Click Fraud and It’s Victims
September 23, 2006
Many people are victims of click fraud and they don’t even realize it. Sometimes they do but it can be much to late and they will have lost thousands. Martin Fleischmann is one such victim. Read his story.
Is Chitika Faltering?
May 13, 2006
Chitika was once the promising new opponent to Adsense and was great because it could be used in addition to Google’s adsense unlike many other ad providers. Most members were pleased when they also saw that they were being paid more per click as well.
However it all seems to be going downhill now and started with the auditing and not well kept accounts. For instances you cannot check your accounts in real time, you almost have to wait 24 hours and sometimes even then your daily balance is not yet posted. With the auditing every month you could see your balance of $100 drop to as much as $40 or less because they would say that they determined the other $60 to be fraud so even then your daily balance means nothing.
The final kick in the teeth came with the payments. One month they put up a message saying something about the auditing and that payments would be late. Not a problem unless this started happening frequently which it did. I no longer use it but still see at least two emails a month telling me that payment will be late.
Can Chitika bounce back? I have no idea but they need to do something soon because many webmasters I talk to say they no longer use it or plan to stop soon.
Money-Making Methods for Bloggers
March 16, 2006
ProBlogger Darren Rowse has made a list of 8 (direct) ways bloggers can earn money. Here’s a summary:
1. Advertising
There are many ad options: Contextual Ads, Other CPC Advertising, Impression-based Ads, Blog Ads, Text Ads, RSS Ads, and more.
2. Sponsorship
The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about.
3. Affiliate Programs (Amazon, Linkshare, Commission Junction, Clickbank…)
Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic.
4. Selling/Flipping Blogs
…in reality [this] is not something that is overly common…yet
5. Donations and Tip Jars
Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make [this] work.
6. Merchandise
[This] will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog
7. Selling Subscriptions
To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.
8. Blog Networks
You can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer.
Chitika Rolling Out New Text Ads
January 11, 2006
Chitika was the new darling revenue maker for blogs all over the blogosphere. When it first launched many bloggers noticed that they were recieving more per click using Chitika than they could ever hope to get using Adsense. But as they say all good things must come to an end and it soon did when Chitika began to change eMinimalls, delaye revenue audits, and drop CPC rates.
Even this month Chitika announced that their would once again be an audit delay and it’s publishers are not happy. Truth be told they haven’t been happy with ad company for a while. Now Chitika is hoping to make their publishers a little happier by bringing by text ads.
Chitika text ads strongly resemble YPN and Adsense ads but it’s not immediately known when these ads will start being offered again. For more on this story: Chitika text ads. Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration also has a nice screenshot of Chitika text block.
