Chitika – Make money from blogging

So who doesn't want to earn money doing something they were going to do anyway?

Everyone has heard of Google AdSense but I'd never heard of Chitika before. In fact until I started this blog I was uninformed about Ads in general because over at Wordpress.com you are not allowed to show your own ads & affiliate links (for example I had one for B&H Photo in NY which I couldn't use). The free wordpress.com is only free because they show their own ads on your blog unless you pay to have them removed (which is fair enough).You have to host your own WP site using Wordpress.org for the freedom to use ads.

Anyway, I opened my blogger account with the express intention of belong allowed to use AdSense only to realise one of the conditions is that you have to have had your blog up and running for a while before you are eligible. Doh. I've only just activated them but before I did I found these guys.

Apparently you can even use different ad networks together. You don’t need to commit to just one! For example, publishers who use both Chitika Ads and Google AdSense together have seen a 30% boost in revenue, as opposed to if they used AdSense alone (according to the Chitika blurb).

Personally I hate sites with loads of annoying ads on them, I'm sure I'm not alone too. Mainly because they clash with the look of the site and stand out too much from the content you're there to look at (especially on photo sites). Thats why I was so pleased to find Chitika because they let you customise the look of the ads to fit better with your site giving a better user experience. That way, if a visitor is actually interested in the ad link then they'll click it but if not, well its much more easily ignored if it blends in. Their ads work on the search terms relating to what you have on your site (I don't think its as a clever as AdSense but I don't have any frame of reference for that yet).
The minimum payout is just $10 via Paypal. Also, Chitika have an affiliate program – you will earn 10% of the CPC revenue that your referrals made for the first ten months that your referrals have Chitika running with free referral banners are provided (as you see from the one I've put in this post).

I don't expect the cash will flow in but every penny counts, especially if you don't have to do anything  extra to earn it ;)