Chitika - Continues to struggle with delays
I have been following Chitika, which seems to be based on the Shopping.com API, for the last several months. The concept of it is very interesting, and you haven’t heard of it, read about it here.
They have recently had trouble with their Audits, namely delays and crediting users with revenue. As the delays grow longer, more of its userbase is losing faith. Many bloggers are speculating that they are being ripped off. Darren Rowse (aka ProBlogger) who seems to be in tight with Chitika states that the reason Chitika audits disregarded revenue “so heavily was primarily for reasons of traffic from non accepted countries”. Darren has yet to say anything really negative about Chitika, and helps keep their hype alive… So many are skeptical that he might have deeper ties than meets the eye…
I won’t state my own opinion yet, but I do know that merchants won’t pay for non accepted country traffic… So that much is true. And for myself, knowing how the Shopping.com associate program works, I am not suprised that Chitika is having these problems. That is if Chitika is using the SDC API (which it looks like from a developers standpoint), they must wait for audits from Shopping.com and then perform their own internal audit. I just don’t know why they wouldn’t be more upfront with their userbase about the process.
Here is a list of their problems with the Chitika model itself and why members are losing a portion of their revenue:
- Curious clicks - Users with no intention of buying or interest in the product.
- Fraudlent clicks - Bots, Proxied clicks, etc.
- Non-accepted country clicks - Generally, clicks from countries where a merchant product is not sold.
Further reading:
Chitika delays audit and payments by two weeks at Jensense.com
Chitika Audit Issues at ProBlogger.net
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