When the Chitika | Related Product Unit (RPU) launched it was available only to select publishers for testing, during which time we received tons of great feedback on how effective this unit is for publishers. Now we are happy to say that we are ready to open up the flood gates and now our entire network has access to this unit. (Yes! This means YOU). The RPU is a simple, non-intrusive text link format that integrates right in to your content.

The RPU has instantly become one of the most successful ad units across our network. Our users experienced overall revenue increases and enjoyed its complete customization features. Publishers love this ad unit because it doesn’t “look” like an ad. Here’s an example:

Use the RPU to:

• Monetize space which has traditionally gone un-monetized
• Provide your users with a logical “next place to click”
• Keep your readers happy - the RPU is completely non-intrusive

Where RPU works
The RPU is specially designed to be placed right at the end of your blog post, review, or article. This works well because once your user has read an article, they will be looking for the next place to click. The Related Product Unit provides this for them without being invasive (it sits nicely next to, or above your “Related Articles” section - thus not disrupting the user-experience).

“While laser quality targeting is almost always a good thing, sometimes people might want to learn about similar products to the one they have been researching to make sure they are making an informed purchase. The Chitika RPU allows me to show information about other products the customer might want to research before making a purchasing decision. RPU makes me more money, and offers my readers more choices.”
-Tim Flight, GPSReview.net

Here are five ways the RPU can make you more money!

If you are a Chitika publisher, when you login, you will see your “RPU Code” tab. Here you can choose your RPU unit size, colors, product category, set channel tracking and grab your code.

If you are not yet a Chitika publisher you can sign up and also have access to all our interactive CPC ad units!

See what others are saying in the RPU Forum Discussions

Similar to the Nintendo Wii being 2007’s most-wanted item, according to your poll votes, the Chitika | Linx was this year’s most popular CPC ad unit for our publishers.

Linx is an in-text ad unit that automatically identifies key products/keywords on your page to hyperlink (double underline) to interactive paid (CPC-based) product listings. Linx stole the show this shopping season for 3 reasons:

1. Incremental revenue- Earn more revenue without taking up more space.
2. Keyword driven- You choose the ads so it will be more effective.
3. Linx has the the looks- A makeover for the ad unit and it’s code panel made setup more manageable and Linx more attractive on your pages. Love at first sight? Linx before & after.

Last year our RPU ad unit was a huge success story and continues to be. I wonder what it will be next year, we are always up to something ;)

Product ideas/requests? Jump into our product forum discussions.

(Read: In Your Pocket!!!)

Chitika’s new stylish in-text ad unit Linx was released to the entire Chitika publisher network just one month ago. Many of our members took the code right away to test how Linx compared to their other in-text ad’s and were very happy with the results.

Linx did quite well for Al Carlton over at Self Made Minds. He put together a nice comparison of the different in-text ad networks. See his comparison chart here.

Linx is compatible with Adsense, it’s fast and it will not slow your page down.

“With many in-text ads, the browser itself has to look around for the keyword. With our system— if you use HTML classes —our servers tell the client exactly where the keyword is on the page (or at least as close as it can).”
-Mike Axiak, Chitika engineer. You can read his full post about Linx updates here.

Got Linx?

The only reason I own the digital camera I have now is because my brother insisted is was worth what he paid for it. He showed me that the initial expense of the camera would turn out to be less than what I’d spend developing disposables in a year. And not to mention the quality far surpassed a camera housed by cardboard.

Well, it may be easy to sway someone from using a disposable camera to using a nice digital but the point is I wouldn’t have known the benefits of making the switch if someone didn’t share with me their personal experience about it.

Taking up the challenge to provide product reviews can be done in two ways. One is to earn cash from paid-to-review websites like Epinions and “Videopinions” on ExpoTv.com. The other is to start your own product review website or blog like Digital Photography Blog and I4U News and use CPC services like Chitika to help you earn revenue from it.

As a Chitika member you automatically receive your own link to your custom store called a ShopLinc, this store can be linked from a page on your website or blog where you can display products related to the products you review.

The great thing about this store is you don’t need to be a product review guru, you can choose to display your store by itself (without your own reviews) and still earn CPC revenue from it. All you have to do is grab your custom store and promote it.

Let’s say you do have product reviews, where are they displayed in your ShopLinc? If you look to the right hand column of this example ShopLinc, you will see a section labeled “Research from the Expert”. This is where this blogger’s own product reviews are displayed. The product reviews in that column go hand-in-hand with the Chitika product images within the rest of the ShopLinc which earn you CPC revenue when clicked on.

Getting started is simple & you could be earning revenue within minutes. Sign up now and maybe your reviews will help guide someone the way my brother was able to guide me!

Linx is out! I know you all know this already, but I still don’t believe it. Three weeks and over 300 publishers later, there are still many improvements that are being pushed out, and many really cool changes that will come down in the not-so-distant future. Here are some of the improvements that have come out in the past week or so:

• Default include classes: No more need to specify, unless you really want to.
• Better keyword targeting: This will be improved in the future as Linx figures out how keywords performed.
• Increased ad pool so that more keyword can have higher-quality ads.

“Improved relevancy? You be the judge. (Source)“

Each of these have had tremendous impacts on the performance of Linx, and there is a nontrivial list of things to keep working us busy and the product performing even better.

Linx has a lot of really cool features to it, but most (if not all) people probably don’t know what the coolest ones are. You might have noticed, but we designed Linx to be *fast*. What does that mean? With many in-text ads, the browser itself has to look around for the keyword. With our system— if you use HTML classes —our servers tell the client exactly where the keyword is on the page (or at least as close as it can).

Our servers work very hard to download your pages and give the right information to your browser via JavaScript to display ads. When a person puts their mouse cursor over a keyword, the ads will come up almost instantaneously.

The main price to pay for this is that we need to work extra hard to ensure that all the pages in the world can be understood by our server. We have been in the process of working through all pages that call us. If you happened to try Linx and saw no keywords highlight, trust us— we know, and are working to fix it. (You may even get an email saying that we personally ensured your site works.)

That’s it for now. If you have any more comments or suggestions for Linx, please let us know! We are definitely open to change things to fit everyone’s needs.

About Chitika | Linx

eMiniMalls

More than just an ad on your pages, eMiniMalls provide helpful information including a product image and multiple merchant purchasing sources. Most importantly you can control what products are shown in your eMiniMalls, like this seasons hot holiday shopping items. Putting this unit on your page is easy- just paste a few lines of code. Apply Now!.

Related Product Unit (RPU)

The RPU is a close second to eMiniMalls when it comes to earning you revenue. Publishers love this ad unit because it doesn’t “look” like an ad, and it can be completely customized.

ShopLinc

ShopLinc is your own personalized storefront - perfect for the holiday shopping season. If you’re a Chitika user, your ShopLinc store has already been created for you; just login and click the “ShopLinc” tab.

ShopCloud

Use the ShopCloud to link to your favorite holiday shopping products or use one of our 44 categories to display products.

Linx has recently undergone an image/code panel makeover for the better according to our happy publishers. And yes, the new Linx can be used along with Google Adsense on your pages.

Owna

Now Playing!

Chitika | Owna

You can display hot products on your pages in one of 5 attractive skins (And don’t forget to add your own tag line!). Login and click the “Owna” tab if you’re a Chitika user. You don’t have to be a publisher to show this off on your site, but you will need to be a Chitika member to earn revenue from it, so sign up now!

The Chitika | RPU (Related Product Unit), has proven to be one of the most profitable ad units among our publishers. Users like Luigi, owner of I4U.com have seen an overall ad revenue increase after using the RPU & JErm of the TechFresh.network actually doubled his revenue over night!

What makes the RPU so great?
By customizing the css you can make the RPU match the exact look and feel of your website. This makes it look less like an ad and brings value to your website providing helpful information & resources about the products you are selling or reviewing.

Here are 3 RPU units customized to match 3 different websites:

1.

2.

3.

All three of these RPU units were customized to cater to the design of the website they’re on. The success our publishers get with the RPU has alot to do with their ability to change the look of it because not every style will look good on every website.

Customize your RPU:

More about RPU/Publisher Requirements
RPU Discussion Forum

Yesterday the newly redesigned
Chitika | Linx ad unit was released to the Chitika publisher network. Linx first launched in May of this year and was released only to a select group of publishers for testing. Now after some upgrades in design and function, all Chitika users can grab this cool PPC unit.

So now everyone wants to know- is the new Chitika | Linx compatible with Google Adsense?

The answer is yes, you can use it with Google Adsense. Based on the changes in the terms of service of Google (in the last few months), we believe this is 100% compatible.

Get Linx
Linx has a neat preview tool that shows how Linx will look on your blog right within the code panel. Login, click the “Linx Code” tab, enter your blog URL and click Preview!

The engineers at Chitika have been hard at work making some cool changes to one of our ad products: Chitika | Linx. In addition to making appearance changes to the ad unit, they gave the code panel a pretty nice face lift.

Once I heard this, I jumped at the chance to be the first one to test it out to make sure it is usable for everyone. I went in and played around with the code on a test blog of mine and came up with these issues right away:

1. It was completely unclear how Linx was going to even look on my blog and I wanted to know before pasting in the code.
2. There needed to be different codes for different types of blogging platforms like: WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.

A day later, the issues were fixed. Now the code for each blogging platform is already generated for you -just copy it! There’s also a cool preview tool that shows you exactly how Linx will look on your blog. All you have to do is type in your blog URL and a live preview appears like magic right in the code panel, you have to try it out :)

So how has the appearance of Linx improved?

What do you think? You can check it out live because Chitika | Linx is now open to all users! Log in, click the “Linx code” tab and type in your blog URL to see how it will look :)

Is Linx missing something? If you tell me I may be able to get the engineers to add new features to it! Comments are open!

From the mind of a Chitika engineer…

A LOT has been happening in the past week. I am excited to say there will be many improvements coming down the pipeline. One interesting project is that of web capture.

There are times when we want to expand our inventory for some of our ad units like eMiniMalls to ads that do not come with images. We cannot just slap those new ads on without images because this will be an eye sore on your pages.

There are two solutions to this problem: (1) find an image for a similar product, or (2) illustrate where the user is about to go. The first is done some times, and sometimes does fairly well. Other times, we just don’t have an image, period.

So now we can illustrate where the user goes. How do we do this? Well, if you are like me and you have browsed the internet enough, you already know the answer— take a picture of the web site they are about to go. This has already been done, by countless people, so it’s not that exciting. Still, though, it is fun taking your own approaches to designing a system to take images for people.

In designing this system, there are a few rules that come to mind: