Can You Make Money with Chitika on Wizzley?

Chitika publishers tend towards realism. We know that we're the poor relations of the monetized internet. But in defeat comes dignity and the secret smiles of knowing that we're valued as more than just a number.

We have Terms and Conditions that are easy to follow and don't change every other day. We have real human beings to answer any query within 24 hours. We have a revenue stream that, as far as I can tell, is highly competitive.

However, we also have to exist in an on-line world where the odds appear stacked against us. As a fledgling on-line writer, I have applied to join content sites, where the lack of an Adsense account saw me instantly turned down. They weren't after well-crafted articles. They simply wanted something to fill the space around sales pitches.

We also have to face the doom-sayers, who state that no money changes hands on the internet without Google's express permission.There is a kernel of truth in that, if not the whole story. Google is such a dominant force that it reminds me a little of a Roman Emperor overlooking a gladiatorial pit. Thumbs up and you live to fight another day. Thumbs down and the pressure is on to surrender.

There's the drip-drip demotivation of well-meaning mentors, who say things like 'Chitika is better than nothing, I suppose' or 'Oh dear! Well you can't put these ads in the hotspots, you'll just lose revenue'. Or the extra work in having to learn a whole new optimization, which appears to fight against the tides left by the rest of cyberspace.

It's all pretty scary for those just starting out, or veterans who suddenly find themselves locked out in the cold. But Chitika users quickly become realists, reaching just that little bit harder to maintain our foothold in the empire. After a while, you even begin to suspect that you might be on the winning side.

The fact that Wizzley offers Chitika as an ad provider means that you can make money through it. Many, many sites don't. By default, this makes it a factor in your favor.

Unfortunately, like every other writing platform on the internet, Wizzley is optimized for Google Adsense.

In all of the important ways, this doesn't matter; but in one or two significant quarters, it does.

Breaking this down into pros and cons, let's look at the negatives first. There are two major ones here. Before assessing where the balance breaks even. Then finally where Chitika might even win out.

All who sign up to Wizzley will receive a 50/50 share of the revenue on their articles. Half of the time, your work will display your own advertisements. The other half belong to Wizzley. As you write more, you get a higher percentage within that cycle. The highest is 60/40 to the writer.

The Wizzley team have opted to show Adsense during their 40-50% revenue time. If you are using Chitika, a disparity is immediately obvious.

While your adverts are showing, there are just two blocks of them. One is at the top, under the main headings; and one is at the bottom, before the comments section.

While the Wizzley adverts are showing, there are more than double the number of ad blocks. In addition to filling the areas where your Chitika ones were placed, there are three more. An image advert is displayed below your profile section, while a small list unit is in the center of the right-hand column. At the foot of the same column is another image advertizement.

In short, Wizzley (and any writers who choose Adsense) have twice as many opportunities to monetize articles, as you will with Chitika.

Try not to take this personally. ChefKeem and the team, along with Chitika, are all doing their very best in difficult circumstances. Wizzley's technical staff cannot put more ad blocks in, because the alternatives do not exist. They could insert something similar to what's already there, but that would look very repetitive and, frankly, rubbish.

So moving one layer out, we look at the advert provider and wonder why they don't have more varying blocks to offer. The reason is that the company is doing what it can to survive in a monopolized industry.

No-one is going to choose a lesser known brand over the fore-runner, especially when that is as familiar and ubiquitous as Google. Therefore, Chitika has made its name by signing up people willing to diversify. That is to run both providers, side by side, on the same website. Just like Wizzley has, in fact.

Google hates this and it has the dominance to stamp out the practice with policy. In 2005, when Chitika was an up-and-coming ad supplier, Google inserted, into their Adsense Terms and Conditions, this notice:

Competitive Ads and Services
We do not permit Google ads or search boxes accessing Google search services to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads or services. This would include ads that mimic Google ads or otherwise appear to be associated with Google on your site. If you have elected to receive content-based Google ads, this would also include all other content-targeted ads. If you have elected to receive Google search services, this would include other search services on the same site and non-Google query-targeted ads. We do allow affiliate or limited-text links.

It instantly forced website owners into an either/or situation, which Adsense was bound to win. Many competitors went out of business. That policy has since been relaxed slightly, but the current one still reads 'publishers may not display Google ads or search boxes on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site.'

Chitika was one of the few which managed to get around it. Their designers created adverts which didn't mimic Adsense in any way, shape or form. But given the vast array of formats available via Google, this is extremely limiting.

Following that through from the start: service users (me and you) have allowed an internet monopoly by an ad provider. That corporation has used its dominance to attempt to stamp out the opposition. The chief survivor has exploited a TOS loophole to keep going. That loophole restricts the blocks it can offer; and Wizzley has published all that it can from the stock. 

This is why Chitika publishers here have fewer adverts on display around their articles.

Each Wizzley article, including the one that you're reading, is made up of modules. They are blocks which can be inserted in ever more creative ways, so that it all looks very pretty.

They are fun to produce and, within the limits of the overall website's style, no two pages need be the same. As aesthetically pleasing as they are informative, this is lovely for our readers too.

However, Adsense users get a feature which makes Wizzley pages look even more amazing. They are able to insert text right alongside the initial ad blocks. This makes it all very compact and intuitive. It also fills a dead bit of white space, which otherwise would have existed next to the half-page Google ads.

Chitika people didn't have that problem. Our hotspot advert block takes in the full width of the page, covering the white space which was the bane of our colleagues.

Unfortunately, the fix for them means that their pages now look prettier than ours! *Raises a pitchfork in a playful RAWR*

At the moment, this isn't a disaster. It's merely a feature open to Adsense publishers, which can be ignored by those with Chitika. We can use it too, but it places the text above the ad block and looks a little clustered.

What's more worrying is the 'watch this space' alarm bells that sounded, when I heard the reason why. It's a credit to the Wizzley team that the inserted text looks great, so it probably would have happened eventually anyway. What pushed it up the priority list was Google's announcement that sites with more adverts than content, above the fold, would be penalized in its search results pages.

That would be those opting to use Chitika header adverts then. The ones that the company has been forced to create, as anything else would mimic Adsense too much. Did I mention there was a certain corporation monopolizing the web?

At the moment, there is nothing to worry about here. Hopefully there never will be.

After all that doom and gloom, it's definitely worth moving onto what Chitika users have in their favor on Wizzley.

First of all, many long-time writers here have reported that their main revenue comes from the affiliate links, not from either Adsense or Chitika.

The latter do have more peace of mind in these circumstances though. In the past, Google has been a bit sniffy about affiliate links being posted on the same website as its own adverts.

Right now, it's allowed. But if that capricious corporation changes its mind again, then every Wizzley writer will have the choice between switching to Chitika, or taking down all of those modules pointing towards Amazon, Zazzle and the rest. This would have a knock-on effect in the website's Google SERPs ranking.

For the moment, it's neither here nor there which provider is used, therefore Chitika breaks even in the comparison.

Where the company starts to move ahead is in the algorithms behind each paid listing. Adsense is contextual, which means that cookies will scan the page for its content, then produce advertisements to match. If the article is about anything it can't sell, then the adverts either disappear or drop to nothing.

Chitika bases its results on the entire search history of the person browsing the page. It has a wider pot of topics through which to monetize. (Read more about this in: How Does Chitika Work.) Moreover, Wizzley writers tend to get much of their immediate traffic on-site, before settling in for the long haul. As our articles mature on the web, the vast majority of readers will arrive after clicking a link on a search results page.

In fact, writers and readers alike are doing everything that plays more comfortably into Chitika's algorithm than Adsense's. The long-term benefits could well be far greater.

The proof of the pudding is always in the tasting though, so let's conclude with my bottom line money made through Chitika on Wizzley to date.