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Top 5 – GWP Winner (and the #1 Reason Why Chitika Rocks)

Posted By Darren Rowse 12th of May 2007 ProBlogger Site News 0 Comments

OK, after a good night’s sleep an hour or two working through the list to weed out a couple of little problems I’ve just selected a winner for the Top 5 Group Writing Project. Before I announce them – here are a few administrative notes:

  • Full List – For those wanting to see the full list in the one place I’ve just put together a compilation page of all 893 entries at Top 5 Group Writing Project Final Submission List. Please keep surfing it, linking up (I think some top 5 favorites would be appropriate) and making friends of those bloggers you find.
  • Duplicate Entries – A few people misread (or didn’t read) the rules properly and there were a few who submitted multiple entries. I’ve left them in the list but have only allowed their first entry to be eligible for the prize.
  • Late Entries – There have been a few of these – but unfortunately I can’t keep adding new entries to the list. You’re welcome to keep writing Top 5 posts – but they won’t be listed any more – sorry.

Before I announce the Winner – I want to complete my own little Top 5 project – the top five reasons why I think Chitika Rocks.

#5 – On Day 1 I told you that they were interactive ads and very clickable
#4 – On Day 2 I told you about their RPU (related product units) and why they’re cool.
#3 – On Day 3 I told you about their free BlogBash ebook which is filled with great blogging tips
#2 – On Day 4 I told you about eMiniMalls

#1 Reason Why Chitika Rocks

The reason why Chitika Rocks the most can perhaps be summarized best with a little screen shot of the log in page of my Chitika account where they very kindly remind me each time I log in how much money I’ve earned by using them. Here’s what it looks like:

Chitika Earnings

That amount doesn’t include April’s earnings (and goes back to when I started to use them in September 2005) – but when they do update it that figure will go past quarter of a million dollars. What else can I really say? I think Chitika Rocks (and who wouldn’t)!

Thanks again to Chitika for putting up the prize for this project.

The Winner of the Project

Before I announce the winner – let me say that there are many deserving winners this week – I hope that participants have been ‘rewarded’ with a little extra traffic (and for those of you who were featured on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon with your entries a lot of extra traffic).

However there is only one winner and that winner relies completely upon luck as this is a random prize draw.

And that Winner is……

Nancy R. Callahan for her entry Baby names from Video Games.

Congratulations Nancy – I’ll be in touch with you shortly to arrange for $1001 cash to be sent to you from Chitika. Thanks for your entry.

And thanks to everyone for participating! I’ll hoping we can do one of these projects per month from now on in. Feel free to nominate topics below.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Whoa, sorry about the typo – I mean Chitika.
    (See? Too excited to type properly… :)

  2. i guess i should really look into this chitika thing then huh….oh and congrats nancy! Also…thanks for organizing a great group writing project …look foward to the next one !!

  3. (How funny – I wrote 2 comments, but only the second posted.)

    What I’d basically said was:

    Thanks so much, Darren, for holding another group writing project. I love participating. And thanks for the information on Chitika — I’ve just signed up. :)

    PS – Jonathan, thanks! Isn’t it sad how Jessica Alba is trying to get credit for all the work I did in the film? :)

  4. […] was searching through some of the entries to Darren Rowse’s Group Writing contest at Pro Blogger, and stumbled on a post written by Sognatrice at Bleeding Espresso. I decided I […]

  5. $244k? Damn, the Top 5 prize should have been larger or featured more winners… ;)

  6. Cha Ching! Well done with your Chitika earnings!

  7. Thanks Darren, these group projects have always been lots of fun.

  8. Thanks for hosting the writing comp! It was a really great experience since this was my first time getting involved. I came across some really great posts.

    Congrats Nancy!!! Well deserved!

  9. congrats to nancy … also thanx to darren for the great competition topic …

    i think the responses were so overwhelming that to expect good traffic to your site is a letdown … would you be surprise if i were to tell you the new traffic i’m getting is very very negligible – less than 50 unique users? yes, that’s the fact and i think it’s because there’re simply too many participants …

    anyway, i’m glad i enter the competition because i believe i’ve written the best post so far for my own readers … i never thought of “top 5” title could inspire me to write a beneficial post for my blog … so i guess there’s always something to be gained from such competition …

    cheers everyone – looking forward to another competition …

  10. I still can’t get over that earnings summary box — that’s just amazing! I’m pretty sure you’ve convinced about the same number of people to show Chitika some love, Darren.

  11. […] with the Problogger Group Writing Project coming to an end and a lucky winner announced, I thought I would write a short note on how this […]

  12. Wow…I had thrown in the towel on Chitika long ago, after seeing less than 1/2 of 1% CTR on their ads. Maybe you know something I don’t. I’d really be interested in hearing your thoughts on improving click-through on Chitika ads.

  13. Most ad services available to independent bloggers are only going to offer cents-on-the-click – so it all comes down to traffic. More traffic = more clicks = more money. Most of us will never hit numbers like $244k or even $24k. Because this is a site dedicated to blogging techniques, I assume a large percent (most?) of Darren’s revenue comes via referrals rather than shopping units themselves. Looks like Chitika pays out a 10% bounty on commissions for each person referred for 15 months. Of course being a VIP, I’d say he gets a higher rate.

  14. Darren – great writing project! I saw your announcement on the b5 forum but didn’t enter. next time….I am there!

    Congrats Nancy! Very creative posts. I love to go to a blog that truly has original content.

    Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day everyone! :)

  15. Congratulations to Nancy, and what a great project. It was fun,thanks Darren.

  16. […] Problogger’s Group Writing Project is over now and Congrats to Nancy R. Callahan who was the winner . Thanks to the Project , i came […]

  17. I have an idea for a yearly, quarterly, or monthly theme. How about creating BlogIdol. Like American Idol and have various random topics to have the first 50 bloggers blog that enters the contest, blog about some topics you choose and put a poll on your site. You choose the top 20(sort of like the judges on American Idol) then have people vote for the top 10, then narrow it down to the top 5, then top 3 and then choose the winner.

  18. […] few days ago I participated in Darren Rowse’s group writing project over at […]

  19. This is going to sound churlish, but here goes:

    Unless your name is Darren Rowse, there is really no point putting all 900-odd links on a single big post and claiming you are bestowing ‘link love’.

    The ONLY visits my article has had, apart from people who came directly from Problogger itself, is from a site that picked the 10 or 15 articles most relevant to that site. 20 or so sites have posted the whole list (that’s what my trackback stats show anyway) and not a single visitor has arrived at my site from there.

    Perhaps people need to re-think the influence they have on the blogosphere?

  20. […] to blog about Lucky today because I recently (and quite randomly) won a fantastic prize from ProBlogger. It made me feel quite lucky, and then I wondered whether ‘Lucky’ had ever ranked as a […]

  21. Dave Zatz said> Looks like Chitika pays out a 10% bounty on commissions for each person referred for 15 months. Of course being a VIP, I’d say he gets a higher rate.
    Dave, just to clarify, we do not differentiate. Even VIPs get the same rate.

  22. I posted the full list on my blog today but when I went through it I noticed that my entry at http://internetmarketingreview.org/blog1/2007/05/10/top-five-celebrity-faux-paus/
    was not included. I have added it to the list on my blog but I would appreciate it if you’d make sure it gets included on your list, Darren. I sent it in early in the afternoon on Thursday and it was included in the list you posted of the Thursday entries here on your blog, though for some reason it got left off the list of ALL entries.

    Thanks, Denise

  23. […] Rowse, creator of Problogger.net announced the winner of his latest group writing project Saturday. It was Nancy R. Callahan for her entry Baby names […]

  24. WOW I could pay off my house and have enough left over for a couple of toys. :-)

  25. Congratulations to Nancy!!!
    cant wait for the next one.

  26. And here’s a reason why Chitika sucks.

    They *NEVER* *EVER* respond to support tickets. I’ve tried many many time to get some support from them on many issue, and they never responded once.

    They probably DO respond to you, but hey, all I make out of chitika is two or three bucks per day, so they don’t give a * about me.

  27. That’s a whole lotta money for an affiliate! I only wish.. even a quarter of it!

  28. […] Stop right there and push yourself away from the keyboard. While many can attest to the fact that there is money to be made from blogging, what you see on their websites comes from a serious dedication to the hard work and experience […]

  29. The problem with Chitika is that they don’t accept blogs from any of the FREE services!!

    That’s really bad :(

    Cheers!!
    Jason
    I Blog at http://jsbi.blogspot.com

  30. […] Darren Rowse made US$244,381.98 from Chitika (aff) since 2005, and it is only one of the many income streams he has from his blogs […]

  31. […] AuctionAds? Chitika? These are all fine and swell, and when done right can definitely make you a bunch of money. But I want to talk about Eli who took an entirely different route and rocketed from $0 to […]

  32. If I got paid that much from Chitika I would be pretty happy with them also. But the truth is that they have really SCREWED many good publishers over and not paid them ANYTHING!.

    Even a couple of years later I could rant on and on, but the short version of my story is that I signed up with them and had some good results. I then took the time to add their code to many of our sites. in a short while we had gotten perhaps $60 in clicks and I was thrilled. The ads looked great and worked even better then the AdSense I had been using.

    Then I received a notification that we were being dropped because of bad clicks. I was in shock because I don’t do that and have no one connected to our company that would do that either.

    I tried for 3 MONTHS to get a detailed account of what had happened. If there was click fraud going on, you would think they would want to work with publishers to determine the source and get the bad guys.

    I got a few responses to the 30 or 40 support tickets I sent in, but I was never able to get them to treat me any better than scum. I was never able to reach anyone by phone either. I was never paid a CENT and had to spend more time pulling all their crap from all my sites. It was a HUGE waste of time and a very frustrating experience.

    Don’t just take my word for it, do a search in Google for “Chitika sucks” and look at the nearly 80,000 results that come up…!

    My advice? Sure, give them a try. Maybe you can get big checks from them also. But if you don’t want to risk what I and MANY others have gone through, stay with AdSense, Affiliate programs, or Ebay Auction Ads. There are better choices out there.

  33. I have applied for Chitika many times, but they didn’t accept me! Do you know how to let them accept me successful? Thank you very much.

    Sincerely,
    Dingchao

  34. That’s awesome, I heard about Chitika a lot and the more I hear about it the more I like it!

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