Chitika has long been a fan of Dave Taylor, the tech guru behind AskDaveTaylor.com (among other sites).  We’re very proud to introduce him as our first guest writer of the summer on the Chitika blog, answering the question “What numbers should I be tracking on my website?”

Enjoy!

“There are two types of people in the online world, the 72.5345% of people who are convinced that the world is a measureable place, and the other bunch of folk who don’t try to add things up. If you’re reading the Chitika blog, you likely have at least a passing desire to keep track of how your advertising efforts are doing, so odds are good (so to speak!) that you are a quant.

That’s a good thing. If you’re not tracking statistics about your site, then you have no idea whether it has more readers than it did last month, what topics are most interesting to your reader community, and whether any of those people are actually clicking on your ads and generating some revenue for you. Yeah, you could just look at your Chitika report at the end of each month and see if it’s non-zero, but hopefully you’re a bit more involved than that.

The problem is that there are so many different numbers to track that it can be completely bewildering. I mean, what’s the difference between an “impression” and a “page view”?  Are “unique IP addresses” the same as “unique visitors”?  Even the Chitika reports have impressions, clicks, CTR, Avg CPC and eCPM.  What is all this stuff?

Let’s start by talking about how a Web page is put together: it’s discrete files. The HTML text is one file, and each graphical element is another. A typical page probably has 15-30 graphical elements nowadays, so for purposes of discussion, let’s settle on 20. When you go to that page, you’re requesting 21 files: the HTML file and the 20 graphical files. Those 21 requests are called “hits”, and the HTML request is typically called either an “impression” or a “page view”. If you get 300 visitors to a specific page on your site, that’d mean you would have seen 6,300 (300*21) hits versus 300 page views.  A popular site can easily deliver up millions — or tens of millions — of hits per month!

Now let’s say that on average, everyone who visits your site actually looks at 3.5 pages. Some people, of course, dig in and read 25 pages, while others see one and immediately pop away. Now those 300 visitors are actually accounting for 1,050 (300*3.5) page views or 22,050 (300*21*3.5) hits.  Make sense?

If you were to just count page views, you could fall into the trap of saying you had 1,050 readers, but that’s wrong. That’s how many pages you served up, but in fact you had 300 visitors. Since each computer on the Internet has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address, if you were to look in your log files you would see that the people who read multiple pages are recorded as coming from the same IP again and again. Ergo, when you want to talk about the number of unique visitors to your site, you look at “unique IP addresses”, and generally it is the same as talking about unique visitors.

Advertisements like Chitika ads are a special situation because not only do you want to keep track of how often the ad is shown, but you also want to keep track of how often the viewer does the desired behavior (click on it). So the number of times it’s shown are the “impressions” in the Chitika report. How many times does the ad actually get clicked on?  That’s “clicks” and the ratio of one to the other is the “click thru rate” or CTR.

For example, let’s say that our site served up 1,050 ad impressions (since a user going from page to page will keep having the ads presented to them) and racked up 37 clicks. That means that it had a CTR of 0.035 (37/1050) or 3.5%. Pretty darn good, actually.  Now let’s further postulate that these 37 clicks earned you $6.39. That means that each click was worth $0.17 (6.39/37). That’s your average cost-per-click (“Avg CPC”, though it should really be called your value per click, but that’s another story). Many big advertisers like to sell ads on a cost-per-thousand-impressions basis (CPM, with the M standing for “mil”, Latin for thousand). In this scenario this is $6.08 eCPM (follow me here, that’s 6.39/1050*1000).

On my busy AskDaveTaylor.com site, I pay a lot of attention to my advertising performance. Truth be told, though, all I really look at is the CTR and the revenue figures. The CTR tells me how well the ads are performing, while the revenue tells me if I’ll be eating Top Ramen or a cedar-plank salmon filet for dinner.

I hope this all help you make sense of the complicated world of Web and advertising traffic numbers!”

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Dave Taylor has been online for 29 years now, and has been blogging since 2003. In addition to his Ask Dave Taylor tech support blog, Dave also writes film reviews at DaveOnFilm.com and explores parenting issues at AP Parenting.com. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendfeed, etc etc, by starting at DaveTaylorOnline.com

By: Stasys Bielinis

When displaying pay-per-click ads (PPC), the ad targeting can make the key difference between dismal and excellent click through rate. Why should anyone click a flower ad on your gadget website?

Even default keyword suggestions and broad categories like “PC desktops” or “Pets” sometimes are not enough. When a reader is checking out my Dell XPS 1330 review, I want for the ads about Dell XPS 1330 or at least Dell XPS and other gaming computers to appear in in my Chitika eMiniMalls and Chitika RPU boxes. And ads about dogs have no place in my cat grooming blog post.

But short of creating a separate ad code with relevant keywords for each blog post, there’s no way I can do it on my Wordpress blog. Or is there?

Actually there is, it’s pretty easy and if you know how to copy & paste the ad code into your blog template, you can do this too. The key here is this line in Chitika ad unit code:

This is where Chitika servers read the suggested keywords from, match them to their inventory and serve the relevant ads. Just get the relevant keywords for each blog post in here and your ad relevance should increase significantly too.

There are quite a few ways to do that. The easiest one involves getting your blog post headline into the Chitika ad code as a keyword string. You try to use the relevant keywords in your blog post headlines, don’t you?

Then ad this line of code into a place where Chitika keywords go: “< ?php the_title(); ?>“, so the ad code looks like this:

And you are done. Now you have a different post headline with relevant keywords in Chitika ad units, that load with every individual blog post page. And you can still fall back to relevant categories on the main category, archive and blog home pages.

If you want to be more precise and insert the keywords exactly how they should appear, you can do that as well. You just need to know a little PHP and actually write down the keywords after each blog post.

Use any of the tag plugins or tags functionality in Wordpress 2.3 to enter relevant keywords as tags. Or you can have a separate custom field where to enter the keywords. Then you just use the function that outputs the value of these fields as a text string and you get a highly targeted ads again.

This actually worked for me quite well when Chitika Linx was in very early beta and their contextual spider truly sucked. I just switched to the non-contextual mode and copy/pasted to custom field the words from my blog post, to be highlighted as Linx. But I haven’t tried this after recent Linx changes so I’m not sure how that will work today.

-Posted by: Stasys Bielinis, Staska.Net, Unwired View

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Have a good tip? Be featured as our next A Publisher Speaks! Just send your story to karla(at)chitika(dot)com!

Publisher: Richard Schneider

When I first bought the PictureCorrect.com domain name in 2003, I created a Photoshop service website where people could send their photos to be edited for a small fee. Unfortunately, I was unable to find very many interested customers so I tried adding an online gallery of some of the best photos that I have taken. But this still did not bring many visitors to the site.

Almost a year later, I decided to scrap my initial idea and rebuild the site to be a free photography information resource. I thought it might be fun to build a site that conformed to some of my hobbies.

I initially tried to monetize the new site with only Google Adsense which worked well but only with certain sections. Later on, I started adding information on specific products so I signed up with the Amazon affiliate program and others but had very little success with them.

When I first stumbled upon Chitika, I experimented with eMiniMalls on only a couple pages to see how well they performed and I was shocked to see how much more I could earn with Chitika than with the other solutions I had tried. After being a Chitika member for only a few days, I spent hours replacing other ad units with Chitika units. Soon after, my Chitika earnings surpassed my Adsense earnings to be my number one revenue source.

PictureCorrect.com reached a milestone at the end of last year by receiving more than 100,000 unique visitors in one month. This consequently required me to move it from a low budget hosting arrangement to a dedicated server (since my site has high resolution photos, I have burned through over 20 Gigabytes of bandwidth in a single day). My next goal is to keep making the site more and more useful until 200,000 unique visitors come in a single month.

I am very grateful to Chitika for helping me make my hobby into a small business. Also, if Ryan Travis gives you some optimization advice, it is probably in your best interest to give him your attention.

Get the expert optimizations like Richard did with Ryan Travis
Simply post your URL in the optimizations thread on Chitika SPHERE.
Yeah, it’s that easy!

Publisher: Tomaz Mencinger , VacuumWizard.com

Want to know what motivated Tomaz of VacuumWizard.com to start optimizing his revenue? This guest blogger wants to share how he took his highest-paying ads and was able to increase his revenue just by making simple changes in placement. Was it really worth all the effort?

When I first created my Vacuum Cleaner Reviews site in July 2006, I planned on using Google Adsense and the Amazon affiliate program as my main monetization services.

When the site started to receive more than 400 visitors per day, I realized that the Amazon program was not really effective. This was because with Amazon you are paid CPA (per sale) and I had thousands of clicks but only a few sales.

I thought to myself, if only someone would pay per click… ;)

And then I discovered Chitika eMiniMalls! My website was accepted to the program and I started experimenting with the ads immediately.

Chitika outperformed Amazon by at least 5 times! They even came close to my Adsense earnings even though I had all the Chitika ads placed below the fold.

This motivated me to painstakingly ;) replace all the Amazon affiliate links from more than 100 pages of content with Chitika eMiniMalls.

The end result was worth the effort - Chitika ads make my site look better and the earnings have been growing with my traffic.

I have been since then trying to optimize the ads and find other ways to increase the revenue with Chitika ads.

Why this worked for me…
One of the ways to improve the CTR of Chitika (and Adsense) ads is to combine them in a way that complies with the Terms of Service of both programs.

I have found 7 combinations of Chitika and Adsense ads that work really well.

Another way I was able to increase the revenue of my ads was to track which brands of vacuum cleaners pay more per click. That’s quite easy to track with channels. I realized that some of the vacuum brands pay twice as much as the others.

I then rearranged my navigation menu so that the higher paying brands were higher on the menu. You can read more about this in my blog post “How I Increased My Daily Adsense and Chitika Earnings by 20% in 10 Minutes”.

What’s Next…

My plans are to continue growing VacuumWizard.com and plan similar types of websites that have product reviews and can be monetized with Chitika ads.

Perhaps one final tip for all webmasters looking to earn more money online - this is a long term project and it usually takes 9 to 12 months before you start seeing some traffic and revenue. Plan your website with Chitika ads in mind but first focus on creating lots of great content and getting traffic to your website. Once you have that, leave the rest to Chitika and you’ll be very happy to check the numbers in your account!

-By Tomaz

My websites:
VacuumWizard.com
FreedomIdeas.com
Blog:
TennisThoughts.com

How can you be sure you are getting the best optimizations advice? Submit your site for expert review today. Members and non-members are welcome to Chitika SPHERE Optimizations.

Publisher: Tony E., DigitalTechNews.com

DigitalTechNews.com launched in May 2005 with the goal of focusing on the consumer electronics products and technology innovations that make up the digital world we live in.

The blog had really started as a hobby, since I was already constantly reading about the latest in tech and gadgets, a sort of side project that complimented the work I do in multimedia/web/graphic design, and music production”, says Tony E. of DigitalTechNews. “Shortly after launching DigitalTechNews.com, I did some guest blogging on a tech blog for Problogger.net’s Darren Rowse- who I have to acknowledge for all the great blogging tips on his blog. I’ve also done some graphics for, and learned a few tips from GearLive.com Blog Network along the way – shout out to Andru Edwards.

“There are now about 1600 posts on Digital Tech News, so I would suggest that readers have a look at the archives for a good idea of tech and consumer electronics innovations and developments of the past two years or so. With about 15,500 RSS subsribers, DigitalTechNews.com is certainly more than just a hobby these days. I’ve been able to successfully monetize the blog with various Advertising and affiliate programs – Chitika being one of the best performing at the present time.

“After signing up with Chitika about a year ago, I’ve been impressed with the company’s developments, but only recently I’ve seen about a ten-fold increase in earnings thanks to the optimization tips that I got from Chitika’s Ryan Travis. The eMiniMalls and RPU Ads are what’s working best for me, but I’ve also set up some ShopLinc online storefronts that you can check out at www.DigitalTechNews.com

I can’t wait to see what Chitika has up their sleeve for the future. -Tony E.

Ryan Travis helped Tony increase his revenue ten-fold and he can help you, too! He is available LIVE and ready to help Chitika publishers & non-Chitika publishers reach their goals at Chitika SPHERE Optimizations.
Not a Chitika user? You can find out before signing up whether Chitika is a good match for your blogs/websites!

About Chitika

Jason created a Facebook application similiar to Chitika | iBought and has used the Facebook API to his advantage to display Chitika ads on his app: iBaseball.

How I did it….
One of the hardest parts of creating applications for the Facebook platform is how to monetize those apps. Many apps are perfect for advertising so it can be frustrating trying to find a program that is flexible enough to target a wide variety of topics and layouts and still be used on the Facebook platform.

My application iBaseball, is no exception. The app delivers, scores, news, pictures, schedules and standings on all 30 Major League Baseball teams. Each team has it’s own “profile” page, with users setting a favorite team to use that team’s profile as their application home page.

eMiniMalls, ShopCloud$ and MPU on Facebook!

So this app has highly targeted users: everyone is a baseball fan and they are a fan of a certain team, since fans usually buy and shop for team merchandise, I wanted ads with pictures, preferably with multiple products to give users the ability to “window-shop” and since as everyone with passing baseball knowledge knows I can’t show Yankee ads on a Red Sox page or Cub ads on a Cardinal page or vice versa.

Lucky for me I am basically describing a Chitika eMiniMall using the Multi-Product Unit option. After writing a display function to properly feed the different variables to the eMiniMall code, I am able to display specific team products in an ad that is color coded to match the team colors. so users get to browse through a wide variety of team products in a cool way, and the ads blend in perfectly with each page layout. Even if your application isn’t as demanding as iBaseball, the eMiniMalls are the perfect match for any app, since you set the keywords you want to target, you don’t have to worry about the problems contextual ads are currently having “reading” page content.

Even if your app isn’t product based, you can choose products, that you think your users might be interested in, or use information available through the API to display ads of the user’s favorite band, or movie etc. The only limit to using eMiniMalls is your imagination and not what the system can handle.

Got questions for Jason about putting Chitika products on Facebook? Chat with him here!

Expert: Mark, Phones Review

I love life and try to live it to the fullest as much as I can however being so passionate about my blog Phones Review, my personal life seems to have slowed down a bit. I enjoy writing and getting out information that I know my readers love. It’s also nice because these are the same things I am interested in; and this is what I do everyday (7 days a week if possible). Mobile phones are one of my interests, learning about the new models and concepts keep me doing what I do best.

Life & Lucky Number 11
I’ve had many jobs in many different fields and have worked my way from the bottom in my career. I have a business called Marksway Internet Solutions that has been going for one year now. I basically make websites work- it’s also blogging and promoting, but my main expertise is writing on Phones Review and Cheap Laptops. I just hope this carries on for many more years.
One of my hobbies away from work is martial arts which I have been doing for about 11 years & I’ve also been married for 11 years! I wonder if anyone else has a cool statistics fact about them?

About My Blog
Phones Review is about getting information on everything to do with mobile phones, home phones, accessories and much more. Trying to be different than millions of other blogs in this field is very hard indeed but we seem to be making a statement since we are all over the search engines. Not only is it about information, we like to have debates, share information in the forum section and keep you well up to date with the latest news. They are all the top brand names to keep you busy and much more.

The ups and downs of blogging
Blogging is a pain staking business to be a part of. You really do need patience, time and of course passion, if you do not, then you need not bother starting because it can take over your life.

Blogging is about information, getting the information out in a way that readers will be interested in, searching for the latest news before millions of other blogs and keep updating stories that you have already covered; but that is not the end of it, you need to have a nice design that people will like, an angle that is different to other blogs and most importantly, you have to try to answer your readers comments as quick as possible.

There is also marketing, promoting and partnerships with other top ranked blogs. There is so much more to cover but I will save this for another edition of Phones Review, Life & Business. It is very much hard work but it is worth it because if readers are happy, and then so am I.

A little something about me:
Writing has been my passion since I was about 7 years old; it’s the only thing I do that makes me lose track of time while simultaneously making me feel completely present. Before pocketables my hobbies and other interests were writing and gadgets. But now that writing and gadgets are what I devote most of my waking hours to, I’d have to go with karaoke and online shopping. I also have a random obsession with snowflakes, marshmallows, and pillows.

Let’s take it back:
Pocketables actually began (under a different name) as a writing outlet for me. One afternoon last summer, I signed up for a blogging account to keep an online diary, just a little journal where I could write about whatever was on my mind. Purely by coincidence, what was on my mind at the time was the Sony Vaio UX180P (gadgets rank right below writing for me). So I wrote about it and changed the name of the site about ten times (I didn’t get my domain until September, three months later) until finally settling on “pocketables.”

Hmm in 10 years…
My husband and I are celebrating our 1-year anniversary next week, so in 10 years I hope to see us with children, living in a bigger place, traveling often, and still being grateful for the life we’ve built together. On a personal level, I just hope to still be writing regularly. I’ve been writing short stories, novellas, plays, and non-fiction since elementary school, so I’d love to be doing something professional along those lines someday.

Behind my passion for blogging:
Blogging involves so much more than I could have ever imagined, and I haven’t even scratched the surface in learning about the industry. I try not to focus too much on all of that though, because I don’t want to lose sight of why I started pocketables in the first place. I haven’t encountered many struggles in my blogging career so far, at least none that stand out in particular, but I think a common misconception among non-bloggers is that blogging is really easy. It’s not. I’ve never worked so hard in my life, but I’ve also never been this happy. So it’s a ton of work, but it doesn’t feel like it. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.