Chitika eMiniMalls – How Much Money Do they Earn Me?

Chitika eMiniMalls – How Much Money Do they Earn Me?



Chitika-EminimallsI’ve been getting quite a few excited emails from readers who have signed up for the Chitika eMiniMalls that I reviewed last week. There has been a lot of positive feedback so far from those who I’ve referred over to the program with some people earning some significant money from it so far (including ‘Rachel‘). There have also been a few (less) emails from bloggers who have failed to see them as effective.

The most common question that I get asked by readers about the eMiniMalls include:

* ‘How do the money from eMiniMalls compare to earnings of Adsense?’
* ‘How much money do you earn from eMiniMalls?’

(update: the third most asked question is ‘how do I increase my earnings?’ If you’re asking this you might also like to check out Chitika eMiniMall Tips for increasing earnings)

I’ve resisted talking about specific figures of money earnt to this point because I wanted to clarify with the Chitika people whether I was allowed to do so. Today I just got confirmation that it’s ok for me to talk about daily earnings figures but not CTR, impressions etc. The reason I want to talk about this is simply because I really believe in this ad system – as you’ll see from the figures below – it’s had a pretty amazing impact upon my earnings and I’d like readers here to have the full picture of what the potential to earn money with it is.

So let’s look at yesterday’s earnings for me with both Adsense and Chitika were. Update: due to Adsense terms (that I misread) I have been told that I cannot reveal my daily Adsense figures but only gross payment figures (monthly totals). So I’ll do that here instead of a daily figure for yesterday. You can pretty much work out what the Adsense earnings are from the figure if you know how many days are in August! All I’ll say is that yesterday was a bit under August’s average.


Adsense earnings for August – $15,849.73

Chitika eMiniMalls earnings Yesterday – $702.45

Let me follow the figures up with a few statements of qualification:

* Yesterday Adsense was a little below average for me
* While I can’t mention how many impressions there were for either program – they were very similar to one another
* The Chitika eMiniMalls figure is before their auditing process takes effect. From what I’ve seen of this process last month – this is likely to decrease that figure by around 10% – update this turned out to be an accurate estimation of the audit figure for this day.
* The ads appear across a range of sites (17 or so – NOT just this site). In most cases they appear on the same pages as one another (remember that you need to disable the contextual ad function of the eMiniMalls to do this and stay within Adsense’s TOS
* The CTR for Adsense is significantly higher than it was for the eMiniMalls
* The click value for eMiniMalls is significantly higher than it was for Adsense
* From what I can tell from these results and those of readers who are trying eMiniMalls (Chitika is yet to add channels) – the best performing sites seem to be product related blogs including blogs about gadgets, clothing, etc. Having said this I’ve heard from a number of bloggers with VERY general, non product related sites that are doing reasonably well out of them also.
* These are not just one off or fluke numbers – I’ve had no major increases in traffic over the past few days – I have added the eMiniMalls to more pages in the past week – but the numbers seem to be consistent over the past few days. Time will tell whether they will remain at this level but I have no reason to believe that they will not.
* The above figures are in US dollars.

As you can see from the numbers – I personally have reason to be pretty excited about eMiniMalls. If these numbers continue they will more than double my daily earnings and taken them to a level that is over $1000 per day. This is less than some of the bigger blog networks out there but for an ordinary guy like me who has only been at this blogging thing for under 3 years – I have to say that it’s very promising. I can’t guarantee that they work on every blog – but they are definately worth experimenting with.

Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links – if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have endeavored to point out both its benefits and weaknesses in all my writing about it.

Here’s What You Should Do to Improve Your Blog Today

Earlier in the week I was asked this question – what is one thing that I can do tomorrow morning when I sit down at my desk that will improve my blog?

My answer was this:

Identify a reader’s problem (or that of a potential reader) and produce a post that will solve it.

I’ve covered some of how to identify readers problems in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook (day 16) but this has been such an important part of my own blogging that I want to emphasise it again here.

Ultimately if you are solving someone’s problem you’re doing something that creates an impression and when you do that you do a number of things including:

* increasing the chances that they’ll come back and become a loyal reader
* increasing their trust in you – which helps build authority, credibility and influence
* increasing the chances that they’ll tell someone else about you

I attempt to solve problems for readers on two main levels
Big Picture – What Problem is your BLOG solving?

I find it helpful to have a ‘big’ and overarching problem in mind as I start and then develop a blog. It helps keep me on track and is great for attracting new readers if you communicate it well.

For me on my photography blog the problem that I’m attempting to solve is that most people who own a camera are not using it to its potential. They take pictures that could be improve greatly with a little knowledge and so I want to give them more control over their cameras.
Small Picture – What Problem is your new POST solving?

With your big picture problem in mind you can now begin to break it down into smaller and more specific problems that your readers may have.

For me this means tackling problems like – taking blurry photos, not knowing how to take a decent social media profile picture, not knowing which DSLR to buy and not knowing the basic settings that most cameras have.

Some of these problems are more basic, common and general while others are more specific or advanced – but they all aim to help those who face the problems leave the blog better informed and equipped to solve the problem.

Ultimately this is all about being Useful. Of course being useful takes many forms and the problems that your readers might have could include a large list of things including some like:

* “I’m bored”
* “I want the latest news about….”
* “I want to learn how to….”
* “I want a laugh”
* “I am lonely”
* “I want to improve….”
* “I need a review of….”
* “I need advice about….”
* “I think I’m the only one with the problem of….”

The list goes on and on.
Here’s what to do Today

If you’re looking to improve your blog and you have a few minutes right now – start making a list of the types of problems your readers (or potential readers) have. (if you need help on identifying these problems check out the 31DBBB workbook (day 16) if you have a copy).

Once you’ve got your list of problems – select one and produce something (a blog post, a video, a podcast, a PDF report or even a tweet if its a small problem) and publish it.