Chitika Tips: Random Product Item
In previous Chitika tip, I told you how to hide the Chitika eMiniMalls ads’ “Search” tab. Here I share another Chitika tip with you — “random product for Chitika ads”.
Background
Since my website has a rather broad topic, it is difficult for me to choose few keywords for Chitika ads. I tried to list down the keywords, at the end, I got a whole page of keywords! Also, I cannot use Chitika contextual function because I do not want to against Adsense TOS. Therefore, let Chitika randomly select ANY product ads may sound good to me.
Bonus tip: I found that using category keyword like “apple” will always return the same result. Therefore, Chitika support team advice us to enter exactly the product name as Chitika ads keyword. Get the product name from Shopping.com.
The codes
Get the default code from Chitika code generator. Then add the following lines of code into it.
ch_non_contextual = 1;
ch_query = "";
“ch_non_contextual” set the Chitika ads as non contextual ads (required to conform Adsense TOS). Blank “ch_query” will result a random ads be selected. That’s it. Now your Chitika ads rotate different ads for every visit but it is non contextual.
My two cents
First of all, I am not sure if Chitika allow this or not. It is allowed by Chitika.
Secondly, if your website is very topic focus. Do not use this trick. You are adviced to go to Shopping.com and copy paste the product names as your Chitika keywords. (here is the instructions).
In my opinion, if you select a category keyword, the ads should randomly rotate the products under the category. The non-contextual ads now needs to have a very specified keyword to display the product, else it will only return the most popular product in the category (please correct me if I am wrong on this).
Sign up Chitika* and start earning money from your website. Make sure you also check out my other useful Chitika tips & tricks.
I think you should write to Chitika before using this technique, you don’t wanna get banned by AdSense right?
I got very confused ler. I followed the code from Darren (which link I took from Kah Soon’s site). Then, I enter keywords like food, chocolate (I got chocolate condoms ads!), electronics etc and the ads are working.
Please tell me this is not against Adsense, right?
If we specifiy product name exactly, wouldn’t that make our choices even smaller? Say you want TV. Just put television instead of Sony TV, isn’t it?
Hope you can clarify this so that we no need to write individually to Adsense and Chitika.
Yes, I got reply from Chitika already. They do not say “no”.
lilian: yes, putting keywords does not against Adsense TOS.
From my testing, if I put broad keyword like “television”, I always get the same product in chitika ad.
I also get the same ads if you put just one term. So that means you have to put a lot of terms to make them rotate. :-)
I did try this before. Once i put Super Mario, it comes up Super Mario Xbox Games, after a while it changes into Super Mario plush toy.
perhaps i should give chitika a try since you mentioned it is good for blog with low traffic… and my blog sure very low traffic one.
lcf, what is the first step to do then if i want to sign up for it? or can you recommend any other ads for low traffic sites?
i hope chitika is not like amazon where we get paid only when the person buys the products.
Lucia – You should try a popular product like ipod nano, or some other hot product people want. Chitika is pay per click, not commission based like Amazon. Good luck.
Good information LCF !
plugin to put chitika on you WP
here