publisher that does exclude certain types of sites. When you submit your application you should normally hear back from Chitika with a response within 24 hours (during normal business hours/days)
Keep in mind that when signing up you are being bound to their Chitika’s Terms and Conditions that include non-disclosure of some of your earnings information (eg CTR, click values etc). Also note that at this point of their beta test they are only accepting sites written in English.
Please note that if your site’s readership is mainly from Asian countries that unfortunately due to a lack of Asian merchants and low conversions Chitika does not pay out for all Asian countries and the ‘auditing’ process may decrease your earnings considerably.
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