Chitika have launched a premium publisher program in the last week.
Chitika publishers will now fit one of three categories – Silver – Gold and Premium.
Each level has it’s own privileges – from what I can tell most publishers are Gold publishers (I’m not sure why there’s a Silver category) with premium publishers qualifying by fitting this criteria:
You have used Chitika ads consistently and made at least $1000 over the past 90 days
AND / OR
You have a proven high-quality of traffic based on the feedback of our advertisers.
What do premium publishers get?
- Higher Rev Share (no details on what this actually is)
- CPM and PPC ads (get paid for impressions as well as clicks)
- Real time Auditing (no more waiting til the end of the month)
- Dedicated Account Manager
- Custom Ad Units (Chitikas designers can create something to suit your blog)
- Instant Chat with your account Rep (if you’re in the same time zone – I’ve never seen mine online)
- Account Overview Reports (monthly)
- Customized backup categories (tailor a category specifically for your blog with specific products)
- Chitika Premium Publisher Badge (pictured right)
- Spots as a guest blogger on Chtiika’s blog
As a publisher who has been put in this program my own attraction to it is the higher rev share (although I’ve not really seen any marked improvement), the CPM ads (my CPM income is about 10% of the click revenue – a nice jump!) and the possibility of custom ads.
I do think it’s interesting that Chitika have gone public with announcing what premium publishers get. AdSense are public about the fact that they have a premium publishers program and have mentioned at different times what number of page views is needed to get into it – but they’ve always been more vague on what those publishers get. In doing so I wonder if they’ve created less of an ‘us and them’ feeling with their program.
My worry is that perhaps by giving everyone a category and telling everyone what they are missing out by not being premium publishers is that they might frustrate their middle and lower tier of publishers. Time will tell.
Nice, I’ll have to reconsider putting this on my more product oriented sites. I haven’t had the greatest experiences with Amazon and Shopzilla’s aff programs.
CPM + PPC is *very* intriguing.
Very interesting, I’m always fascinated to see what other networks are doing. We’ve taken almost the opposite approach. After seeing the “super affiliates” panel at affiliate summit last year, we heard that the best publishers want to be treated well and given a top rev share right out of the gate without having to spend a lot of time in lower tiers. That sounds far more critical than I mean to be — there’s no obivous answer as to how to reward your current top publishers without putting off new publishers who may be next year’s top tier.
The mouse over does not work. Maybe it’s just me.
It’s not supposed to work. That image is just an example.
Higher revenue share for those who earn most? The rich get richer ;)
Guess I need to work harder on optimizing my Chitika.
As the new kid on the block (O.K., maybe the old kid) programs like this make me feel neglected and ignored. If they thought it out better they could have promoted a “newcomer” program alongside the Premium program.
As Jon Kelly mentioned above, you never know who might be next year’s top tier.
Chitika seems more concerned with attracting only the top publishers. This can be a dangerous attitude for any business.
I agree with what Max Powers said above me. Chitika might be alienating a lot of potential publishers who are small now, but can be huge by this time next year.
While dividing people up into categories like this can motivate some people to work harder, others will just move on to another ad program.
Sounds great! I will try it.
Chitika doesn’t really perform well on my blogs, even when they are above the fold. Three tier program sounds to me that they only want just a few publishers instead of thousands. Bad move, in that thousands working for you is better than just a few. I will have to seriously reconsider my participation in their program.
What i can say that chitika customer service was not good. I tried it before and when i paste their code into my blog i wont see any ads. I have requested from their help but didnot get any thing. hence didnt try them. but i use adsense with some what success other than any other networks.
Great i will try Chitika.