Written on May 12th, 2007 at 10:05 am by Darren Rowse
Top 5 - GWP Winner (and the #1 Reason Why Chitika Rocks)
OK, after a good night’s sleep an hour or two working through the list to weed out a couple of little problems I’ve just selected a winner for the Top 5 Group Writing Project. Before I announce them - here are a few administrative notes:
- Full List - For those wanting to see the full list in the one place I’ve just put together a compilation page of all 893 entries at Top 5 Group Writing Project Final Submission List. Please keep surfing it, linking up (I think some top 5 favorites would be appropriate) and making friends of those bloggers you find.
- Duplicate Entries - A few people misread (or didn’t read) the rules properly and there were a few who submitted multiple entries. I’ve left them in the list but have only allowed their first entry to be eligible for the prize.
- Late Entries - There have been a few of these - but unfortunately I can’t keep adding new entries to the list. You’re welcome to keep writing Top 5 posts - but they won’t be listed any more - sorry.
Before I announce the Winner - I want to complete my own little Top 5 project - the top five reasons why I think Chitika Rocks.
#5 - On Day 1 I told you that they were interactive ads and very clickable
#4 - On Day 2 I told you about their RPU (related product units) and why they’re cool.
#3 - On Day 3 I told you about their free BlogBash ebook which is filled with great blogging tips
#2 - On Day 4 I told you about eMiniMalls
#1 Reason Why Chitika Rocks
The reason why Chitika Rocks the most can perhaps be summarized best with a little screen shot of the log in page of my Chitika account where they very kindly remind me each time I log in how much money I’ve earned by using them. Here’s what it looks like:
That amount doesn’t include April’s earnings (and goes back to when I started to use them in September 2005) - but when they do update it that figure will go past quarter of a million dollars. What else can I really say? I think Chitika Rocks (and who wouldn’t)!
Thanks again to Chitika for putting up the prize for this project.
The Winner of the Project
Before I announce the winner - let me say that there are many deserving winners this week - I hope that participants have been ‘rewarded’ with a little extra traffic (and for those of you who were featured on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon with your entries a lot of extra traffic).
However there is only one winner and that winner relies completely upon luck as this is a random prize draw.
And that Winner is……
Nancy R. Callahan for her entry Baby names from Video Games.
Congratulations Nancy - I’ll be in touch with you shortly to arrange for $1001 cash to be sent to you from Chitika. Thanks for your entry.
And thanks to everyone for participating! I’ll hoping we can do one of these projects per month from now on in. Feel free to nominate topics below.
84 Responses to “Top 5 - GWP Winner (and the #1 Reason Why Chitika Rocks)”
celsojunior
May 12th, 2007 10:25 am
Congratulations, Nancy! =D
Chee Kui
May 12th, 2007 10:25 am
A quarter million? In that case, Chitika really rocks. Wow. Should seriously consider reapplying for it now.
Nancy’s lucky. I wish I was the one who won. ~
Talia Mana, Centre for Emotional Well-Being
May 12th, 2007 10:35 am
A quarter million - fantastic, over what time period?
Congrats Nancy! Nancy is a fellow writer and member of AbsoluteWrite so it’s nice to see the prize go to someone I know.
Ginene
May 12th, 2007 10:46 am
Wow that is really some great earnings on Chitika!
Congratulations to Nancy!
Talia Mana, Centre for Emotional Well-Being
May 12th, 2007 10:50 am
I applied to Chiquita with my reality TV blog so I guess that will be more income for you Darren if the blog is accepted! It’s only a month old but it has 10,000+ page views so hopefully they will accept it. If not I’ll reapply later.
egon
May 12th, 2007 10:58 am
$250,000? Are you kidding me? **sigh** and I’m stuck with a measly $620/month for my blog :(
Karlo Licudine
May 12th, 2007 11:00 am
Congratulations to Nancy Calahan for winning the prize! ^_^ I’ve also won a consolation prize as well, that is the traffic and the new friends that I have made. Thanks for the project! I’ll be sure to join next time ^_^
Meg
May 12th, 2007 11:03 am
Congratulations to Nancy.
$250k - yeah that rocks! Well done :)
Simmons
May 12th, 2007 11:17 am
Congrats.
alamster
May 12th, 2007 11:32 am
Congratulation to you all, I’ve learn many things in few days
thanks
Kathleen
May 12th, 2007 11:40 am
Congratulations Nancy!
Weekend Rest « A Mind of My Own
May 12th, 2007 11:40 am
[...] Thoughts. trackback I mentioned that I had participated in the contest to win USD 1,001. The winner is Nancy. If only I could post the good news that I was the winner. Oh well, with more than 800 [...]
Nicholas
May 12th, 2007 11:58 am
To everyone, give yourself a pat on the back. We did a great job, and I’m sure it will take me at least another week to read the rest of the entries.
Congratulations to Nancy for her cool post regarding the video game names. I like Carmen the best..
And thank you Darren for setting up such a hugely successful writing project!
LearningNerd
May 12th, 2007 12:04 pm
Remember, kids, everybody’s a winner. =P Really, though, like Karlo said, we all got the consolation prize of some links, comments, and new friends! Congrats to Nancy and everyone, and to Darren, thanks for running this great project!
Roberta
May 12th, 2007 12:19 pm
This was a lot of fun. Congratulations to Nancy Callahan for winning!!! All great posts!! Thanks again Darren for the links and the top five idea. :)
LintCollector
May 12th, 2007 12:23 pm
Onya Nancy! (as we would say in .au)
I’ve enjoyed my consolation prizes - discovering many great blogs I wouldn’t have found otherwise, many hours (too many!) of enjoyable reading and learning, and a renewed motivation for blogging. A little extra traffic too, but only a little - my humble $10 per month from Google ads won’t be mushrooming to problogger levels anytime soon!
Ryan Dlugosz
May 12th, 2007 12:24 pm
congrats to nancy and better luck next time to the rest of us.
I’ve noticed a bit of traffic, but one of the things that surprised me the most was that quite a few bloggers out there copied and reposted the *entire* list of top 5 links! Sure, it’s more backlinks for all of us, but it’s kind of sh!tty to steal the content like that…
I noticed it since I suddenly saw a bunch of blog search hits (bloglines) for my last name.
Chee Kui
May 12th, 2007 12:32 pm
Lol Ryan. It’s good for us tho. Haha.
mincus code » How to Stand Out in a Sea of Fives - Firefox, Perl, Javascript
May 12th, 2007 12:37 pm
[...] for those that missed it, Darren let in on his amazing Chitika earnings - almost [...]
Carolyn
May 12th, 2007 1:11 pm
The Top 5 Group Writing Project was awesome fun! I’m glad that I joined in the posting. I’ve really enjoyed discovering so many great blogs. I’ve got some new favorites! Thanks, Darren, for the opportunity to be a part of this.
Congratulations, Nancy! Great post!
Glen Johnson
May 12th, 2007 1:21 pm
Congrats Nancy and thanks again Darren
The Top 4,465 Things In The Known Universe
May 12th, 2007 1:41 pm
[...] previous post, Jackie Chan’s Greatest Fight Scenes, was an entry in Darren Rowse’s Top 5 Writing Project. Since I benefited from incoming traffic as a contestant, it seems only fair that I pass on some [...]
Martial Development
May 12th, 2007 1:44 pm
FYI: entries 222 and 223 are duplicates, as are 502 and 510.
Duplicate Content Checker
May 12th, 2007 1:51 pm
Lots of entries, lots of buzz in the blogosphere…needless to say, the project was a hit. And yes, making this a monthly thing would definitely encourage more people to participate in network-building efforts such as this one. There could only be one winner at a time, sure, but I think everyone gets even a little something out of all of this. Thanks, Darren, for coming up with the Top 5 and cheers to Nancy for winning the big prize.
ashok
May 12th, 2007 1:53 pm
In response to the last post, where you asked why this topic was so popular:
I don’t know. For me, the experience of a top 5 was something that seemed simple, but turned out to be pretty hard. Did I want to be funny? How did I want 5 things to relate in a way that I covered all aspects of a topic? Did I want to be informative? Did I want to cater to opinion and affirm to others that yes, their tastes are shared? Was I supposed to be unique?
I’m still not sure about those questions, because making “top 5″ lists doesn’t come naturally to me. I mean, I think all of us have top music lists and top movie lists. But those are a different entity altogether. The numeration means less than the circumstances we’ll bring the movie/music up. There is no definitive “this must be seen or heard under any and all circumstances,” even when we say that.
So I guess I’m saying this: the top 5 thing was good exercise. It forced me to think differently than I normally do, for I had to find a way to say something in a style I wouldn’t use typically. Thank you, everyone’s been super kind and linking back to me, and I hope I can say hi and help them all out.
P.S. Search engine traffic for my site is a third to half what it was this last week, and I’m frustrated.
JoLynn Braley
May 12th, 2007 2:06 pm
Congratulations Nancy!
Thanks for putting this project together Darren, it’s been an awesome week!
Angela
May 12th, 2007 3:00 pm
Congratulations, Nancy! Enjoy your winnings! :-)
Yay, for the once a month plan!!! I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks Darren!
Angela Betts
Easton Ellsworth
May 12th, 2007 3:19 pm
Congrats Nancy! Darren, you can rest a bit now, right? :)
Top 5 Group Writing Project « fortyplustwo
May 12th, 2007 3:56 pm
[...] 5 - Group Writing Project - Full Submission List, a great starting point. And he has selected the Top 5 - GWP Winner. It is Nancy R. Callahan for her entry Baby Names from Video [...]
Tuan Rumah
May 12th, 2007 4:58 pm
Congratulation Nancy & Darren from Why Must Visit Malaysia? truly creative and inspirational !
Mirko
May 12th, 2007 6:02 pm
Congrats to Nancy, waiting for the next group writing project now :)
This was my first one and was really great…
Cutie
May 12th, 2007 6:02 pm
Congratulation!! Well, because I also love game, I like the list! That’s unusual list and really cool!
Armen
May 12th, 2007 6:29 pm
Definately a profitable Group Writing Project. In fact, it’s going to be difficult to beat in next weeks project ;-)
Matt Jones
May 12th, 2007 6:29 pm
Congrats Nancy! Make a post telling us what you are going to do with the money!
Ali
May 12th, 2007 6:38 pm
Congrats Nancy!
Darren, those are some serious earnings with Chitika, I guess they do rock. I’m already signed up with, time to push their ads further.
Hsien Lei
May 12th, 2007 6:47 pm
Woohoo! Congratulations, Nancy! And thanks to Darren for a fun and rewarding GWP. :)
Carole
May 12th, 2007 7:00 pm
Congratulations to:
* Nancy for winning
* Darren for the amazing number of entries and the great job creating and managing this project
* All participants, for taking part in what was probably the largest group writing project ever undertaken in a week.
Any chance that Gary’s plug-in, that was so instrumental in making this happen, will be available? I’m hosting the Carnival of Cities this Sunday, and although not nearly on the scale of this writing project, it would be great if I could use his plug-in to manage it.
Chris M
May 12th, 2007 7:04 pm
I received my first Google Adsense check today, thank-you for all your inspirational articles Darren!
Probloggers Top 5 GWP: and the winner is … | Make Money Online with Online Money Tip
May 12th, 2007 8:26 pm
[...] Group Writing Project has finished. It has been a great success, over 800 bloggers joined this project. With subjects [...]
Probloggers Top 5 GWP: and the winner is … | Make Money Online with Online Money Tip
May 12th, 2007 8:26 pm
[...] Group Writing Project has finished. It has been a great success, over 800 bloggers joined this project. With subjects [...]
Stijn
May 12th, 2007 9:12 pm
Congratulations to Nancy, that’s a crazy top five. :) And I must say, I had great fun participating in this project. Perhaps sometime in the future I may join another one of these projects. Have a nice weekend Darren.
justChris » Blog Archive » Problogger’s Top 5 Group Writing Project
May 12th, 2007 10:02 pm
[...] group writing project that I participated in has ended with a total of a whopping 893 submissions. I’m going to try [...]
Sharon Sarmiento
May 12th, 2007 10:09 pm
This project has been delightful, sort of like a field trip across the blogoshere! Pure fun.:-)
Oh, and thank you to whoever submitted my post “Top 5 Hottest Blogger Fantasies” post to StumbleUpon. Getting a steady stream of traffic from there!
Congrats to Nancy–enjoyed your post!
Darren Rowse Announces Group Writing Project Winner
May 12th, 2007 10:40 pm
[...] Rowse has finally announced the ProBlogger Group Writing Project Winner - Nancy R. Callahan from Nancy.cc. Her entry was about Baby names from Video [...]
MoneyMakingIdeas
May 13th, 2007 12:47 am
Congratz, Nancy! Hope you’ll not forget us. Thanks, Darren for this great opportunity. I’m sure everybody had enjoyed your project!
David
May 13th, 2007 1:03 am
Nancy, congrats! Your blog is timing out atm, I hope the traffic isn’t causing you problems.
Sun
May 13th, 2007 1:05 am
Congratulations, Nancy!
This is a fun project, Darren. Looking forward to the next one and hope I can be a winner :) .
Geoff Young
May 13th, 2007 1:54 am
Congratulations, Nancy! And thanks again to Darren — great stuff as always.
Jonathan Danylko
May 13th, 2007 2:18 am
Congratulations, Nancy!
And to the rest of you, I’m *STILL* reading through all of the great entries. Talk about a great read.
Oh…and Nancy…I loved you in Sin City. :-)
JD
Janette Toral
May 13th, 2007 3:30 am
Thank you so much for this writing project. I tried putting the lessons I learned here for futher experiment by creating a small writing project on identifying new blogs. I hope you can check it out. Thank you again!
Nancy R. Callahan
May 13th, 2007 7:36 am
Whoa, sorry about the typo - I mean Chitika.
(See? Too excited to type properly… :)
Wolf Stone
May 13th, 2007 8:10 am
i guess i should really look into this chitika thing then huh….oh and congrats nancy! Also…thanks for organizing a great group writing project …look foward to the next one !!
Nancy R. Callahan
May 13th, 2007 8:32 am
(How funny - I wrote 2 comments, but only the second posted.)
What I’d basically said was:
Thanks so much, Darren, for holding another group writing project. I love participating. And thanks for the information on Chitika — I’ve just signed up. :)
PS - Jonathan, thanks! Isn’t it sad how Jessica Alba is trying to get credit for all the work I did in the film? :)
This Eclectic Life
May 13th, 2007 9:50 am
[...] was searching through some of the entries to Darren Rowse’s Group Writing contest at Pro Blogger, and stumbled on a post written by Sognatrice at Bleeding Espresso. I decided I [...]
Dave Zatz
May 13th, 2007 10:18 am
$244k? Damn, the Top 5 prize should have been larger or featured more winners… ;)
MotorsportBabesAU
May 13th, 2007 11:46 am
Cha Ching! Well done with your Chitika earnings!
James
May 13th, 2007 1:00 pm
Thanks Darren, these group projects have always been lots of fun.
Jane May
May 13th, 2007 1:24 pm
Thanks for hosting the writing comp! It was a really great experience since this was my first time getting involved. I came across some really great posts.
Congrats Nancy!!! Well deserved!
Fred
May 13th, 2007 1:26 pm
congrats to nancy … also thanx to darren for the great competition topic …
i think the responses were so overwhelming that to expect good traffic to your site is a letdown … would you be surprise if i were to tell you the new traffic i’m getting is very very negligible - less than 50 unique users? yes, that’s the fact and i think it’s because there’re simply too many participants …
anyway, i’m glad i enter the competition because i believe i’ve written the best post so far for my own readers … i never thought of “top 5″ title could inspire me to write a beneficial post for my blog … so i guess there’s always something to be gained from such competition …
cheers everyone - looking forward to another competition …
Duplicate Content Checker
May 13th, 2007 3:08 pm
I still can’t get over that earnings summary box — that’s just amazing! I’m pretty sure you’ve convinced about the same number of people to show Chitika some love, Darren.
Impact of Problogger’s Group Writing Project « Online Presence
May 13th, 2007 3:12 pm
[...] with the Problogger Group Writing Project coming to an end and a lucky winner announced, I thought I would write a short note on how this [...]
Chuck
May 13th, 2007 9:28 pm
Wow…I had thrown in the towel on Chitika long ago, after seeing less than 1/2 of 1% CTR on their ads. Maybe you know something I don’t. I’d really be interested in hearing your thoughts on improving click-through on Chitika ads.
Dave Zatz
May 13th, 2007 11:21 pm
Most ad services available to independent bloggers are only going to offer cents-on-the-click - so it all comes down to traffic. More traffic = more clicks = more money. Most of us will never hit numbers like $244k or even $24k. Because this is a site dedicated to blogging techniques, I assume a large percent (most?) of Darren’s revenue comes via referrals rather than shopping units themselves. Looks like Chitika pays out a 10% bounty on commissions for each person referred for 15 months. Of course being a VIP, I’d say he gets a higher rate.
Julie
May 13th, 2007 11:25 pm
Darren - great writing project! I saw your announcement on the b5 forum but didn’t enter. next time….I am there!
Congrats Nancy! Very creative posts. I love to go to a blog that truly has original content.
Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day everyone! :)
Sue
May 14th, 2007 12:54 am
Congratulations to Nancy, and what a great project. It was fun,thanks Darren.
Madhur Kapoor’s Blog » Problogger’s Group Writing Project - All entries
May 14th, 2007 1:00 am
[...] Problogger’s Group Writing Project is over now and Congrats to Nancy R. Callahan who was the winner . Thanks to the Project , i came [...]
Ginene
May 14th, 2007 3:42 am
I have an idea for a yearly, quarterly, or monthly theme. How about creating BlogIdol. Like American Idol and have various random topics to have the first 50 bloggers blog that enters the contest, blog about some topics you choose and put a poll on your site. You choose the top 20(sort of like the judges on American Idol) then have people vote for the top 10, then narrow it down to the top 5, then top 3 and then choose the winner.
The ProBlogger Effect
May 14th, 2007 6:40 am
[...] few days ago I participated in Darren Rowse’s group writing project over at [...]
David Jackmanson
May 14th, 2007 9:37 am
This is going to sound churlish, but here goes:
Unless your name is Darren Rowse, there is really no point putting all 900-odd links on a single big post and claiming you are bestowing ‘link love’.
The ONLY visits my article has had, apart from people who came directly from Problogger itself, is from a site that picked the 10 or 15 articles most relevant to that site. 20 or so sites have posted the whole list (that’s what my trackback stats show anyway) and not a single visitor has arrived at my site from there.
Perhaps people need to re-think the influence they have on the blogosphere?
Nancy’s Baby Names » Blog Archive » Name of the Day: Lucky
May 14th, 2007 4:29 pm
[...] to blog about Lucky today because I recently (and quite randomly) won a fantastic prize from ProBlogger. It made me feel quite lucky, and then I wondered whether ‘Lucky’ had ever ranked as a [...]
Alden DoRosario
May 15th, 2007 12:13 am
Dave Zatz said> Looks like Chitika pays out a 10% bounty on commissions for each person referred for 15 months. Of course being a VIP, I’d say he gets a higher rate.
Dave, just to clarify, we do not differentiate. Even VIPs get the same rate.
Denise Grier
May 15th, 2007 1:56 am
I posted the full list on my blog today but when I went through it I noticed that my entry at http://internetmarketingreview.org/blog1/2007/05/10/top-five-celebrity-faux-paus/
was not included. I have added it to the list on my blog but I would appreciate it if you’d make sure it gets included on your list, Darren. I sent it in early in the afternoon on Thursday and it was included in the list you posted of the Thursday entries here on your blog, though for some reason it got left off the list of ALL entries.
Thanks, Denise
The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource » And the winner is…
May 15th, 2007 3:00 am
[...] Rowse, creator of Problogger.net announced the winner of his latest group writing project Saturday. It was Nancy R. Callahan for her entry Baby names [...]
Blantonious
May 15th, 2007 10:35 am
WOW I could pay off my house and have enough left over for a couple of toys. :-)
punky
May 15th, 2007 10:42 pm
Congratulations to Nancy!!!
cant wait for the next one.
John
May 16th, 2007 6:47 am
And here’s a reason why Chitika sucks.
They *NEVER* *EVER* respond to support tickets. I’ve tried many many time to get some support from them on many issue, and they never responded once.
They probably DO respond to you, but hey, all I make out of chitika is two or three bucks per day, so they don’t give a * about me.
ogene
May 16th, 2007 6:55 pm
That’s a whole lotta money for an affiliate! I only wish.. even a quarter of it!
Blogging Basics Part One: So you wanna blog? | PureBlogging
May 23rd, 2007 5:27 am
[...] Stop right there and push yourself away from the keyboard. While many can attest to the fact that there is money to be made from blogging, what you see on their websites comes from a serious dedication to the hard work and experience [...]
Jason S
June 5th, 2007 4:15 pm
The problem with Chitika is that they don’t accept blogs from any of the FREE services!!
That’s really bad :(
Cheers!!
Jason
I Blog at http://jsbi.blogspot.com
Can blogs really make money? : Viral Voices
June 11th, 2007 1:47 am
[...] Darren Rowse made US$244,381.98 from Chitika (aff) since 2005, and it is only one of the many income streams he has from his blogs [...]
Don't Read This If You Want To Keep Wasting Time With Adsense | Startup or Bust
June 13th, 2007 11:05 am
[...] AuctionAds? Chitika? These are all fine and swell, and when done right can definitely make you a bunch of money. But I want to talk about Eli who took an entirely different route and rocketed from $0 to [...]
Chris
August 4th, 2007 1:42 am
If I got paid that much from Chitika I would be pretty happy with them also. But the truth is that they have really SCREWED many good publishers over and not paid them ANYTHING!.
Even a couple of years later I could rant on and on, but the short version of my story is that I signed up with them and had some good results. I then took the time to add their code to many of our sites. in a short while we had gotten perhaps $60 in clicks and I was thrilled. The ads looked great and worked even better then the AdSense I had been using.
Then I received a notification that we were being dropped because of bad clicks. I was in shock because I don’t do that and have no one connected to our company that would do that either.
I tried for 3 MONTHS to get a detailed account of what had happened. If there was click fraud going on, you would think they would want to work with publishers to determine the source and get the bad guys.
I got a few responses to the 30 or 40 support tickets I sent in, but I was never able to get them to treat me any better than scum. I was never able to reach anyone by phone either. I was never paid a CENT and had to spend more time pulling all their crap from all my sites. It was a HUGE waste of time and a very frustrating experience.
Don’t just take my word for it, do a search in Google for “Chitika sucks” and look at the nearly 80,000 results that come up…!
My advice? Sure, give them a try. Maybe you can get big checks from them also. But if you don’t want to risk what I and MANY others have gone through, stay with AdSense, Affiliate programs, or Ebay Auction Ads. There are better choices out there.
Voice Of Dingchao
March 5th, 2008 11:20 pm
I have applied for Chitika many times, but they didn’t accept me! Do you know how to let them accept me successful? Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Dingchao
Renee
November 21st, 2008 6:50 am
That’s awesome, I heard about Chitika a lot and the more I hear about it the more I like it!
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