Last week Chitika announced their newest, best-performing ad unit – the Chitika List Unit (CLU).  I am really excited about these ad units. It will give me another way to increase my Chitika earnings from a new unit that has proven to directly increase my CTR. You might also be interested in these ad units, therefore I have prepared a short Q & A for you:

What is the Chitika List Unit (CLU)?

The CLU looks just like your regular Chitika text ad units. It also has the ability to expand & display up to 9 ads in the unit. (wow!)

Here is an example of the CLU on a website:

There is a saying in the make money blogging business; “The More Ads In One Unit, The Higher The CTR”. So you will probably be making more money with a CLU.

Why should you use the CLU?

1. CTR Increase usually means more money for you! According to Chitika initial tests have proven that the more ads within an ad unit, the higher the revenue for you from the unit. I am also testing, will update you about my personal test too.

2. Great User-Experience. The CLU will expand and contract to however many ads are supported for a query within our ad inventory. In other words, if Chitika can not supply 9 ads for a particular query, the ad will automatically adjust its height, ensuring no ugly white-space.

How do you get the CLU?

All you need is to sign up Chitika and then login & get your code.

Where should you place the CLU on your website?

CLU is recommended to go directly below your content, or mixed in/bottom of a list.

You may also read my previous blog posts if you haven’t heard Chitika before. Here you are:

Chitika Premium Upgraded to Chitika Select

Chitika + Adsense Ad Placement Guide

Double Your Blog Income With Chitika Premium

How To Make Money With Blogs – Part 5

Writing talent and excellent web content will get your foot (and blog) in the door, so to speak, when it comes to establishing a web presence, but it won’t make you money.  Talent must be harnessed to “web savviness” in order for you to quit your day job (if in fact that is your goal) and make decent money from your blog.  This demands a fundamental understanding of diverse web technologies.  To be without this knowledge is like being a general in charge of a battle without knowing what the weapons are.

Online income generation depends on understanding these technologies and knowing how to utilise them to propel the most traffic to your site.  Take for example, a lack of knowledge about search engine optimisation (SEO).  Without an understanding of SEO, the search engine ranking of your site is significantly decimated compared to the ratings of a site where the webmaster is au fait with the concept.  Still, technology cannot stand alone and in order to be truly web savvy you must understand that making money with a blog means knowing how to please the majority of those who orbit around your blog most of the time, namely: visitors, advertisers, search engines, affiliate programs, etc.

One direct method to monetise your blog concerns Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising networks of which Google AdSense is the most popular option.  As with others of its ilk, you sign up and then simply copy and paste code snippets on your website.  Google then places contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.  The amount of profits gleaned is proportionate to the general traffic levels of the website and on the click through rate (CTR) and the cost per click (CPC).

Additional CPC advertising networks include: Yahoo Publisher Network (YPI), BidVertiser, Chitika and Clicksor. CPM advertising networks (Cost Per Mille) operate in the same manner as PPC networks except that you get paid according to the number of impressions that the ads displayed on your site will generate.  Some CPM networks include: Casale Media, Burst Media, Value Click, Tribal Fusion and Right Media.  There are also text link ads, affiliate programs like Amazon or LinkShare and ads sold to individual advertisers that can generate monthly income to your site.

There are also indirect methods that can generate income for a blog.  Selling an e-book, for example, is one of the oldest moneymaking strategies on the internet.  You can also sell hardcover books on your website which many authors and journalists do.  A news feed is a very important indirect method of earning money online.  RSS (Real Simple Syndication) requires a feed reader such as Google Reader.  Create feeds so that your readers can subscribe to them.  If you add new content often, each time you do so, the feed will promote it and thus draw more traffic to your site.  RSS feeds do not rely on bookmarking and they automatically keep your content fresh and new.

Every now and then I test and review valuable ad networks for bloggers. Conridium is yet another one. It is especially suitable for gaming/entertainment bloggers. If you are blogging about games and entertainment you can make some extra income by joining this ad network.

Conridium is a CPA ad network which pays publishers for generating sign-ups for the most popular free multiplayer games online. They have the great offers and you can’t complain about the payouts. They are a gaming ad network that started a while ago and not to many people know about them.

You can get around 30% conversion on the clicks and around 65% conversions from your gaming site. Conridium was not so hard of a network to get approved. As a publisher you get paid for every sign up you bring them. From my experience they pay pretty well. They offer revenue shares with their publishers, and it varies depending on your site.

They have a great publisher relations guy. He is really responsive and always is happy to answer any of my question and concerns. One thing I learned as a publisher you can not have incentivized leads with them. Once you have created your account, you would need to submit your website details for approval before the ad code is provided to you. Personally, I would recommend that you put your best site forward [in terms of traffic]  and a site in the entertainment/gaming niche would have more chances of approval.

As a publisher you will have various banner ad options; leader board, half banner, sky scraper,The most effective ad size is their new Editorial links. the links are way more effective but you have to ask them so they can get you editorials.

On my account I am generating an average of 50-1.50 per sign-up, I have not seen any network so far in the gaming industry with this high of payouts for signing up for a free game. They pay via Paypal or Check, subject to a $100.00 USD minimum balance.

Conridium’s minimum requirement is 50,000 unique visitors a month, entrainment/gaming content. Though from my experience MMO/RPG web sites do the best job for them.

Over all Conridum is pretty good addition to any earning strategy, and depending on how you place your ads , may end up giving your monthly revenues a real boost! Highly recommended for anyone in the gaming niche.

You can find more details at their website: www.conridium.com

Back in Nov 2009 I posted Chitika + Adsense Ad Placement Guide. Chitika is still my 2nd largest make money online revenue stream. Since Nov 2009 my Chitika income increased significantly in parallel to the increase in the number of referrals and blog posts. The best is yet to come. Today I would like to share a very good news about Chitika.  I am very excited to let you know that Chitika is expanding their ad display to show to more than just your search traffic! What this means to you? Your Chitika ads will now show to some of your non-search traffic so you can generate more revenue. Great, isn’t it?

The new ads are called Chitika Select. Using their click-prediction technology, Chitika will display Select ads on your blog when there is a higher chance the ad will be clicked.

How will this affect your revenue/stats?

Whenever Select ads are displayed on your blog it will result in more impressions to your Chitika ads automatically. The more impressions to your Chitika ads, the higher revenue. Chitika estimates Select ads could give bloggers a 5 – 10% revenue increase on top of Premium alone. Not so bad, huh?

The good thing is, you do not have to make any changes to your Chitka ads; this will happen automatically starting Monday, March 8th, 2010. Excellent news!

You might have some questions about the new ads. Bearing this in mind, I copied FAQ section from the official announcement for your easy guidance:

Can I Still Use Chitika | Select With Google AdSense?

Yes! Just like the Chitika | Premium ads you can use the new Chitika | Select ads and AdSense together on the same page.

How Can I Upgrade My Chitika | Premium Ads?

You don’t need to, it will happen automatically Monday, March 8th 2010.

Are Chitika | Select Ads PPC (Pay-Per-Click)?

Chitika | Select will always show the highest-paying ads possible. This will include PPC ads as well as CPM image/banner ads (which pay per impression, whether a user clicks or not).

Will Chitika | Select Ads look different than Chitika | Premium?

Sometimes. Similar to how Google shows image/banner ads if they determine that it is the highest paying ad for a certain user visiting the site, we will do the same. Some of your users will see ads with the Chitika | Premium format and others will see ads that look different but will pay more.

It’s been almost one month since I posted on my blog. I feel a bit guilty because of this. Have I told you before that since last summer I offer SEO and Social Media consultancy services? Frankly speaking I did not expect these two tasks to consume most of my time when beginning. On the other hand, I also did not expect to gain so much experience in social media, search engine optimization, and e-commerce in such a short period. That is why I do not regret. Anyway, this is just another story. Today I would like to tell you more about another experience I gained about blogging during this period;how to non-stop launch various niche blogs and regularly post content without actually writing anything. Sounds great, huh? Here we go…

The good thing about Chitika Premium ads is that they only appear to a visitor that clicks through to your blog from a search engine. Seth Godin and other marketing gurus call it “permission marketing”.  You don’t disturb your existing or temporary blog visitors with Chitika Premium ads.  I have a blog farm of around 30 blogs, and so far Chitika Premium ads have performed very well because all the blogs in my blog farm have already been optimized for search engines.

Until this year you were not allowed to use Chitika and Adsense together on the same blog. But now you can use them together and double your blogging income.  I have been using Chitika Premium ads since June 2009 and Chitika has become my second largest income source.  Having said that, using Chitika Premium and Google Adsense together is not an easy task especially for the dummy bloggers.

If you don’t know how to start or struggling to use both ads together, here is a nice and free guide from Chitika: Adsense & Chitika Ad Placement Guide

Featured in this eBOOK:

• How to combine Chitika & AdSense ads for a higher total revenue.
• The importance of customizing your ad links to your website links.
• Successful AdSense & Chitika Placement ideas
• Advanced customization tips

Download your copy this weekend. I am sure you will not regret.

When it comes to making money online with a blog, one of the most popular methods is contextual advertising. Text or image ads are shown which match the content of the pages. Ads appear in small boxes. Contextual ads are often displayed to the right or left of website copy, or as blocks within sections of the text. The ads shown are related to the content of each individual page. As visitors click on these links, you make money.

Probably the largest and most used of the contextual ad programs is Google’s Adsense. Google really is a giant when it comes to the Internet, and their talents go far beyond just being a search engine. Adsense is used by many site owners to bring in a monthly income. While Google Adsense is still the king of contextual advertising, there are a few good alternatives. A good and popular example is Chitika ads.

It is not so easy for me to understand how majority of the bloggers are still making less than 10$ per month while there are tons of opportunities even for the newbies. Smowtion is yet another blog monetization opportunity for both established and new bloggers. The good thing about this new advertising network is bloggers get paid per impression.

Blog monetization is an ongoing process. A simple change in the position of an ad can result in a doubling of your blogging income. If you want to make some good money with your blog, you have to become a master at blog monetization. Bearing this in mind, starting with this quarter I will be analyzing the most profitable blog monetization methods under the name of Blog Monetization Outlook.

Today I bet the most common question in the minds of bloggers is: “How come some bloggers make a fortune while majority can not even make $20 per month?” In this post I answer this question based on my three years of problogging experience.

Did you know that every single day around 16,000 new WordPress blogs are launched? Some of these are from existing bloggers, but most of them are launched by the newcomers. The competition is getting tough day by day. It is not as easy as it was before to make money with blogs. What to do now?

Making money blogging is not all about advertising or affiliate marketing. If you can sell your own product or have the resell rights of an existing product, you start making much more money.