So, here is my situation - I'm not a massive money spinner when it comes to contextual advertising... I'm having it a little play with adsense and chitika on http://www.----.co.uk - and I'd love to hear some suggestions.

I've only got chitika running on one page so far.
http://www.----.co.uk/2005/09/24/----------/
That page gets hardly any traffic...

I have no idea what to write about on this site.
It ranks *Incredibly well* on Google for pretty much what I want (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=--------, for example) - I just need to generate traffic on there that will fit into the site, and also be suitable for making some cash out of chitika.

It's really great offering this help - if you need anything in return, just ask :)

Thanks, O

We replied:

Thanks for your interest and for taking the time to fill the form on our site.

1. Great site! And very current with all the news in your industry (which I follow closely). Your typical audience is very web savvy. It's trickier persuading webmasters/SEOs to click than it is with other user groups. Also, the industry news as listed on your site doesn't lend itself well to Chitika type of contextual ads. As the topics on the page can vary from Craigslist to choosing images, Adsense is better placed to serve contextual ads (as Google's Mediabot is pretty hot on picking up new content and therefore attracting ads relevant to it).

2. You may have seen our blog related tips that allow you to use the blog title as the targeting text for Chitika ads. That may be worth trying if you do want to do some A/B rotation testing between Adsense and Chitika - I believe a small 160x160 or 180x150 floated to the left or right of each article would work well.

3. If you do want to use Chitika on this site you could experiment with the contextual to try it out but another option would be to choose an item/keyword/ad from the Chitika database that is likely to have "general" appeal to your entire audience. Geeky products ...technology / gizmos... tend to get clicks by webmasters even if they're not looking to purchase (Unlike Adsense, Chitika doesn't have Smartpricing - so conversion is not an issue with Chitika at this point).

4. For the page you currently have Chitika on - the Dreamweaver ad you've got is quite a high paying one (no, I didn't click on it :-)) but it's location below two Google ads and one Amazon may not get it many clicks. It's worth finding out which is the highest paying program (Not just EPC... but eCPM) and putting their ad in the most prominent position.

5. The location where you have an Amazon + adjoining Google ad is prime territory and, I believe, a Chitika ad in that spot will get you more clicks per thousand impressions. Quite simply because of its interactivity - when people casually run their mouse over the ad they see movement and instinctively stop for a second look. In effect you're getting a second chance to convince them to click.

6. That interactivity is something that is sometimes underestimated. Your 336x160 Chitika ad has only one tab and therefore no movement even when I mouseover. It's as good as sticking a PriceGrabber kind of static ad on there. I'd modify the Chitika code to allow searches - remove the line that says ch_nosearch = 1; - it is fully compatible with Adsense TOS.

7. Chitika is not brilliant for the subject of "books" (your books page: http://www.----.co.uk/books/). But, keep an eye out, that should change shortly - they've got some plans in that direction.

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