Chitika November And December Audits Released

My question for Chitika is that if they aren't going to pay for clicks outside the US why don't they allow an alternate URL that is displayed when a user is fetching the ad from outside the US? This would have the benefit of almost eliminating all these "outside the US" clicks and satisfy their publishers that they are deriving revenue from all end users and not just a subset of their users.

After a 2 week delay beyond when they were expected, Chitika fulfilled it's audit for November. It has also cleared it's December audit. Results are still down for every publishers, some not as drastic as others. Some people are also reporting that they've been kicked out of the program for fraudulent clicks though they haven't engaged in the practice.

Jensense

Personally, here is what I saw. For my own earnings, I lost 5% for November and 3% for December. For my referral earnings, I saw my earnings reduced about 40% for November and about 25% for December. Unfortunately, those referral earnings audits were still pretty significant in my books, especially since they began filtering clicks at the beginning of December.

That great a loss in revenue for referrals is horrible and may see a severe drop in those referring people to the service. I personally wouldn't refer anyone to this Chitika eMiniMalls service which is racked with errors and disappointment. For those of you who are referring people why are you doing it? Just for the money? Shame on you! Whether you realize it or not you are taking a direct hit to your reputation by referring someone to this service that you repeatedly report is disappointing.

Feedbuzzard

A quick look at my numbers reveal a very strong November. The audited versus actual numbers indicate I took a 15% hit. Ouch!

... today [was] the first day ever that my AdSense earnings actually out did my Chitika earnings.

That is seriously bad news for Chitika. If publishers start seeing their Chitika earnings performing less than AdSense there is little draw to a service that repeatedly, month after month, pisses them off with reduced revenue.

Marketing Tools Review

I took a 20% reduction for November. Uggh! December was much better at about 4%.

It seems that the December reductions are a little more reduced, which means that their daily screenings are getting better at taking out all those clicks from users outside the US.

Eric Giguere has this to say about them even making the two week extension.

Hell hath frozen over, it seems.

Hell hath frozen over indeed!

From a Sitepoint forum here is a few comments.

68% of unaudited revenue

...

75% payout here

...

Lost 38%

...

about a 20% loss

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lost 42%

...

I lost about 25%

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Lost bout 50%-60%

...

Audit for nov, 30 percent

...

there was a difference of 42% in Nov, the difference was only 13% for Dec

...

10% down

Now 10% doesn't seem like much of a big deal, but if you were expecting $10,000 and then on the magic payday they only gave you $9,000 what would you say? I'd be furious.

10% ROI is actually pretty decent in the business and investment world. For people to just accept a 10% loss without questioning is worrisome. For those who accept an even greater loss than that and actually stay with the program, I just don't know what to say.

This entry is in the following archive(s):
Chitika eMiniMalls Archive

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