Chitika should be happy about some of the changes announced over at the Chitika Blog today. There are two main 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.
This is what many publishers were calling for in the last round of audits. It will mean that your daily figures will be down for December in proportion to the percentage of traffic you have from disallowed countries. To avoid losing out publishers should use the Alternate URL feature. It is worth noting that there is still an auditing process that will filter out other factors at the end of the month but that this should reduce the decreases in revenue from auditing.
2. Faster daily updates: You can expect to see a faster turn around time for the daily reports.
I’m generally asleep when stats update and didn’t notice any difference yesterday but I do know of quite a few publishers were were surprised by quicker updates (hours ahead of ‘normal’) yesterday.
Lastly Chitika announced that they’ve expanded further into Europe and are now testing running ads in countries including France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, and Netherlands.
We’d now have to see as to by how much would the earnings decrease after the monthly audit..hopefully it’d not be a lot if the “daily filtering” is doing its job correctly.
–An avid Internet browser
Bien ! Let’s try it in french.
A move in the right direction, certainly.
The only true measure of Chitika’s worth to the publisher, however, is the final payout.
Note this: “The final revenues are calculated after the audit process that takes into consideration factors like click fraud, merchant feedback, merchant chargebacks, etc”
Various factors can still affect your payout.
I await the November figures with interest….
Wow, after reading this message I checked out my Chitika account and saw they have already reported the earnings for Monday. That’s about 9-10 hours earlier than usual.
ooh you’re right. Now I can check my stats before going to bed again! :-)
Thats good however I get good impressions but very few clicks,not sure if its worth it but will keep using them a little while longer.
“The only true measure of Chitika’s worth to the publisher, however, is the final payout”.
That’s untrue.
With daily figures removing any clicks coming from unsupported countries, you can more quickly respond to what content is creating these invalid clicks. Personally, getting these daily updates with theuse of SIDs has greatly increased my potential payout by over 100% in the last few days. I was able to more quickly react to traffic trends, modify my content and submit stories to other sites driving valid traffic to my site instead.
To say that the final payout is all that matters is probably the most shortsighted approach to creating a high paying, successful blog. Tweaking your site to match traffic and reading trends to increase your payout is the only way to ever make your blog/site grow.
“With daily figures removing any clicks coming from unsupported countries, you can more quickly respond to what content is creating these invalid clicks”
Untrue.
Potential payout is *not* your actual payout. Profit can only be determined when you have the audited details and past performance is no measure of future earnings. The audited details can be affected by various factors, not just geo-targeting.
I like the Chitika system. I’ve had very good results from them, thus far. However, I’ve been in the affiliate marketing game a long time, and I’ve been burned before. Ask any old-hand: the only money that counts is the cleared funds in your bank account.
I believe the phrase “don’t count your chickens until they are hatched” is apt here.
The difference between spud and hagrin is that one of you is comparing your income and the other is comparing managing your website. Personally, I don’t really use my Chitika traffic analysis to do the management because I have google analytics and sitemeter which both report much faster than Chitika (even with their faster daily updates), and that gives me much more relevant information for what I am currently trying to accomplish.
What I am currently trying to accomplish doesn’t really have Chitika as my cornerstone of income, however.
Spud –
I understand your point – it’s just like the stock market. Who cares if your stock is up 25 points today if you don’t sell because tomorrow you could give it all back in losses.
But the “head in the sand” approach just doens’t fly. I’m sure you check Chitika’s reports more than once a month right? If so, you do care about day-to-day earnings and reports.
And personally, there is no difference in the long-run between optimizing income and managing your site. I use Analytics, Sitemaps, Chitika, AdWords and other tools from my host to manage the day-to-day tweaking I do on the site.
I have been paid out by Chitika so I don’t see it as an affiliate program (like AllAdvantage back in the day) which just never paid out.
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Hagrin, I think Blaine has it right when he says we are talking about two different things.
Like you, I am concerned with tracking. I’ve done it every day, for years. I know my segmentation, I know my paths, I know my metrics. I know exactly where my traffic comes from, how much it costs, and where it exits. We’re on the same page with regard to the need to track.
My point is that there is an information asymmetry. You can’t tell exactly what payout you’re getting from Chitika until they actually pay you. The figures provided on a daily basis are ballpark, and Chitika have made a point of saying that the actual payout is dependent on various factors between themselves and their suppliers, which means that you, me, Darren, and anyone else on the outside have no way of knowing in advance how big the ballpark is. It would be simple if geo-targeting was the only factor, but that isn’t the case.
Personally, I’m giving Chitika the benefit of the doubt until I see the November figures and compare those figures with my own data. I like the program and certianly hope it succeeds.
I, like many others, would like to see better reporting on their side.
Chitika is a FRAUD, I am a victim of them , First they deducted 57% of my earnings in Audit and next month I received a mail that my traffic is Fradulent however I am being paid by Adsense for the same traffic, This is really ridiculous, My traffic is 100% legit and I had offered them to have my server logs and prove my site clicks as FRAUD,Moreover I had referred 14 publishers to them, If they really have a legit reason to boot me out why are they not responding to my questions, the help ticket is wiating for a answer since last 8 days??? I am a international publisher, and I am unable to take legal action against them. I pray GOD Chitika pay for their actions.