How To Use Chitika - Sign Up as a Publisher, Create Ads and Make Money
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» Chitika | Premium
"Turning page views into profits."
That's what you, as a publisher, would want for your website. To fully utilize the potential of page views or page impressions you get, and make money out of it. So how exactly does Chitika turn page views into profits? How different is it from Google Adsense or any other affiliate ad program?
Chitika focuses only on Search-targeted Advertising. Search-targeted advertising is another concept of affiliate advertising which uses the method of displaying ads targeted to a search query by a user on a major search engine like Google.
Google Adsense on the other hand uses Contextual Advertising, meaning the advertisements displayed in an ad slot will try as much as possible to match the content on the webpage.
» Search-targeted Advertising
There are 4 kinds of Chitika Ads - Chitika Premium, Linx, WhitespaceAds and eMiniMalls. I'll be focusing only on Chitika Premium, as it is the best performing ad type and is most widely used.
Here's an explanation on how Chitika's search-targeted advertising works (using Chitika | Premium).
1. User A goes to Google.com to look for generators and enters the keywords "powered generators".
2. The search results show and he clicks the first link - www.poweredgenerators.com (www.poweredgenerators.com is a Chitika Publisher)
3. User A gets directed to www.poweredgenerators.com and the Chitika Premium ad slot will display advertisements relevant to the searched keywords - "powered generators". You can see the keywords highlighted in yellow below stating "You searched for powered generators".
This is the simple technique that Chitika uses to capture the keywords leading to a web page and then use it to display targeted advertisements in the ad units.
» Sign Up as a Publisher
So now that you've understood how Chitika works, it's time to use it. If you haven't already registered as a Publisher, you may do so here: Sign Up as a Chitika Publisher.
Once registered, Login as a Publisher and you can begin creating your Chitika Premium Ad Unit. If you are familiar with Google Adsense's Ad Setup process, creating your first ad unit will be a breeze as Chitika adopts a similar user interface and ad setup process as Google Adsense.
» Chitika Premium Ad Setup
1. Click the Ad Setup tab at the top navigation bar.
2. You'll now be at the Chitika Premium Ad Setup page. At the bottom of the page, there's a link "Other Chitika Ads" which will bring you to the ad setup of the other 3 ad unit types mentioned above. Chitika Premium is recommended above the other ad types.
3. Click the Get Code button and you will go to the next step of choosing your ad unit size.
4. Choose your preferred ad unit size and click Continue To Next Step.
5. Now you have to choose a Fallback. The purpose of a fallback is to cater for visitors who land at your website not from a search engine or in short, for non-search traffic. You can pick 1 out of the 3 choices offered. The recommended choice would be Collapse into nothing. This option is good because your regular visitors will not be bothered by the advertisements while transient visitors will have a well-targeted ad. Pick your fallback and proceed.
6. This final step, Customize your ad, is optional but I strongly recommend that you pick a colour theme that suits with your website so that the ad unit blends into the content and won't look annoying or too obvious. Also, it's always good to assign a channel to your ad unit. Channels are generally used for analytical purposes. With channeling, you can know which ad at which page of which website is getting the most number of clicks hence allowing for convenient optimization. Go on to the next step.
7. Now you'll be shown the source code of the ad you have just created. Simply copy and paste this anywhere within the body tags of your web page - <body> [chitika-code] </body>.
Done! You've just created a Chitika Premium ad unit. But how come the ad doesn't show when you preview your web page?
» Previewing and Testing your Ad
The Chitika Premium ad unit cannot be seen on your web page, if you access it directly, i.e if you access your website by entering its URL in the Address bar.
Chitika Premium Ad units will
only display ads to search engine traffic coming from America and Canada.
That's one limitation about Chitika - it only caters to the above 2 countries. But Chitika offers a way for Publishers to preview their ad unit conveniently.
1. Copy the ad code and paste it in your web page.
2. Now, you'll have to input parameters to simulate traffic coming from a search engine. Pick a keyword or keyword phrase, for example "funny cat videos" or "shopping". Then, add it to the end of your page URL using the parameter "#chitikatest=shopping". If your webpage URL is www.mywebpage.com/me, this is how it'll look like - www.mywebpage.com/me#chitikatest=shopping. Note that if you're testing for a keyword phrase, add the plus sign like so - www.mywebpage.com/me#chitikatest=online+shopping.
3. You should now be able to see the ad in your webpage displaying results targeted to your chosen keyword(s). Play around with different keywords to view the different results shown in your ad unit.
So that's it! You're a Chitika Publisher master now. ;-) I hope I have helped you understand Chitika in one way or another. Feel free to ask me any questions if you encounter any issues.
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A Video on How Chitika Premium Works
It is very useful and self explanatory for newbies.thanks
Hi Azhar, very nice post. I am doing a MBA dissertion on the online display advertising industry and am keen to compare different publisher workflow/models as part of that. Can you share any links/information with me on that. Specifically, I am trying to understand how the workflow or model works right from when a publisher signs up to start seeing revenue on her/his site based on the ads bieng served. You can email me at arghochatterjee@aim.com also.
Thanks,
Argho
thanks admin,. you helped me soo much by writing this article. thanks to you
thank you admin. you helped me a lot by writing this post. thanks 2 you
nice one admin, i also want to take chitika ads for my blog http://myyouthbrigade.com
Thank you admin..
helpful article,m planning to take chitka ads for my site http://fsquarefashion.com
i couldn't earned well from chitika implemented on my blog - www.maxhungama.com . :(
its really a content which m looking for www.vehiclesarena.com
thanks for your sharing :D
Hi really nice published articles
i also want to show the these ads on my sites
http://www.coreitdevelopers.com
Regards
Harish Rawat
Nice post .I have apply it on my blog http://webtechera.com for more income.Thanks
Are there any free blog sites that still use or let you easily insert Chitika ads? HubPages and Squidoo are very user friendly sites but neither will let you insert Chitika ads nor do they insert them. Squidoo used to have them along with adsense but they've evidently severed their relationship with Chitika during this past year. I am very very interested in locating another site like HubPages or Squidoo that allows you to insert specifically Chitika ads and would appreciate anyone's response or help. Thanks
wow thanks for this wonderful post, i am new to blogging and was looking for such a type of post on how to use chitka to add ads to my website http://www.techfreeks.com, if you have a link to how to use google adsense then plz recommend
earn_Online_24x7 18 months ago
Tkx Azhar, your article is very good and I'll definitely give Chitika a try. Can you tell me if Chitika works on Blogger?