How Not To Destroy Your Online Business: The Chitika Example

How Not To Destroy Your Online Business Instantly: The Chitika Example

by Dan Amato

Chitika eMiniMalls burst onto the online scene and dominated it quickly. They used a unique advertising display that allowed websites to place products on their site easily and get paid for people who clicked through. The Internet was on fire with website owners touting how much money they were making. They seemed to get glowing reviews everywhere and other than a few complaints on customer service they were looked very highly upon.

Chitika launched their eMiniMalls in October, 2005 and quickly displaced other forms of advertising on many a website. Some website owners even going as far as removing Google AdSense and other pay per click advertising forms from their websites in favor of Chitika. Running on a 30 day pay schedule, those who used the advertising in October would see their first revenue checks coming around the First of December, 2005 at the latest.

Days before the revenue checks were to be cut, Chitika announced that it was going to do an audit of clicks and that some publishers could see their revenue down a bit from what had been reported throughout the month. On December 1 Chitika implemented the auditing and the results were a bombshell that is bound to destroy the company. There was a firestorm around the Internet of some publisher's revenue being cut in the audit by as much as 90%.

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"The Nervousness In Hiring Personnel"

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