My First Days With Chitika
First of all, Chitika sucks. Really! But in order to understand why, and in order to understand all reasons, here is the story... When I started showing Chitika ads on one of my websites I was expecting something really good, which would generate at least 40% of
AdSense earnings on the same site. I didn't try Chitika because I had no other choice. I tried Chitika because AdSense revenue got worse as mentioned on
this page. Well, after I got accepted, I integrated Chitika code and waited three days until I saw first earnings. The result was impressive, almost ($US) 30 cents per click! In fact this was
better than AdSense!
After 3 Days
Unfortunately, after the first days the revenue got worse. I emailed the staff and got an explanation; Publishers earn more during first days, then the revenue is cut. I don't know why, but only one explanation comes to my mind. The explanation is that Chitika gives you 100% of revenue during the first days and then they cut about 60% of it, or even more. Let's check the table below...
The Table of Earnings
| Day |
Revenue per Click |
| 2009-11-26 |
$0.275 |
| 2009-11-27 |
$0.275 |
| 2009-11-28 |
$0.275 |
| 2009-11-29 |
$0.111 |
| 2009-12-25 |
$0.065 |
| 2010-02-15 |
$0.045 |
| 2010-02-16 |
$0.045 |
| 2010-02-17 |
$0.050 |
The Result
As one can see in the above-shown table, earnings per click went from $0.275 to $0.050 when I decided to stop showing Chitika ads. If you want to know the percentage, let's count. If earnings increased from $0.050 to $0.010, then it would be an increase of 100%. If it all went from $0.050 to $0.200, then it would be an increase of 400%. And from $0.050 to $0.275 it's 550%! Surely, Chitika sucks!
Payments
Chitika pays, at least I received my first payment. It was over $100, so no complaints. Of course, it was when the revenue was higher. Now I'm going to wait for the last money and then I'm not going to visit Chitika website ever.
The Last Reason to Ignore Chitika
The funny aspect of this decrease is also a decrease of clicks. For some unknown reason there were less and less clicks as time went by. Same placement, same colours, same (or even better) traffic. From about 40 clicks a day to less than 20 clicks per day. AdSense and Infolinks have showed very similar numbers of clicks except for Chitika.
Something's fishy about Chitika!
February 18, 2010