At first I thought it was weird how much problogger.net promoted Chitika. Then I found it even more weird when I got a email from Chitika telling me to visit problogger for tips on better conversions… Maybe its just ironic but perhaps maybe this “expert” had “incentives” to promote Chitika. I am just wondering to myself why problogger would try so hard to promote a company that really has no reason to be so heavily promoted.
Well it does make sense that a person would want to get tons of referrals but at the sacrifice of creditability? I guess whatever. I am not a problogger and have only even had a blog since last July so what the hell do I know.
I do find it interesting that ASSLOADS of other “experts” (Jensense, Threadwatch, Andy Hagans, Jason Golod) have been posting how Chitika has been screwing over users yet problogger continues to post even today about Chitika and its new features.
BUT NO MENTION OF HOW THEY ARE GIVING IT TO PUBLISHERS IN THE ASS.
Will be interested to see if the biggest promoter of chitika will give any mention to how its screwing people over.
Maybe in his contract he cant talk negative about them =P
EDIT: Shortly after he responded on my blog here Darren has made a post about Chitika audits.
Great post! I really enjoy reading your blog and how you are not afraid to speak your mind. Keep up the good work
Erk. This is news to me actually. But I also have a sneaking suspicion I’ve sent through referrals that have been “lost” – ‘cos my referral stats that I collect just arent adding up. Who knows. 😐
Who are you to call out Darren? That guy has probably spent more money online then you have ever made. This post is like a big DUH. Of course he is getting kickbacks from Chitika!
In actual fact I do report both the good and bad about Chitika. I’m more positive about them than negative because they perform so well for me on my blogs. Most of my posts about them are ‘how to’ posts – ie how to work with a system that many people complain about but a system that many don’t know how to use effectively.
Yep I do have refferers with them and I’ll be honest and say I enjoy that income – however I talk about them so positively mainly because they have been a great performing product for me and I’d like to share that. I have talked as glowingly for the last two years about Adsense but no one complains about that.
Hrmm problogger seems like a straight shooter to me. I enjoy there website
Note: That is not the real Jason Calacanis above. This is the real Jason Calacanis and I have nothing to do with this. best jason
The comment above was not left by Jason Calacanis.
I’ve known Darren for more than two year. I’ve witnessed him do reprehensible things before. I think he is a liar. I think he’s cheating his readers. He is embellishing his Chitika earnings to get more referrals. I’m glad you finally caught him out.
Thanks Jason I have removed the above comment.
Well…. I would’nt say I have caught him at anything I just was pointing out some facts. He has come here and defended himself and I respect him for that.
Frank I think this is an overreaction and that you’re getting close to getting yourself in trouble with your accusations of me.
I take offense that you call me a liar – I’ve not lied about my earnings with Chitika at all. I make very good money with them. In fact since telling people my earnings with them they have increased considerably and I’ve refrained from publishing these details because I didn’t want to ‘hype’ things up. Chitika’s brought an incredible earning capacity through their ads to some bloggers – I’m one of them – why wouldn’t I talk about it?
Trouble? Darren, this is what I meant, when I said you’re not the nice guy you are trying to present to the world. You have a mean streak. I saw it before. I know you. I don’t believe you. My opinion. My right.
I’ve got a mean streak? What is that? I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about with having seen it before.
To be fair I’d say we all probably have parts of us that we’re not overly proud of – but I really don’t know what you’re referring to. I’m just a guy trying to make a living from blogging who would like to help others to do that.
‘I’ve known Darren for more than two year. I’ve witnessed him do reprehensible things before. I think he is a liar. ‘
That kind of a statement is just biazarre. You know me? I’m not sure who you are. I didn’t recognise your name or blog (is it having problems cause I can’t access it any more?) – and I have no idea what reprehensible things I’ve done before. If I’ve hurt you or have done something wrong I’m more than happy to admit to that and try to make retrabution – but this just seems like character assasination.
If you want to critique or challenge me I challenge you to come to me via email and do so directly without allusions to things you ‘know’ or ‘have seen’. Doing it this way in a public forum isn’t constructive. You accused me of being immoral in your post on your blog – but what if you’re wrong? Perhaps your action in attacking me in this way are imoral also.
If you’d just asked me questions about what I was doing I would have been more than happy to talk to you about them and try to show you that I was being truthful but for you to do it this way doesn’t seem fair.
Darren, you are a respectable individual and the critics are not being rational. There is a time to respond to accusations and there is a time to ignore people. Don’t defend yourself against people who aren’t worth your time.
Chitika Publishers Furious Over Revenue Audit That Has Taken Up To 90% Of Their Revenue
Chitika implemented a revenue audit to invalidate clicks it calls “curiosity clicks” that I mentioned here on Nov 17,2005. Unfortunately for some publishers — and most it seems — upon checking their month ending stats some have seen upwards of…
Frank: You really need some help man, if you read most of the posts by Darren, he’s for real. Your claim to know him is bogus. If you did know him or even read his blog for the last couple of month you’d be better informed. Nobody knows who you are, and know you’re running and hiding, ’cause your blog is now erased from blogger.com
Darren: keep up the good work.
There’s no conspiracy. It’s called BOGU. Bend Over and Grease Up. When someone is paying you thousands of dollars per month, as Darren claims he’s receiving from Chitika, then you act nice to those people. Right? That’s common sense.
Alright, so the Chitika honeymoon is over. Yes, Darren is still promoting Chitika and is doing well by it, but he’s always been upfront about it. Darren’s relationship with Chitika is probably like that of an AdSense Premium publisher to Google — he’ll probably does get better treatment from Chitika than most people. But whose fault is that? The Chitika folks have benefited tremendously from that relationship.
The real problem is that Chitika was over-hyped, that’s all. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the eMiniMalls program itself, and it seems to work very well for some people as a replacement for or in addition to more traditional programs like AdSense. And it will probably continue to do so.
The real problem is how Chitika handled this whole auditing issue. As I said in my blog, they should switch away from a monthly auditing process to a weekly or daily process, or even near real-time like AdSense does. This requires hardware, though, and it may be that they just can’t do it technically at this point.
That said, they should have been warning publishers about this. Surely they must do some analysis of the data they get during the month. Surely they would have seen problems — too many clicks from non-US areas, for example. They could have told publishers to be ready for big cuts at audit time. They would have been criticized, sure, but not as badly.
Anyhow, reality has sunk in. Now we can all go back to our normal business.
[…] This guys tears into Darren Rowse. Ouch. More about Cheatika. […]
Amen! And I’m not even sure I’d say as much as Darren did.
I have no comments on the Chitika service in practice, but if it works for him, that’s great! And who can blame Chitika for being responsible to their advertisers?
It sounds like the main issue is people think they’re making more revenue than they actually are due to fraudulent clicks. Once that issue is resolved I’ll bet that most people will cool down a bit and step back into reality. This is about sales for merchants, not handing you money for having a blog.
A Bad Week for Chitika
Chitika’s eMiniMalls was seen by many to be the real deal in it’s competition for Pay-Pay-Click advertising on blogs, none more so than Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger – Here, Here, Here and Here, who has been a fervent admirer of Chitika …
Chitika Audits Kinda Shitika
I’ve hung back from experimenting with Chitika, the hip new contextual advertising program, so this info is all second hand, but a lot of people are reporting heavy earnings cuts over the past few days, as Chitica has begun auditing revenue: Jensense …
…and I thought the enemy was Chitika??? 🙂
Webmasters have reported cuts between 20-90% in their Oct audited revenues so lets wait for Chitika’s explanation in their blog.
Frank: Darren’s just writing his “personal” opinions about Chitika and if he’s making money from their ads/referrals, he’d most likely be writing something positive – sounds reasonable?
If you don’t like what he writes, move on – everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Hence, it’s immature to come out and bash him publicly.
Darren: You should not even have bothered to respond directly to Frank’s comments IMHO. The majority of us understands what an “opinion” is and we certainly respect yours 😉
I’ve got to be honest, I was wondering the same thing. I saw so many pro Chitika posts, and then Darren didn’t pick up on a post I wrote about Chitika’s alleged misleading practices… but then again, I suppose he does have to be selective, and the article was not all that wonderfully written, either. A lot of things, including my own pride, made me wonder about Darren’s Chitika connection. After spending some time reading his blog, and with his newer posts regarding Chitika, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
It truly makes one wonder whether it’s a matter of Darren being “in bed” with Chitika, or simply Chitika picking up on Darren’s posts.
Don’t kill the messenger if the message is bad. If someone doesn’t want to blog about the negative sides of Chitika, then it’s the bloggers prerogative. All boils down to the matter of personal opinion and respect.
[…] Summary : Chitika still looks a interesting model to help you make money on the internet and from blogging in particular, just be aware that if you do have allot of non us traffic its not likely to be your best money making option, but that’s no reason not to use it at all. I will also point here that i am not at this time a chitika affiliate, and of course they may reject my site, my opinion is based on trying to get a handle from the many articles out there in the last few days. I have even noticed some bloggers giving a hard time to Darren Rowse for promoting chitika, why? didn’t seem anyone was complaining until the audits, now because he doesn’t just come out and say these guys are assholes he gets slammed by some idiots, I personally think that’s a bit harsh, but rather a sad fact of how things are, its always easier to blame someone else for a problem than yourself, I mean did Darren drag anyone over to chitika kicking and screaming by the hair and force them to sign up? of course not .At the end of the day its our business, and we make the decisions, when you decide to run a blog for profit the buck stops with you so deal with it, you guys who read my site will hopefully see me proved right in my quest to make it work, but rest assured the mistakes I make are mine and mine alone, my advice to anyone starting their own blog is to remember its your decisions which shape its destiny. dave Chitika Leave a comment […]
No, no, I’m not trying to down Darren for not picking up a negative-biased story. Not at all. In fact, I support Darren, and his blog (well, okay, I read it, regularly). My apologies if my comment was mis-worded, or worded in a confusing manner. I merely meant to relate that that instance made me think, and think back on things I’d seen Darren post. Overall, I’d say there’s a little more communication between problogger and Chitika, than “normal,” but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re in cahoots.
I’ve also posted on Problogger that I have chats with Adsense people, YPN people, Adgenta people, Blogads people…. so what? Ad systems talk to their publishers, especially their bigger ones. They do this for many reasons – it’s common sense. I think you’ll find Chitika talk to numerous publishers on many different levels – that doesn’t mean anyone is in bed with anyone – it’s just good business practice.
[…] So for whatever reason Google and Yahoo have decided my original Chitika post should rank high. I guess perhaps I could be thought of in bed with Chitika…. After all I called out the person at problogger.net yet I am doing the same thing. (earning referrals from my post about success). […]
I can’t see a single thing that Darren has done wrong. In fact I had a blog that I promoted using the exact strategies and tips at problogger and it gets a lot of traffic (ie thousands of uniques/day) within a month of launch that I attribute directly to his advice.
Keep up the good work Darren.
[…] Been reading a handful of blogs pointing fingers to almost everyone about the recent Chitika fiasco. […]
Daren
I totally support you on this. I dig the way you have defended yourself here, without loosing your dignity and NOT lost it like this guy, whats his name..Frank somebody ,and some other people in Blogosphere who seem to be more jealous than anything else, of you and your earnings and are making wild accusations, without roducing a shred of evidence/facts.
More power to you,man.
Regds
Sarang
Darren
Totally support you on this and also dig the way you have defended yourself without loosing your dignity. Unlike this Frank guy and some other Bloggers who seem to be more jealous of you than anything else.
More power to you, man.
Regds
Sarang
I didn’t see this post until just now, but now I’m glad I haven’t bothered to try out Chitika yet. I think most people are probably better off sticking with larger well known companies.