Moving to Chitika Premium after AdSense ban
Ajith | Dec 2009 | About Online Ads, Make Money Online, Product Reviews, Updates From Us
Yesterday, my Google AdSense account got disabled for no apparent fault of mine! After having my AdSense account for more than two years, it was really shocking to see this kind of action from Google. When I dug into the click pattern, I observed that somebody had click-bombed one of my other blogs where AdSense was present. At one point this blog had 25 clicks from the same number of impressions.
While awaiting the result of my appeal to the Google AdSence support team, I decided to move to Chitika Premium ads. I had used Chitika eMinimalls a couple of years ago but this one seems to be a more attractive proposition and an AdSense alternative as it focuses only on search traffic.
AdSense vs Chitika Premium
The Chitika Premium ads are nothing but their eMinimall Pay-Per-Click ads with the only difference that they are shown only to the search visitors from US and Canada. And Chitika claims that they pay a premium for this kind of relevant search traffic. I am yet to see any good results but I trust them because in the test mode with various keyword combinations, it showed some appealing ads like the one given below.
The Chitika ads have always been text plus graphics packaged inside a rectangular border. However, in the past, they somehow lacked the context relevancy as compared to what AdSense rendered. The Premium version seems to solve this issue to some extend. However, while Google Ads can fit anywhere, by the nature of Chitika Premium ads, I believe that they need to be placed on top of the page for better Click Through Rate (CTR).
The overall look of the ad is still pretty much the same as it was two years ago. Also, in many cases the rendering of the borders is not proper giving the page that carries the ad an incomplete look. Despite this, I believe that, if placed properly, they can be very effective as they all start with a very intuitive question to the search visitors.
The ads can be customized for any color and most commonly used fonts. The border, however, cannot be taken out. There are also a wide range of sizes that fit most of the blog themes.
The main advantage of Google AdSense is that it converts for all kinds of traffic (search, social media, direct…) from around the world. Chitika Premium, by definition, restricts to the search traffic and that too from North America alone. This will definitely result in reduced number of clicks but hopefully they get better Earnings Per Click (EPC)
PPC experiment continues…
As my PPC income has always been very low, it did not really hurt me much when I was slapped the AdSense ban. After all, I did not have too many AdSense blocks on my blogs. However, the ban has kind of forced me to experiment other PPC networks like Chitika Premium though I believe that Google AdSense is still the best.
Have you ever tried Chitika Premium? If so, what has been your experience?
Happy Money Making!
CPC is good but CTR is low in chitika, atleast for me it was.. however, this depends on how much adsense used to pay you per click!
Also, if you were click bombed then you do have a thick chance of earning back your account.. wishing you good luck!
You seem to be right about the CTR… It’s not yet that exciting because you are restricting impressions to search users only. The earnings per click so far is varying from 11 to 23. It was easier to measure because for most days I got only 1-2 click
Chitika will be very limited.
At all Adsense is the best.
Shekhar, No doubt – AdSense is the best.
Hope, Google will approve your account again.
“When I dug into the click pattern, I observed that somebody had click-bombed one of my other blogs where AdSense was present. At one point this blog had 25 clicks from the same number of impressions.”
I was wondering how did you do that analysis?
Raghu, I do not have any hope as such because Google very rarely revert their decisions
Please read Atul’s comment below on how to check the click pattern. In addition, I used the channel feature and hence it was easier to check from which blog, how many impressions and how many clicks (and which ad blocks)
Sorry to hear that Ajith..
i hope google will activate ur AdSense account again.
All the best with Chitika Premium
By the way what was ur monthly Click through Rate and traffic for that blog and whats the over all Click through Rate of ur accont.
@ Raghu : the analysis can be done from the AdSense Advanced Reports .. although it takes some time..
Thanks Atul, though I doubt if they do it… But I have done my part honestly and haven’t involved myself in any mal-practices.
I have heard that ProBlogger uses Chitika really well and it works for him. I had been thinking of switching for some time now, looking forward to a coverup post with the results of the switch. G Luck
Run if you have traffic from US, Then try Chitika, they paying more for clicks.
Hmm, it’s still nowhere near AdSense
@Arun, Like Anish said, Darren is getting HUGE US traffic and hence it must be working well for him
Sorry to hear that Ajith. Pray that Google will reinstate your account and blog.
Coming to Chitika a lot depends on where your traffic is coming from and what they are looking for. They do have a low threshold for payment of just USD 10.00 and are much better served with alternating other ads.
Thanks Rajiv… Yes, the low payout threshold is an advantage but the CTR is not very good yet. Need to look for other options as well.
actually i always fear somebody might do the same to me…lots of insane clicks
There are a lot of je*ks out there man. Anything is possible in online business.
Shocking News
That’s just weird, Ajith. You don’t do paid ads, but usually they’ll alert you at least the first time when they see something weird going on with your adsense.
Good luck to you with Chitika; I hope it works out for you. Truthfully, there’s plenty of other ways one can go besides Adsense if you needed to. Don’t forget about Yahoo.
Mitch, yes, I never used text-link-ads and hardly do two paid reviews per year. Nope, there wasn’t any alert from their end.
As for Yahoo, they don’t accept international publishers, as far as I know.
I keep forgetting about that international thing.
Adsense has nothing to do with paid links or sponsored posts thats more for Google’s organic search queries ..and you can do paid text and sponsored posts as long as you have a nofollow tag on the outgoing link …it can be used as a form of advertising , not as a form of extracting Google juice …Adsense bans are based on click patterns if someone want to ban you they can do so in less than a minute by clicking all your ads…adsense anyways pays peanuts to advertisers
You may be right about paid content and AdSense impact. A lot of people believe all Google services hate paid content
As for the AdSense payout, I do not think that it’s peanuts. The more traffic you have, the more you get…at least when it comes to PPC, it’s the best so far.
I don’t think selling paid review has anything to do with the ban. But I’m sorry for what happened to Ajith’s.
Well, that’s just the way it is. Aren’t we all in the mercy of the almighty Google?
Yan
I am shock to hear this. It is very sad to hear this.
Hope google give you back your account. but, i have never heard that they reverse their decision.
I have chitika and used it for some time. It doesn’t work well for me. Hope it works for you.
All the best. if it works well for you, hope you come up with a post in future and i might diversify chitika and adsense.
Nihar, I have the same feeling that they may not revert their ban decision. Anyhow, I am not really desperate as the AdSense income from this blog wasn’t that great. However, I had some niche blogging plans which has to be on hold now.
The probability of reinstatement is 0.01% but here’s the good news, there is a WAY to get a new account which is not really hard at all if do the right thing.
Yan
Hey Ajith thats sad to see your adsense account is click ban, anyways.. Instead of using any advertising , why dont u run an affiliate campaign. As it is your posts are very lengthy and useful and I’m sure with your expertise you can do wonder with your affiliate sales.
Harsh, In fact I am already there with affiliate/referral stuff. Thanks for emphasizing it… As for Chitika or PPC, it’s only an experiment for the time being.
Oops, I got banned with adsense a couple years back hehe!
Chitika is cool too… Why don’t you try some CPA offers?
Swastik, So we are in the same league
Yes, I have CPA plans…
Wow.. that’s a sad news Ajith..
Did you file a case against Google?
I mean, you can approach Google, if the fault is not in your side!
Pradeep, Well, I approached Google but not exactly sueing them
But I don’t know if they will get back to me…
Gosh… that’s scary and shocking, I mean how easy for anyone to game Google
Hope they revert the ban, it shouldn’t be too tough for them to know the truth.
It’s honestly too bad about your AdSense account. I hope they set things right and don’t just leave things the way they are because they’re a giant company and they can.
Right, they can decide to kick us out any time
So would you say that Chitika is the best second choice if you don’t want to use Adsense on a certain site? Or is there something better?
I am not sure but it looks promissing. Adbrite is pretty good as well but sometimes they serve rated ads to your site.
Quite Quite shocking to hear that news. Specially from you Ajith.
That’s the reason one shouldn’t depend on one source of income. Specially AdSense, as Google can’t control click fraud and they ban the bloggers.
You can rock with out AdSense also…just rock
Yep, without AdSense also life can go on.. In fact, it is helping me to do a little bit of risk management
It is a bad news indeed.But I feel Ajith is already prepared to face this situation by developing alternate channels.So it is a kind of interesting situation for him.
Same time a warning bell for other bloggers too.
Chitika works equally good from an advertisers perspective…I do use it in some of my websites…Inline text ads like kontera rocks