I’ve been getting quite a few excited emails from readers who have signed up for the Chitika eMiniMalls that I reviewed last week. There has been a lot of positive feedback so far from those who I’ve referred over to the program with some people earning some significant money from it so far (including ‘Rachel‘). There have also been a few (less) emails from bloggers who have failed to see them as effective.
The most common question that I get asked by readers about the eMiniMalls include:
- ‘How do the money from eMiniMalls compare to earnings of Adsense?’
- ‘How much money do you earn from eMiniMalls?’
(update: the third most asked question is ‘how do I increase my earnings?’ If you’re asking this you might also like to check out Chitika eMiniMall Tips for increasing earnings)
I’ve resisted talking about specific figures of money earnt to this point because I wanted to clarify with the Chitika people whether I was allowed to do so. Today I just got confirmation that it’s ok for me to talk about daily earnings figures but not CTR, impressions etc. The reason I want to talk about this is simply because I really believe in this ad system – as you’ll see from the figures below – it’s had a pretty amazing impact upon my earnings and I’d like readers here to have the full picture of what the potential to earn money with it is.
So let’s look at yesterday’s earnings for me with both Adsense and Chitika were. Update: due to Adsense terms (that I misread) I have been told that I cannot reveal my daily Adsense figures but only gross payment figures (monthly totals). So I’ll do that here instead of a daily figure for yesterday. You can pretty much work out what the Adsense earnings are from the figure if you know how many days are in August! All I’ll say is that yesterday was a bit under August’s average.
Adsense earnings for August – $15,849.73
Chitika eMiniMalls earnings Yesterday – $702.45
Let me follow the figures up with a few statements of qualification:
- Yesterday Adsense was a little below average for me
- While I can’t mention how many impressions there were for either program – they were very similar to one another
- The Chitika eMiniMalls figure is before their auditing process takes effect. From what I’ve seen of this process last month – this is likely to decrease that figure by around 10% – update this turned out to be an accurate estimation of the audit figure for this day.
- The ads appear across a range of sites (17 or so – NOT just this site). In most cases they appear on the same pages as one another (remember that you need to disable the contextual ad function of the eMiniMalls to do this and stay within Adsense’s TOS
- The CTR for Adsense is significantly higher than it was for the eMiniMalls
- The click value for eMiniMalls is significantly higher than it was for Adsense
- From what I can tell from these results and those of readers who are trying eMiniMalls (Chitika is yet to add channels) – the best performing sites seem to be product related blogs including blogs about gadgets, clothing, etc. Having said this I’ve heard from a number of bloggers with VERY general, non product related sites that are doing reasonably well out of them also.
- These are not just one off or fluke numbers – I’ve had no major increases in traffic over the past few days – I have added the eMiniMalls to more pages in the past week – but the numbers seem to be consistent over the past few days. Time will tell whether they will remain at this level but I have no reason to believe that they will not.
- The above figures are in US dollars.
As you can see from the numbers – I personally have reason to be pretty excited about eMiniMalls. If these numbers continue they will more than double my daily earnings and taken them to a level that is over $1000 per day. This is less than some of the bigger blog networks out there but for an ordinary guy like me who has only been at this blogging thing for under 3 years – I have to say that it’s very promising. I can’t guarantee that they work on every blog – but they are definately worth experimenting with.
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 endeavored to point out both its benefits and weaknesses in all my writing about it.
Update – I give an update on my Chitika Earnings in this post.
Jacob – be sure to tell us how you get on, they seem to blend into your site well. I currently have Adsense but keen to add eMiniMalls in the near future.
[…] If you’re a blogger or an affiliate marketer then you really need to read this. Nothing more to be said really. Post of The Day […]
Well done Darren!!! You are a perfect example of the virtuous cycle that can start when you share your knowledge on the web.
[…] SlashDot reports that Weblogs, Inc has been purchased by AOL for over $20 million! Other big bucks bloggers are mentioned including eMiniMallsthe lovely and talented shoe blogger Manolo (mentioned earlier on this blog). What does it take to make $$$ on blogs? Comments » […]
Ironic. I block all adds in Firefox. If that becomes part of FireFox and not just a plugin, you guys may not like the clean look of the web with all the stripmall advertisements being purged.
I commend anyone for being able to make money off of this scenario and I equally commend folks who find the spam in ads annoying enough to purge them via their browser.
I just need to figure out how to do a real estate mini-mall for Steamboat Springs and I will be set. Figure it out first and I’ll put in on my site ;)
Quite Impressive
I was looking into an ads program and this just might be it
Darren,
I’m just wondering how much the income reported will go down after figures are audited. I got my first day’s numbers in yesterday and they were quite good, but the audit process looks a little mysterious.
Have you had any numbers audited yet and if so, was there a noticeable knock-down?
Cheers,
Swade.
Swade – the auditing process varies from blog to blog from what I can see. For me it decreased my earnings by 10%. Others have reporting higher or lower rates of decrease depending upon where their traffic comes from.
Not to burst anyones bubble, but if you already have an account at Shopping.com, then ask your rep to make the GUI for you, they have a lot to choose from. If you don’t have an account, ask for one :)
All Chitika is doing is taking a Shopping.com API and re-wrapping into a smaller GUI that can be put into the place of an ad. Check out the bottom of this review: http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review3131.html
Its the same information as Chitika, just in a larger table – thats it. What you see has been provided by Shopping.com. Why take a percentage of what should already be 100% yours anyways?
Don’t let anyone else take money from your site. It should be a blogger/shopping.com relationship. Not a Shopping.com/Chitika/affiliate referrer/blogger relationship.
[…] After reading what Darren Rowse wrote about Chitika eMiniMalls – decided to apply for them myself. […]
nice. you talk about 1000 a day. i’d be happy with 50.
peace
[…] Sure enough – 15 minutes after the first couple of visitors came an onrush of traffic to this post. Since that time around 40,000 visitors have passed through this blog. […]
Why Blog Networks are Overrated, IMHO
Weblogs Inc. sold to AOL. I post again about why I think blog networks are overrated :)
I see they “Your account has been activated, but we have not received any traffic as of yesterday. Please note that our stats are updated nightly. If you have any questions, please fee free to contact us at [email protected]” I would have thought by now yesterdays traffic would be showing in the reports. What sort of time do their reports get updated?
Stats have updated – see it updates 2hrs after midnight Pacific time zone
Ian – I havn’t talked to Shopping.com for a while (actually a while back I remember trying to get in touch with them they wouldn’t return my emails – maybe I was too small) – but the thing that I didn’t like about their system was that were pretty rigid.
I’m going from memory here – but I seem to remember that after I did get their attention I was confronted with a long contract that excluded me from dealing with any other similar advertisers – something I don’t see with chitika. I also was a little overwhelmed by the set up proceedures with Shopping.com which was going to take weeks to get set up on my domain.
On the flip side i see minimalls are so easy to install (I was approved and showing a variety of ads within hours), they pay better than I remember being quoted by the shopping.com representative, and I can walk away from them at any time.
Of course since I talked to them they might have changed or lightened up, but to be honest I really like where I see Chitika going with what they are offering – they have responded to suggestions, given personal service to quite a few bloggers that I know and seem pretty switched on to new media (blogs etc).
I suspect different services will suit different sites best – so maybe we’re both in the right place :-)
Big money blogging
Darren Rowse is doing it again. Or, rather, he didn’t stop doing it. Here he talks about how well he’s doing with ads from Chitika eMiniMalls. Together with Google AdSense he’s making more than $10,000 per day, just from ads on his blogs. He has a b…
Commented deleted – offensive language
Only got around 50c click/per with eMinimalls ($5~6 /day)
I am just wondering what are everyone’s experience?
It seems report updating 2hrs after midnight Pacific time zone isn’t the norm as there is no update so far today. It would be great if this was consistent.
I have a gadget blog (with good traffic) and am seeing about 30 clicks ~ $13 so not that great really, about 40 cents.
The adverts are damn ugly and attract a lot less clicks than adsense also – the fading in images really suck, even with the forced targetting they aren’t as good as adsense.
Im going to give them a little longer though to compare them properly.
I’ve also found the stats are at least one day behind, but now (1pm uk time) I still can’t even see yesterday’s stats.
Still never got a reply from CS either, sent them two emails now (about running multiple sites, have since read they do have channels but they aren’t live yet)
There seems to be more info about chitika in this post that in the whole of the chitika FAQ :)
lart – yep it is annoying the reports are so delayed. This needs serious fixing.
Yes, lart same too you
I think “the higher value per click” discussed in here are not really TRUE!!! or probably they have “two sets” of earn rate for different publisher
Latest from Chitika:
October 8th 2005: 9:30AM US EST:
On October 7th and 8th our reporting system experienced an intermittent outage for a few hours. The problem has now been rectified. Due to this outage, you will notice that the stats for October 7th are missing. The stats for October 8th might also be slightly deflated. However, please be assured that we will make every effort to reprocess the stats, calculate and compensate for any lost revenue. We thank you for your patience and support while we iron out the reporting issues. Thank you.
Oh well will let Chitika run for a few weeks before implementing too much more of their code. This is a shame but hopefully it will be sorted it out sooner rather than sooner.
>I have a gadget blog (with good traffic) and am seeing about 30 clicks ~ $13 so not that great really, about 40 cents.
Well, 40 cents per click is great. That’s a lot better than AdSense for most sites.
Hey Darren, thanks for the heads up on eminimalls!
Yes Chitika seem to be having some teething problems with their stats – indeed statistics for october 7th are missing.
However we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. Things will surely improve in the coming weeks/months.
With Adsense, YPN, available etc, there are now a healthy number of quality ad options in town for smaller publishers. But looking at the interactive nature of eminimalls, it’s seems that Chitika are intent on taking contextual advertising to the next level.
Laptopical – yeah – seems that they had some server issues last night unfortunately but they are going to reconstruct the stats for the day and have it back up again.
I guess this is the risk we take with participating in a beta test. The rewards are very hig h but the system’s stability is still being toughened up over time.
To Thomas
“Well, 40 cents per click is great. That’s a lot better than AdSense for most sites. ”
Is True???
I got $1~2 per click (mid average) and some click high as $7.xx from AdSense for my online tech topic sites.
I installed the program, had over 2,000 impressions in a couple of days and ZERO clicks in the “unaudited” stats.
Makes me a bit skeptical, but ‘ll take Darren’s word and will keep trying to optimize.
An interesting by-product, though-
I DID replace a few Adsense units on non-performing pages, and my AS revenue for the week increased!
Less ads, higher earnings on the same number of clicks.
Interesting indeed.
Thanks for a great read Darren!
signed-up using the affilicate links …. if nothing else the ads look cool but we’ll see how they perform on a more news oriented blog… thanks for the info.
After reading the article I applied to learn more about the program but without any explanation I was denied. Maybe my content is not qualifying enough, I would understand that, maybe my traffic is not enough, I would understand that too, but it would have been nice if they gave me a reason.
In a follow up mail I asked them the reason but sofar no reply to that one.
From what I read on their website I didn’t see anything about specific requirements to participate (maybe I misread) so I would be interested to hear, in case someone knows, what these “requirements” are.
I also signed up using the affiliates link and was approved within an hour. The thing that I don’t like is that reports are generated only once a day. Anyhow, I’ve started generating some money, not much tho, probably because I don’t have that much traffic. What amount of traffic is needed to start generating some real money?
[…] Since my initial review and revelation of earnings from Chitika’s eMiniMalls my inbox has been full of questions on how to use eMiniMalls effectively. As a result I thought I’d write a guide to using Chitika eMiniMalls to refer people to. I hope this is helpful. Feel free to add your own tips in comments below. […]
By going to Shopping.com and searching for products, we are able to find many keyword choices to use for our eMiniMalls.
Find the ones you like, and use Chitika.com’s adbox search feature to see what comes up….obviously you don’t want to click on your own to see how it works.
Hope this helps some of you…..
[…] Darren has reported making good money from eMiniMalls, and others have similar experiences. I have also been testing Chitika ads on a few sites for a several days, but my results don’t seem to be as spectacular. I think the problem is that my sites are not quite the right type of sites for eMiniMalls. They seem to do much better in consumer goods oriented web sites like gadget blogs. […]
[…] It’d be nice if any of the so-called “moneymakers” at my disposal (Amazon links, Chitika MiniMall, PayPal donation button) actually made me any money, but thus far they really haven’t. I’m starting to think that bloggers like this guy are big fat liars… […]
How many format I use in 1 single page ? {Chitika MiniMall)
Thanks for the review on Chitika eMiniMalls. I linked over from Lorens blog to read this review. I will be adding your blog and newsletter to my must read list.
Sean Felker
Im interesting about the ads and want to start earning money.. Can you show me the way, and give me some tips?
Thanks,
Joe
[…] Chitika eMiniMalls – How Much Money Do they Earn Me?: Blog Tips at ProBlogger I’ve been getting quite a few excited emails from readers who have signed up for the Chit […]
Well done, but should you say that your results are actually ‘mind-blogling”?
Oh god: I’m blown away- that is amazing. I’m struggling by with my $2.00 a day and feeling pretty pleased with myself (I don’t ask for much!) and look at you! Time to get serious methinks!
Do all clicks get credited to the referrer, or only certain ones?
If you scroll over the banners in the “best deals” tab, you will see that the link is redirected thorugh chikita to a dealtime url, without your chitika username anywhere in the url string.
What is up with that?
I have not signed up for Chitika or Adsense as of yet. I don’t understand how people make $1000 per day with these programs. I am sure I will be lucky to earn $1 per day.
Darren, if you can give me any suggestions or tips, please email me. I would be greatful to earn just $5 per day. I have heard of something called siteforsell…would you recommend?
Darren, I meant to say SiteBuildIt, Sitesell.
Do you think Chitika ads will do well on a smaller ppc search engine? I have many keywords I can include easily.
[…] […]
I’m enjoying Chitika ads, just not to the fantastic levels that you are.
I started with Chitika during mid-October and beat my Adsense earnings during October. Nice!
All Sounds blinkin marvellous. Just been accepted and will “gingerly” introduce to my photography site.
“Darren, I meant to say SiteBuildIt, Sitesell”
Kristin, Sitebuildit are excellent. I started my photography site 9 months ago with Sitebuildit and traffic is starting to take off considerably now.
I am a photographer and have never built a website before, but I am now getting around 13,000 unique vistors a month and 40,000 page views. This figure seems to be growing rapidly.
Give them a go!
Nick
Chitika Ads
You might have seen ads on this site that deal with stuff like computers, ipods, game consoles, cameras, etc. These are ads by Chitika. Chitika is the latest company to jump on board the whole website advertisement band wagaon, but the difference is…