So far, my one little referral has grabbed me five times as many page views as I have on my own. To me, that is valuable. If just one person clicks through from those extra views, it was worth it. The widget isn´t an eyesore, like some, and I think it provides some extra value by showing relevant blog posts.

After that said, I decided the look and space it commanded was not for me. Thanks to you Darren and everyone’s input for providing a great place to learn.

Although we cannot give such good figures as Darren yet! we can report a solution that will make a respectable cash flow given the correct foundation.

I know for a fact that Chitika will turn into one of our best performers, how do I know this? Because of statistics.

The solution is sound and lends itself to a few creative ways to extract it’s potential.
If you attack the Chitika product from the correct angle i.e. product driven resources with time and marketing Chitika is going to make you good money.

Bloggers Quick to Spam slow to think!

How true we see the blogger waiting on the outskirts to see if it will be good.
The worst risk in life is the risk not taken!

Risk takers may get burnt but over all they are winners, too often I see bloggers asking the big questions HOW DO I.

How do I is a great question, but the person who quietly goes away and reads, studies and generally gets educated about what they want to do is going to go well.

Everywhere on the net we see the words get in touch with your market and fellow bloggers, but it seems that most miss the words, even though how to blog is the biggest topic on the net almost.

Blogging to money is a business I cannot say it enough, I can not press home the fact more that you must have a plan. That plan must have partners, resources, marketing, opportunity, market base and vision for a few.

If you see opportunities come along that may go well, why not lean more on the Hmmm what if it does go OFF!

Every day new resources and tools are launched some of them are going to be long stayers, some are not. If you are too scared to try any, you will always be left on the fence.

My thoughts.

have a B L O G G I N G good day!

And it’s not even so much any company’s fault (well, unless they’re ruthless bastards!) as much as the blogosphere.

It’s like that old drill we did in elementary school, where one person starts a message that goes around the room. Each student whispers it to the next and when it gets full circle, something’s changed.

Zuggu – I’m not sure that the top bloggers praised it as much as some are saying. Most of the initial announcements/reviews from what we might consider ‘top’ bloggers were a little cautious and warned people to not expect the world. Most of the hype that I saw came from other smaller blogs.

geomark – not sure if you got the email from BlogRush today saying that they are aware of the fraud going on with the widget – looks like they are attempting to get that under control – it’ll be in everyone’s best interests when they do.

Rhys – you’re right that people just want quick money. The problem with the hype around Chtiika was that some bloggers presented it as ‘easy money’. Unfortunately there’s no such thing – you need to work hard to make money online via advertising – you need to work hard online to get readers (ie blogrush is just a tool that can help in the process – not the answer itself).

Fred – you’re right, bigger bloggers will do better from referrals of BlogRush – but that’s true for anything. What I like about BlogRush is that it helps blogs in proportion to where they are already at. If your blog does 100 visitors a day it will get that many headlines of it’s latest posts – and no more. If a blog has 10,000 visitors a day it’ll get 10,000 and no more. While this does mean that big blogs get more – it also means that small blogs get some and everything seems proportional. That might not seem fair on some levels – but on other levels I think it is (not sure if that came out right). I also think that while the numbers of visitors might not be massive that a small blog will notice them more than a big one. Here at ProBlogger 37 extra readers that it might bring in are not going to cause a noticeable increase in overall readers – but 37 extra readers on a brand new blog over a few days could be quite significant.

Blaine – John’s email today to BlogRush publishers talked of refining categories which I think will help a bit. I’ve talked privately to a number of BlogRush publishers who are getting over 1% click through on their headlines – some as many as 3-4%. From what I can tell this is partly to do with headlines – but also quite a bit to do with categories. Some categories are performing a lot better than others and John says they’re working on this which hopefully will help.

James – you’re right, my affiliate program with Chitika will do better than most bloggers not writing on the topic of blogging – but the ads themselves don’t work here at ProBlogger. It’s all about matching advertising and affiliate programs with an audience and finding what works on each blog. No single program will work on every blog – the same is true for Chitika, BlogRush, AdSense, Amazon Associates or anything else.

bob cobb – not on this blog. Chitika works on many product related blogs – but on a blog like this it doesn’t.

Cigar Jack – I think you’ll find that quite a few bloggers are similar to you. Chitika is my biggest or 2nd biggest earner too – depending on the month.

Andy Beard – not sure my head is level (some would say it’s quite pointy) – but I guess I try to reserve judgement a little more these days than when I first started blogging. I used to jump on the pendulum swings as much as anyone – but soon realized it didn’t really help anyone. The smart players quietly go about their business, trying new services to find what works and then going full on into those that do.

Agree with you on the smaller blogs feeling the increase in traffic more than bigger ones. Great comments mate.

Hock – you’re right in that some of the big players will see increases – however isn’t any extra traffic on a small blog a good thing? If you can gain an extra visitor a day from it over a year and keep them as loyal readers then that’s 365 extra daily readers at the end of the year. I know in my first year of blogging that that would have been amazing!

HMTKSteve – I make more money from using the ads than I have ever done with the affiliate program at Chitika.

Blogging Experiment –

1. you’re right, BR ‘costs’ bloggers by giving up some realestate on their blog.

2. I’m not sure how much ‘hype’ that BlogRush actually participated in. They did put together a good video that explained the potential of the service – however most of the hype and building of false expectations happened on blogs as far as I can see. I know when John Reece emailed me to let me know of BlogRush that his ‘pitch’ was anything but hyped. It was a ‘take it or leave it’ – ‘this might work for you’ type pitch. In fact that’s why I signed up to test it, because he didn’t promise the world.

3. In terms of your hunch about BR – I’d go with it. If you don’t think it’s working out for you then all you can do is stop using it. I guess all I’m concerned about is that people rush from ‘it’s not working’ to write pretty inflammatory posts about it – when it’s just a tool that people can opt into or out of to use.

Kevin – I don’t see the problem with how most of the big bloggers encouraging people to check it out. The system has potential to bring in traffic – it’s being launched by a respected person who has runs on the board in terms of helping people generate traffic to websites. My own approach in my initial post about it was to encourage people to try it out and see if it worked for them.

Thanks to everyone for the comments – hope the conversation can continue to be constructive and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this when I get back in a few days.

I figured it would take a while to see what’s it true value was, that is why I planned on putting it up on my site for a at least a month.

I wonder if the rush to criticize is indicative of the blogosphere or today’s society in general?

I read your reviews on Chitika when I first began reading your blog, and I have to agree that you always made it clear that they wouldn’t work for everyone. They didn’t work for me, but that is because of the type of sites I have.

I will be the first to confess that I’m one of those who didn’t want to try blogrush, and gave my reasons for not trying it.

Your views are usually balanced and honest so people take them seriously. However, many other people who have reviewed Blogrush are those who would do anything to make money fast. The reviews overpromise. And we all know what happens when something overpromises and can’t possibly deliver what it claims.

So in the long run if it does take off they reap the benefits for a long time.

People haven’t looked at this program critically until after it launched and the stats became available. This setup was a failure from the start, look at the numerous traffic exchange sites that offer headline widgets that nobody clicks on. How is this any different, because they sold it differently to top level bloggers?