Chitika - The PayPal AdSense Alternative


Continuing my online quest for the best AdSense alternatives I recently came across Chitika, which conveniently pays by PayPal on a monthly basis.

I suppose the nearest thing I can compare Chitika to is Amazon Associates. Their ad units typically display a small picture and some text related to the product they're advertising. Chitika ads are truly contextual, which means they are automatically related to the content of the page they're displayed on. This means it is far more likely that search engine referrals arriving on the page will find the ads of interest and click on them.

In the example below the visitor has arrived at the Chitika ads having been referred from Google with the search term "iPod Nano".


Just like AdSense a Chitika publisher earns a small amount everytime someone clicks an ad unit. The clicks of US, UK and Canadian site visitors typically earn in the region of 20-30 cents each, so with large traffic volume it's easy to make a good alternative income stream. Unlike AdSense, as I mentioned earlier, an option exists to have Chitika earnings paid into a PayPal account, which means publisher earnings are received in a faster and more convenient form. Something else to be aware of is that publisher stats aren't displayed in realtime, meaning you won't know your actual daily earnings until the following day. This allows Chitika time to verify the authenticity of each click, which is good for maintaining advertiser confidence in the quality of the service.

Chitika offers a range of attractive ad formats, which can be blended with the design of any website. Unlike some alternatives they also offer the ability to generate ad code that displays to mobile phone web surfers, meaning that stream of traffic can also be monetised. This could be particularly useful on news and current affairs sites, which receive a lot of mobile web visitors.

Preliminary indications are that Chitika is a very strong contender to be the best AdSense alternative out there, if you get a lot of clicking visitors from North America.

If you'd like to give Chitika a try then please sign up and tell them AdSense4Dummies sent you: Try Chitika Now

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