Like many other Adsense publishers, I’ve been seeing a serious drop in Adsense earnings over the last few months so I decided to give Chitika another shot using their Chitika Premium ads to alternate ad space with Google Adsense. If you are unfamiliar with Chitika Premium ads and you get a significant amount of US based organic traffic from search engines, you might want to consider utilizing the Chitika service because the ads are displayed based the search terms from which US visitors arrive at your site. For example, if somebody does a Google search for the term “Best Affiliate Programs” and arrives at my blog, the Chitika Premium ads will show relevant ads for those terms. If a suitable ad matching the search terms isn’t found, Chitika will load an alternate url which you can specify during the ad setup to display another ad network such as Adsense or Pepperjam Network.
My strategy is to use the Chitika premium ads first and as an alternate (backup) I use Adsense. Oddly enough my Adsense earnings have stayed the same but now I have the Chitika revenue in addition to the Adsense. I’ve been experimenting with this for about two months and for the first time this week, Chitika is out performing Adsense but the combined income has my earnings almost doubled from when I was running Adsense exclusively. Although the Chitika ads only show to US visitors who arrived at my site from organic search, the impressions are minimal but the number of click-thrus are greater than Adsense and the eCPM and CPC is far better than Adsense. Additionally, alternating two or more ad networks can certainly increase clicks because repeat visitors are likely to tune out ads that look the same but mixing it up a bit definitely causes visitors to take a second look.
If you would like to try the experiment for yourself but are unsure how to setup the alternating ads, here’s a step by step guide to setting up Chitika Premium as a wrapper to Adsense.
1.) Create a Google Adsense ad block for your site and copy the code into an empty, new file named alt_chitika.php and save the file to your server.
2.) Login to your Chitika account and click “Get code”. You will see the Chitika | Premium option and click “Get Code” to create a new block of Chitika code for your site.
3.) In the “Optional Settings” box, type the url to the Adsense file you created in step 1 into the “Alternate Url” textbox.
4.) Insert the Chitika code into your website where you want to display the ads.
That’s it. Now your ad zone is setup to display Chitika ads to any US based visitors who arrive at your site as a result of search engine traffic. Any other visitors will be shown the Google Adsense code as an alternate. For most bloggers, you won’t see a significant decrease in your Adsense impressions or earnings but you will see that you now have two revenue streams.
If you are not using Adsense, you can still use Chitika to serve your main ads while using any other ad network to serve the alternate ads by following the steps above. If you’re already alternating ad networks using custom code, you can simply use the custom code url as your alternate url in the Chitika Premium setup.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave comments on this article or forum discussions : Affiliate Networks and Affiliate Programs.
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Thanks for the tip. My Adsense earnings have taken anose dive lately. I need to do something to make some extra money from my blogs. I hope this will work for me also.
Thanks for sharing. Search engine optimization is indeed one of the most crucial areas in Internet marketing, it is a perfect bridge between technology and business.
I feel that it always best not to put all of your eggs in one basket. If your income online is due to just one or two methods, then you automatically will have a huge decrease in income if one of those fails to perform at its normal level.
Absolutely right !! Putting all your eggs in one basket, especially Adsense, is a recipe for disaster. Many bloggers only stick Adsense on their site and hope they will get rich from it. While Adsense may be good for the pennies a day approach, from my experience, using a few CPA networks and matching ads to your readers can be a far more effective way to earn big bucks.
I’m currently mixing Adsese, Chitika, PepperJam, Neverblue ads, Market Leverage, Hydra Network, Clickbank and Link Connector on my sites.
[…] Using Chitika Premium and Google Adsense to Create Multiple … […]
[…] (the Adsense shows if no Chitika is present). Iwrote an article about wrapping Adsense with Chitika here for anybody interested. __________________ Affiliate Programs Website Promotion Credit […]
I think this is a best bet if you are worried about being banned by Adsense.
I used to have a lot of success with Chitika but my earnings dropped off a year ago. I didn’t know they made a new premium ads service. Will have to login to my dormant account an try them out.
thanks for the info Dave.
I highly recommend using this technique because the Chitika ads convert extremely well due to the fact that they are displayed based on search engine traffic driven to your site.
I wanted to see if your tip about using both Chitika and Adsense really worked. I have tested it for over two weeks now and you’re right !!! My Adsense earnings are the same as always (maybe a little higher) and now I have a second revenue stream with Chitika. My Chitika earnings are about 40% of my Adsense so I’m not doing so good as you but 40% on top of what I was already earning is sweet.
I owe you a few beers Dave. Will see you in Las Vegas in January and make good on that promise.
chitika is more safe of an alternate to adsense. never have there been webmasters cry over being banned from chitika and have their money stolen lik with google.
I agree with Hazymuth that Chitika is a safe way to make money from PPC. It’s not as bigmoney as Google but safety is better than bigger payouts.
I think users are seeing Adsense ads and just running away from them, I put ads right in their face but they see right through them.
I noticed on sites with Chitika that it was much harder to distinguish from regular content, and that makes all the difference. Clickthrough has doubled.
[…] Chitika Premium - I find myself more of a content devloper than a PPC Marketer. The reason being, with content, the […]
Hey there! Your post really helped me in my internet marketing knowledge. My girlfriend and I started doing a little internet marketing for a boutique’s site.
Nice !
Thanks for the tip. Chitika is more safe of an alternate to adsense.
I published my website less than a month ago and am still building content (it is a portal to all kinds of affiliate sites for how-to books, videos, etc). I am researching now how to monetize the site further and will look at Chitika as an alternate to AdSense. Thanks for a great blog, Dave.
i agree with you. my adsense has declined so much and i will have to take alternative. i think chitika is good i will have to try it.
Hi Dave,
Nice article and thanks for the tips. I agree with goofblogger, not to put all eggs in on basket. It is important to make a multiple income source, just in case one not generated any money still have others. It is like hedging in a fund industries.
[…] the past I’ve blogged about Using Chitika Premium and Adsense to Create Multiple Revenue Streams and how effective it is to use Google Adsense as the alternate to Chitika Premium. For anyone else […]
This is a very good tip and it has helped me increase my earnings by 40% and the Chitika is getting better all the time.
I just want to try chitika too .. sound interestingg. thanks for the tips
I noticed on sites with Chitika that it was much harder to distinguish from regular content, and that makes all the difference. Clickthrough has doubled.