I’ve been getting quite a few excited emails from readers who have signed up for the Chitika eMiniMalls that I reviewed last week. There has been a lot of positive feedback so far from those who I’ve referred over to the program with some people earning some significant money from it so far (including ‘Rachel‘). There have also been a few (less) emails from bloggers who have failed to see them as effective.
The most common question that I get asked by readers about the eMiniMalls include:
- ‘How do the money from eMiniMalls compare to earnings of Adsense?’
- ‘How much money do you earn from eMiniMalls?’
(update: the third most asked question is ‘how do I increase my earnings?’ If you’re asking this you might also like to check out Chitika eMiniMall Tips for increasing earnings)
I’ve resisted talking about specific figures of money earnt to this point because I wanted to clarify with the Chitika people whether I was allowed to do so. Today I just got confirmation that it’s ok for me to talk about daily earnings figures but not CTR, impressions etc. The reason I want to talk about this is simply because I really believe in this ad system – as you’ll see from the figures below – it’s had a pretty amazing impact upon my earnings and I’d like readers here to have the full picture of what the potential to earn money with it is.
So let’s look at yesterday’s earnings for me with both Adsense and Chitika were. Update: due to Adsense terms (that I misread) I have been told that I cannot reveal my daily Adsense figures but only gross payment figures (monthly totals). So I’ll do that here instead of a daily figure for yesterday. You can pretty much work out what the Adsense earnings are from the figure if you know how many days are in August! All I’ll say is that yesterday was a bit under August’s average.
Adsense earnings for August – $15,849.73
Chitika eMiniMalls earnings Yesterday – $702.45
Let me follow the figures up with a few statements of qualification:
- Yesterday Adsense was a little below average for me
- While I can’t mention how many impressions there were for either program – they were very similar to one another
- The Chitika eMiniMalls figure is before their auditing process takes effect. From what I’ve seen of this process last month – this is likely to decrease that figure by around 10% – update this turned out to be an accurate estimation of the audit figure for this day.
- The ads appear across a range of sites (17 or so – NOT just this site). In most cases they appear on the same pages as one another (remember that you need to disable the contextual ad function of the eMiniMalls to do this and stay within Adsense’s TOS
- The CTR for Adsense is significantly higher than it was for the eMiniMalls
- The click value for eMiniMalls is significantly higher than it was for Adsense
- From what I can tell from these results and those of readers who are trying eMiniMalls (Chitika is yet to add channels) – the best performing sites seem to be product related blogs including blogs about gadgets, clothing, etc. Having said this I’ve heard from a number of bloggers with VERY general, non product related sites that are doing reasonably well out of them also.
- These are not just one off or fluke numbers – I’ve had no major increases in traffic over the past few days – I have added the eMiniMalls to more pages in the past week – but the numbers seem to be consistent over the past few days. Time will tell whether they will remain at this level but I have no reason to believe that they will not.
- The above figures are in US dollars.
As you can see from the numbers – I personally have reason to be pretty excited about eMiniMalls. If these numbers continue they will more than double my daily earnings and taken them to a level that is over $1000 per day. This is less than some of the bigger blog networks out there but for an ordinary guy like me who has only been at this blogging thing for under 3 years – I have to say that it’s very promising. I can’t guarantee that they work on every blog – but they are definately worth experimenting with.
Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links – if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have endeavored to point out both its benefits and weaknesses in all my writing about it.
Update – I give an update on my Chitika Earnings in this post.
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
Stats have updated – see it updates 2hrs after midnight Pacific time zone
Ian – I havn’t talked to Shopping.com for a while (actually a while back I remember trying to get in touch with them they wouldn’t return my emails – maybe I was too small) – but the thing that I didn’t like about their system was that were pretty rigid.
I’m going from memory here – but I seem to remember that after I did get their attention I was confronted with a long contract that excluded me from dealing with any other similar advertisers – something I don’t see with chitika. I also was a little overwhelmed by the set up proceedures with Shopping.com which was going to take weeks to get set up on my domain.
On the flip side i see minimalls are so easy to install (I was approved and showing a variety of ads within hours), they pay better than I remember being quoted by the shopping.com representative, and I can walk away from them at any time.
Of course since I talked to them they might have changed or lightened up, but to be honest I really like where I see Chitika going with what they are offering – they have responded to suggestions, given personal service to quite a few bloggers that I know and seem pretty switched on to new media (blogs etc).
I suspect different services will suit different sites best – so maybe we’re both in the right place :-)
Commented deleted – offensive language
Only got around 50c click/per with eMinimalls ($5~6 /day)
I am just wondering what are everyone’s experience?
It seems report updating 2hrs after midnight Pacific time zone isn’t the norm as there is no update so far today. It would be great if this was consistent.
I have a gadget blog (with good traffic) and am seeing about 30 clicks ~ $13 so not that great really, about 40 cents.
The adverts are damn ugly and attract a lot less clicks than adsense also – the fading in images really suck, even with the forced targetting they aren’t as good as adsense.
Im going to give them a little longer though to compare them properly.
I’ve also found the stats are at least one day behind, but now (1pm uk time) I still can’t even see yesterday’s stats.
Still never got a reply from CS either, sent them two emails now (about running multiple sites, have since read they do have channels but they aren’t live yet)
There seems to be more info about chitika in this post that in the whole of the chitika FAQ :)
lart – yep it is annoying the reports are so delayed. This needs serious fixing.
Yes, lart same too you
I think “the higher value per click” discussed in here are not really TRUE!!! or probably they have “two sets” of earn rate for different publisher
Latest from Chitika:
October 8th 2005: 9:30AM US EST:
On October 7th and 8th our reporting system experienced an intermittent outage for a few hours. The problem has now been rectified. Due to this outage, you will notice that the stats for October 7th are missing. The stats for October 8th might also be slightly deflated. However, please be assured that we will make every effort to reprocess the stats, calculate and compensate for any lost revenue. We thank you for your patience and support while we iron out the reporting issues. Thank you.
Oh well will let Chitika run for a few weeks before implementing too much more of their code. This is a shame but hopefully it will be sorted it out sooner rather than sooner.
>I have a gadget blog (with good traffic) and am seeing about 30 clicks ~ $13 so not that great really, about 40 cents.
Well, 40 cents per click is great. That’s a lot better than AdSense for most sites.
Hey Darren, thanks for the heads up on eminimalls!
Yes Chitika seem to be having some teething problems with their stats – indeed statistics for october 7th are missing.
However we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. Things will surely improve in the coming weeks/months.
With Adsense, YPN, available etc, there are now a healthy number of quality ad options in town for smaller publishers. But looking at the interactive nature of eminimalls, it’s seems that Chitika are intent on taking contextual advertising to the next level.
Laptopical – yeah – seems that they had some server issues last night unfortunately but they are going to reconstruct the stats for the day and have it back up again.
I guess this is the risk we take with participating in a beta test. The rewards are very hig h but the system’s stability is still being toughened up over time.
To Thomas
“Well, 40 cents per click is great. That’s a lot better than AdSense for most sites. ”
Is True???
I got $1~2 per click (mid average) and some click high as $7.xx from AdSense for my online tech topic sites.
I installed the program, had over 2,000 impressions in a couple of days and ZERO clicks in the “unaudited” stats.
Makes me a bit skeptical, but ‘ll take Darren’s word and will keep trying to optimize.
An interesting by-product, though-
I DID replace a few Adsense units on non-performing pages, and my AS revenue for the week increased!
Less ads, higher earnings on the same number of clicks.
Interesting indeed.
Thanks for a great read Darren!
signed-up using the affilicate links …. if nothing else the ads look cool but we’ll see how they perform on a more news oriented blog… thanks for the info.
After reading the article I applied to learn more about the program but without any explanation I was denied. Maybe my content is not qualifying enough, I would understand that, maybe my traffic is not enough, I would understand that too, but it would have been nice if they gave me a reason.
In a follow up mail I asked them the reason but sofar no reply to that one.
From what I read on their website I didn’t see anything about specific requirements to participate (maybe I misread) so I would be interested to hear, in case someone knows, what these “requirements” are.
I also signed up using the affiliates link and was approved within an hour. The thing that I don’t like is that reports are generated only once a day. Anyhow, I’ve started generating some money, not much tho, probably because I don’t have that much traffic. What amount of traffic is needed to start generating some real money?
By going to Shopping.com and searching for products, we are able to find many keyword choices to use for our eMiniMalls.
Find the ones you like, and use Chitika.com’s adbox search feature to see what comes up….obviously you don’t want to click on your own to see how it works.
Hope this helps some of you…..
Hi Darren,
I just think what your doing is awesome, you give tips that if followed correctly can improve anyone earnings.
I have just built a new site, and I am following your tips.
Got my self signed up for eMiniMalls, inserted the code and will be adding much more pages daily.
The ads targetted are nicely embedded into the site, showing exactly the ads I want.
Thanks Again,
Alex
How many format I use in 1 single page ? {Chitika MiniMall)
Thanks for the review on Chitika eMiniMalls. I linked over from Lorens blog to read this review. I will be adding your blog and newsletter to my must read list.
Sean Felker
Im interesting about the ads and want to start earning money.. Can you show me the way, and give me some tips?
Thanks,
Joe
Well done, but should you say that your results are actually ‘mind-blogling”?
Oh god: I’m blown away- that is amazing. I’m struggling by with my $2.00 a day and feeling pretty pleased with myself (I don’t ask for much!) and look at you! Time to get serious methinks!
Do all clicks get credited to the referrer, or only certain ones?
If you scroll over the banners in the “best deals” tab, you will see that the link is redirected thorugh chikita to a dealtime url, without your chitika username anywhere in the url string.
What is up with that?
I have not signed up for Chitika or Adsense as of yet. I don’t understand how people make $1000 per day with these programs. I am sure I will be lucky to earn $1 per day.
Darren, if you can give me any suggestions or tips, please email me. I would be greatful to earn just $5 per day. I have heard of something called siteforsell…would you recommend?
Darren, I meant to say SiteBuildIt, Sitesell.
Do you think Chitika ads will do well on a smaller ppc search engine? I have many keywords I can include easily.
I’m enjoying Chitika ads, just not to the fantastic levels that you are.
I started with Chitika during mid-October and beat my Adsense earnings during October. Nice!
All Sounds blinkin marvellous. Just been accepted and will “gingerly” introduce to my photography site.
“Darren, I meant to say SiteBuildIt, Sitesell”
Kristin, Sitebuildit are excellent. I started my photography site 9 months ago with Sitebuildit and traffic is starting to take off considerably now.
I am a photographer and have never built a website before, but I am now getting around 13,000 unique vistors a month and 40,000 page views. This figure seems to be growing rapidly.
Give them a go!
Nick
This is a great blog – we’ll be adding it to our AS directory shortly.
We’ve had a generally good experience with AS since the beginning, but like so many, the CTR and eCPM are nothing like they were in the 1st few months back in 2003.
We have AS running on many sites, in particular a niche model-specific automotive forum. AS is running as a leaderboard top and bottom of the forums. We just experimented by running a Chitika 728×90 leaderboard as an alternate URL for AS in the block just after the last post in a topic. It’s running in non-contextual mode (as required by the AS TOS) and we have a few keywords such as the car maker name, model and so forth.
It’s only been there about 36 hours, so too early to report on results.
We had it running for about 3000 pageviews on another directory / review site with zero CTR…. whereas AS was doing surprisingly well. Again, chitika was running non-contextual there because we wanted to keep AS running in parallel…
Nice reading this blog and all the comments!
Rob
I tried to implement Chitika on my LinkinParkForums.com but earnings are several times lower than AdSense. Still playing with keywords…
These numbers are just plainly amazing ! Unfortunatly, Chikita has no french equivalent yet.
Guess I might start thinking about starting an english speaking blog :)
i signed up with chitika through your affiliate link the beginning of november and i can tell that I’m already earning more then adsense! i just hope that I can archieve even one percent of what you are making!
Just discovered your blog. I spent 3 hours reading!!
I love how you are so open about what you make, how you do it, and it really helps those of us aspiring bloggers out.
Thanks!
glad to hear that Mike, come back any time now.
wow! I’m shocked at how much money ur paying, but I too feel u’ve deserved it. Keep upt eh good work!
I have implemented it on my article directory, but it doesn’t do very good. The CTR is very low… I guess the people that comes to my site are not the target users. They are not ready to buy any products, but just seeking information.
I believe some product related website will do good with this, and
the click value is good~~ Maybe I should build some pages on product review….
Is there any recent update on eMiniMalls vs. Adsense programs? If there is any, please post url. thanks.
hi dear sir ,
i’m davidyang froom singapore . i was wanted to know ,ore how to reg and login . there say my affiliate ,my APPLICATION is not ok . why .. last time i know . at least ,
10,000 Traffic from your my site . but at this time my website is not . 10 k Traffic …. to mysite …
pls help me . ??
davidyang
singapore
David you need to contact Chitika about this. I’m just a publisher so don’t know how they make these decisions.
hi Darren. i signed up four days ago to blogger.com and ad sense.
up to this day I still have zero payment. i tried to paste the code on my view source of blogger but it cannot be pasted. How can i do this?
I wanna know other blogs aside from blogger.com that can earn money. Hope you can help me
Anthony – perhaps start with this series I wrote on blogging for beginners as it answers most of your questions. Hope that helps.
Hello Sir,
Pls let me know how to earn from free blogs.
Deboshree,
[email protected]
I’ll give it a try. Their application says that it works best with blogs that have over 10,000 impressions a month; I hope they approve small sites that are trying to grow.
Good stuff. That would be nice to get updated figures on your results–2years later. Thanks & best wishes.
Tim
Its Just Very nice of you to Tell your reader that the chitika link consists of ur Affiliate ID.. Too good.. I think Your Honesty is the key to ur sucess
Cool!! i just started using chitika on http://www.bloogle1.com …
Cud u pls review ad placements
I hope to try Chitika someday, still not sure how it works but glad someone tried it already.
I too am waiting for approval from chitika emails.
Yes its true this really works, I made some money off it too..