Chitika Review II

Banner ads just seem to get deader and deader every day. A young upstart company called “Chitika” has just supplied the eulogy and a few sharp coffin nails to the once hot banner ads of the 1990′s. Chitika goes far beyond the static banner ad concept and into the world of contextual advertising made popular by the Google AdSense program introduced in 2003. The antithesis of the pop-up ad, contextual advertising from Chitika targets the content of the page on which the ad is placed, then displays advertising relevant to that page’s topic. If your visitors are pouring over an article about MP3 audio technology, they won’t see an ad for cosmetics. You can guess what they will see!

Who is Chitika?

The sexy sounding name Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) has nothing to do with bananas. Chitika was created by Venkat Kolluri (formerly of Upromise) and Alden DoRosario (formerly with Terra Lycos). The company appeared out of nowwhere in May 2003 to become a leading player in the emerging industry of contextual advertising. Chitika announced the release of eMiniMalls in June of 2005.

What is Chitika eMiniMalls?

Chitika eMiniMalls is described a million different ways on the Chitika web site and by enthusiastic webmasters. Among them are “Interactive merchandising service” and the “intelligent and interactive online product merchandising kiosks.” The creative term, “eMinimalls” does a great job of describing the service for everyone. To the webmaster, Chitika eMiniMalls is a snippet of code placed on a site that can target ads to the content and pay each time the ad is clicked by a visitor. To the web site visitor, Chitika eMiniMalls is an interactive informative ad related to the page being viewed.

The eMiniMalls Ad

What makes the Chitika eMiniMalls ads so irrestably clickable is it’s visual appeal, content and functionality. Part graphical, part textual and part interactive, the eMiniMalls ad scarcely resembles a traditional banner ad. The lightweight eMiniMall “ad unit” presents viewers with options for whatever buying stage they happen to be in via mouseover tabs. The effect is to pack a enough information inside the ad unit–product description, graphic, and review along with comparative shopping info and search box–that the potential buyer gets something userful without having to leave the site. The eMiniMalls ad gives a much more endearing user experience than static text links or graphic ads that fire off a quick sales pitch and call to action. With the mouseover tabs, the user doesn’t even have to make the commitment of a mouse click to get some benefit.

What About the Performance?

Chitika eMiniMalls promises to “outshine static banner ads” and give webmasters the power to “generate revenue beyond banner advertising.” Got a low performing, high traffic Google AdSense site? Run a split test and see which one performs better. Performance will vary depending on the types of site conten, ad inventory and bid prices. Chitika eMiniMalls ads can be displayed on the same page with Google AdSense ads if the contextual function is turned off with a line of code (ch_non_contextual = 1;). This is currently the the default.
At the time of this writing, webmasters are paid 60% of ad revenue generated. Webmasters tend to appreciate the disclosure of the payout percentage. Chitika makes payments 30 days after month end in US Dollars to the a publisher’s PayPal account once the balance reaches $50. Webmasters can run Chitika eMinimalls on mulitple web sites as long as the terms and conditions are met.
We’ve come a long way from banner ads. Who’s looking back!

Adsense Vs Bidvertiser

Guys, Today i have installed bidvertiser ad code in my site. I want to test how it will go. I will be removing these ads after three months from today if i am unsuccessful. My aim is not to earn money using such ads but i really want to test it once.

Adsence Vs bidvertiser

Adsence is famous but it has $100 payout that also via check mostly. It has Western Union payout feature added recently but i don’t think many of us will be able to use that feature. But bidvertiser will pay you via paypal when you reach $10 This is petty good thing that i have found.
However, bidvertise has strict rules and if someone does any mistake then it will ban you instantly. Well, if someone clicks to my ads here 4/5 times then i may be banned. Lets see what will happen i am just testing okay ..

Other CPC Ad networks

There are many many CPC ad network but i haven’t tested any of them other than adsence which is petty good one. I will try them one by one and see how it will go. Never worry, i won’t be testing them in this site. This bidvertiser ad test is my last one …..

CPM ad Network

Very Low payout but good if you have high traffic. Adbrite also offers CPM in low rate but there are many other sites which pay you petty high amount like $0.6 CPM for just banner not Pop Up. Pop Up pay up to $6 CPM also. I will also test one pop up ad network in this site.

How To Do Keyword Research For SEO

After you have chosen your topic, you can start to picking niche site keywords.A keyword is a simple word or phrase that is typed into the search engine by a user searching for information. For example if searcher was looking for information on how to loose their weight, they might use some of the following common search terms.
Weight loss
Weight loss tips
How to loose weight fast
Keywords play important roles in optimizing a website, ranking on the search engines and reaching target market. Keyword research all starts with a keyword or keyword phrase that explain your website or blog. People will use variable of keyword phrase in order to find information on the internet. So, the more focused and targeted your keywords the greater your chances of ranking higher for your website's specific keywords. Keywords can be placed in domain name, post titles, a body of text, tag, category etc. and by having your primary keyword in your domain name is one of the key factors in achieving high rankings for a particular keyword phrase.
There are several tools on the web that can help you to broaden your keyword list further. By using these research tools, you can quickly expand your keyword list to get even more keywords to target. I personally prefer an easy, effective, free, but little time consuming way to find out niche value.You can either use of paid keyword research tools such as Micro Niche Finder review, Market Samurai, Keyword Elite, WordTracker or Traffic Travis if you are serious in a more advanced keyword research.
Go to Google Adword's Keyword Tool.
Make it sure that you checked all of these following columns -
* Competition
* Global Monthly Searches
* Local Monthly Searches
* Local Search Trends
* Estimated Average CPC
Let's say that you want to check out a keyword idea for weight loss. Type in the broad term "weight loss" in the keyword tool will retrieve a list of a lot more specific "weight loss" related keywords such as "weight loss diet", "weight loss pill", "weight loss food" and the list goes on. Download the keyword list.Once you gathered the list of keywords, it's time to do keyword analysis and find the most profitable ones. Elaborate it further and remove irrelevant keywords. These keywords should be targeted and related to your website/blog.
Refine Your Keyword List
In finding keywords to target, you are essentially looking for keywords that have good search volume, reasonably low competition and can monetize well.The first thing is the search volume; this is the amount of people that do searches for a word or phrase. Then we want to see the amount of advertisers that are competing for the phrases we're after. The last thing we determine is the amount of commercial value a keyword might have.

1. How many users are genuinely searching for your keywords?
After Google serves up the initial results, you'll want to limit the keyword ideas by specifying "exact match" for match type because it will produce a much precise data than the "phrase and broad match." Try to find keywords that have high search volume like 1000 or more per month. There is pointless selecting keywords that have low search volumes, let say 10 search per day as they will bring in very few traffic to your website/blog.
2. What is the search trend for your keyword within the past 3 years from top search engines?
Google Trends is a great keyword research tool that will show you variations in search volume for one or more keywords over the years. Google Trends reports graphically how frequently a number of search terms have been searched for on Google over the years. Google Trends will provide other information such as city, regional and language comparisons. It is simple to see that people in the United Kingdom search for "weight loss" about 2 times as much as people in Canada. Information like this can help website/blog owners focus marketing efforts regionally.
3. Rankability
The next step is to see how many competing pages there are online for the keywords you have selected.To do this, type in one of the keywords you're searching for into the query bar (make sure you do a "phrase match" search by enclosing the keyword in quotes). The lower the number of competing web pages, the better your probabilities are of gaining a top ranking for a particular keyword. I feel the least accurate, but it will give you a starting place and an idea of the competition. For many niches, keywords with less than 10000 competing pages are considered easy targets and it is a good chance it will give you the best search engine ranking. If your keyword is targeted have more than 100 000 competing pages usually means that the keyword is overly competitive.
Let say we have at least 1000 searches per month for the keyword phrase (around 33 search per day) and in order to rank quickly you will want the number of exact phrase match search results to be under 10,000 (with 50,000 being your total limit in most cases). If the keyword competition is low enough (under 10,000 pages) you can be on the first page of the search results in less than a week. Once you're on the first page you can expect to see at least 10% of the traffic. The higher you get ranked the more traffic you will get. If you're in the top 5 positions you'll get 30% of the traffic; top 3 - 50%; etc. So if the keyword phrase gets 1000 searches per month, you will improve web site traffic by 500 visitors per month once you reach the top three position.
4. Identifying the level of competition
Then you'll want to check some basic information about each competitor, such as data about their unique visitors each month, how longthe website has been running, how many pages are being indexed by Google and other major search engines,how many inbound links they have, their page rank, Alexa rank and any social media tools they use. You can get all those data by using SEOQuake Firefox plugin. If you find you're looking to get into a niche that is dominated by sites with high PR, tons of backlinks and an ad spend you might want to reconsider altenative keyword. Remove the super high competition keywords from your list because you maybe will not get that traffic and target lower competition keywords first so you will get quicker results.
5. How much Pay Per Click(PPC) price.
One of the ways people are using for website/blog monetizing is Google AdSense. If you are interested in making money with your blog/website, then you should consider high paying keyword because will produce high paying pay per click ads. So by targeting keywords with CPC $ 1 at least we would get $ 0.5 per click. Now if you plans to monetize the site with the AdSense ads, this information is crucial.
Okay, by now you should have 1-5 keywords that are highly relevant to your business, have a lot of monthly searches, fairly high paying and are not very competitive.With all these ways being done, rinse, wash, repeat - keep monitoring your keywords and make tweaks as necessary then you can proceed to buy domains name for your website/blog.
As you can see, keyword research and analysis can be time consuming,tedious and challenging task. Luckily most modern keyword research tools can do the same thing a lot faster. But it's a worthwile learning experience because thorough keyword research will help to discover the most relevant search terms used by potential visitors and should be the first step before trying build website/blog.

Chitika Review

I know I promised my results of using Chikita 3 days after my first impression post, but I've been struggling on my approach.  See, there is one side of me that is extremely disappointed and some what frustrated, but another side that sees how Chitika can work and does fill the niche that Chitika is aiming for.  So, as a disclaimer, let me stress the following.

"Chitika is not a replacement for Google Adsense, nor is Chitika trying to compete with Google Adsense."

After listening to Chitika's sales pitch I would have thought that I would be receiving comparable CPC's on my automotive blog.  However, that was not the case and averaging out it looks to be less than half.  Taking it a step further, after the auditing process it potentially could be lowered again, which is where the frustration comes from.
In all of my sites I try to monetize in a way that does not affect readership.  I view my sites more often than anyone, so I attempt to make them as void of Ads and marketing as possible.  So, Chitika just doesn't seem to be fitting in with my own business model.  I have trouble justifying ad placement when it earns me less than half of the cost of a stamp per click.  Higher CPC's may be found in different niches, I'm only comparing Adsense CPC's in the automotive category to that from Chitika.
Chitika Shines
The CTR is of course much higher than Adsense, which is to be expected since they use the tried and true 'image-next-to-ad' technique.  Google banned this method over a year ago because it created less than optimal traffic for the advertisers.  Essentially, you are tricking visitors into clicking on a link, nothing more, nothing less.
A higher CTR would be super awesome, if only it paid out decent.  Where it stands right now, I would need 5-6 times the amount of clicks just to equal one click from my Adsense Ads.  So why even bother taking up valuable real estate on my site and just annoying my visitors?
I'm struggling with the answer to that last question.  Be damned if I'm going to sacrifice my Adsense earnings.  That's why Chitika focuses on alerting Publishers that Chitika can be used alongside Adsense ads.  It doesn't make sense for me, because I'm getting clicks, why would I want to sacrifice half my clicks for a lower paying ad?  I wouldn't.
Chitika Customer Service
I had the opportunity to talk with Ryan Travis, Director of Client Services at Chitika.  My initial phone call was a service issue, dealing with accurate impressions, but all was working well(I'll save info for another post).  Ryan and I ended up talking about optimization, where Chitika see's itself in the marketplace, and where they hope to go.  Ryan was quick to respond to emails, a pleasure to talk with, and part of the reason why I will continue to use Chitika at some level.
Who Should Use Chitika
The only people who should be using Chitika are those who receive a lot of traffic from search engines.  Of those people, the only ones who should be using Chitika are those who can't get Google Adsense to convert.  Chitika Premium ads are only shown to search engine traffic, so those of you getting traffic from other sites need not apply.  And as mentioned above, don't risk losing higher paying Adsense traffic to get a few more clicks on your Chitika ads.
Conclusion
I will continue to use Chitika in hopes they will increase their Automotive inventory of ads and eventually increase CPC's.  Ryan feels that the online marketing industry as a hole is trending toward higher search traffic CPC's, rather than content related marketing like Adsense for content.  I hope he's right and I wish Chitika luck in their niche.  We need options in the market place as both a publisher and advertiser.
In the not to distant future I will be publishing some more results from my Chitika ads.  The Chitika 'auditing' process could prove to be a deal breaker, but I will reserve judgement.

Infolinks Review and How to Increase infolinks Earning

I have being using InfoLinks for almost a year now and this InfoLinks review is based upon my experience of using this service. InfoLinks is an in-text advertising service, which means they scan your post, and converts some keywords into advertisements by showing a double underline below them. There are advantages and disadvantages of using the service and below are each of the discussed in detail. Also I will explain how you can increase your InfoLinks earnings and how you can get more targeted advertisements.

Advantages of InfoLinks

Mentioned below are some advantages InfoLinks have compared to few other services.

• No space required - This is one of the biggest advantages of using this service. As I mentioned above InfoLinks scans your blog and highlights some keywords. So you can utilize the space of your blog for another advertisement service or to highlight other important aspects of your blog.
• High Click Through Rate - Because the advertisements are most of the time within the post InfoLinks ads tend to have a high click through rate. The click through rate for most of my blogs were more than 6% which is better than most advertisement networks. For people who are new to making money online, click through rate is the number of clicks per 100 ad impressions.
• Easy Integration - It is very easy to integrate InfoLinks advertisement into your blog. A small java script is generate for you and you just have to add it within your body. There are plug-in's for WordPress users, widgets for Blogspot users and Drupal modules and Joomla modules as well.
• Can be used with other advertisement networks - Because it is an in-text advertising service you can use it with in conjunction with many other advertisement networks, without violating there terms of service. This includes Adsense as well.
• Easy to join - You need to have your own domain to join a advertisement network like Adsense, but you can join InfoLinks even if you have only a Blogspot blog, which makes it a good Adsense alternative. You still need to have a quality blog because every blog or website that is accepted to the network has to go through a quality check.
• Easy to change setting - The basics setting like color of links, number of underlining links, number or links to be highlighted as advertisements and the category of your advertisements can be easily modified without changing the advertisement code.

InfoLinks Review In-Text Advertising

Disadvantages of InfoLinks

There are certain disadvantages of using InfoLinks as well, listed below are some of them.

• Low Cost Per Click - Although you have a high click through rate with InfoLinks, the cost per click is lower when compared to other networks like Adsense. This should vary according to your niche and in general niches like business and automotive tend to perform well.
• Very Low pay for International Traffic - If you are not getting a large percentage of your traffic from USA you will see very low CPC in your reports. In one of my sites where I get most of my visitors from Sri Lanka I earn 0.03$ from almost 10 clicks. Definitely not recommended to use if you are not getting US traffic.

How to Increase your InfoLinks Earnings

In the above sections of the InfoLinks review  I discussed about advantages and disadvantages of InfoLinks, In this section I will discuss few things you can do to  increase your InfoLinks earnings.
Choosing an InfoLink color - By default green is the color assigned to your ad units and it does tend to perform very well. You can choose a different ad color if you want the links to look more natural and not like advertisements. Its always a good idea to choose pleasing colors like green and light blue.
Choosing Category - In the integration section you will find a place to define the category, which determines the type of the ads you will receive. This helps a lot in increasing your click through rate, because then you will get more targeted ads. More clicks mean more money.
Ad Placement Control - You have the option of choosing which sections to displays InfoLink ads by using INFOLINKS_OFF and INFOLINKS_ON tags. This way you can show more of your ads withing the post content instead of places like previous posts, Introduction text etc.
At the time of writing this InfoLinks Review I have being using it for almost a year my conclusion is that if you are getting lots of US traffic then it is a great way to increase earnings from your blog, if not your better off looking for another service.

Compare with Infolinks and Kontra

Just to show you how low paying kontera is check out both screenshots. The first one is from Aug 01 2008 - Aug 31 2008 using kontera, I made $29.62 with 160,013 impressions ($0.19 eCPM($)).

From Oct 1, 2008 - Oct 26, 2008 using Infolinks I made $62.08 with 119,202 impressions and ($0.49eCPM($)).

So as you can see I had less page impressions but made more than 2X the amount with infolinks and i still have 5 days to the end of October.

below are screenshots from my account for proof. and just in case your wondering about the sites, Yes both are from the same exact site.

Kontera


Infolinks


Who would I recommend? I would recommend people with forums and content sites/blogs to try it out.

Common answers to questions found on there website
Publisher requirements? None
"Infolinks has no minimum requirements for page views or visitors and no hidden commitments."

Payments? Paypal and bank wire minimum $100.
"Every month. In details, at the end of each monthly payment period, Infolinks calculates your earnings for that month and issues your payment within 30 days of the end of the payment period"

If your considering trying infolinks be sure to sign-up now because there is a special higher % program going on for anyone signing up before 31st oct.

I would happily appreciate anyone signing up to use the aff link in my sig

cheers.

Bidvertiser Review

Service Description

Bidvertiser is a pay-per-click advertising network that allows people to put paid ads on certain categories of websites for maximum exposure and click-through. This program works a bit differently from other pay-per-click programs in that you can be more targeted with your ads instead of letting the PPC network place them where they want.

Detailed Overview

Most of the time when you hear “pay per click” mentioned, you think of the major search engine programs such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. There are other PPC programs, however, such as Bidvertiser. This PPC program claims to have a much better system than what you would get with other PPC programs because it pays more attention to how you want your ad to be seen, and by whom. Some parts of the Bidvertiser program do work like the other ones. You bid how much you want to pay for each click and then the program places your ads accordingly. Of course, the more you bid per click the more exposure your ads are going to get, but this program still claims that you will get more ad exposure for less money. You put in a maximum bid that you are willing to pay, and the program will only charge you a penny more than someone else’s maximum bid at any given time, up to your limit.
The ads at Bidvertiser are simple to create, and you can easily do it yourself right there within the program. You choose where you want your ads to be displayed from among their directory of websites. There is a long list of websites in their directory, so you should be able to find the ones that will fit best with your ads and the product you are promoting. As an accepted website in the Bidvertiser directory, you can make money by letting people place their ads on your website. What is also different about this program is that as a website owner, you also have a say in what ads can be shown on your website.
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