Chitika Launches Domain Parking Program
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Company lets domain owners create stores for each of their domains.
Online advertising company Chitika, which has long been an alternative to Google Adsense, has launched a program for domain parking. This is good news for domain owners who have seen parking revenues drop due to changes at ad providers.
The Chitika program essentially lets you create an on-the-fly “store” at your domain using the company’s ShopLinc technology. You get paid based on clicks, but realize what is happening here: Chitika is making money when someone clicks and actually buys something. So in the long run your domains must convert for you to add value. This is where domain parking is heading in general. It will move from pay-per-click to pay-per-action, such as generating a lead or sale.
Here’s what your parked domains look like at Chitika:
Chitika is a good option if you have a consumer-focused domain name. For example, I’m going to try the service out with my domain PosterNook.com.
Look for other parking services like this to pop up. I also expect vertical (i.e. specific topic) domain parking companies to open soon.
Further Reading:
- Yahoo Shutting Down Publisher Network, Recommends Chitika
- Moniker Unveils Paid Parking Program
- Update on TrafficClub domain parking program
Tags: chitika, Domain Parking
If you decide to try the servide out, I’d appreciate you using my link
-Andrew
The problem with the pay-per-action is how are we going to really know if there are 10 sales or 5 sales. I have done these type of pay-per-action and there are good companies and bad companies out there that will only report a smaller amount of sales and pocket the rest.
This has happen to me! So I am not sure how many domainers will go the pay-per-action way.
@ Henry – I suppose you could say the same thing about PPC, right?
I wrote a blog (http://emil.king.net/2008/03/chitika-for-domains.html) to test this service using some of my domain names e.g. http://www.buy.nu, http://www.faircomputer.com, etc.
I will report in 30 days after.
Cheers,
Em
Thanks Emil. It looks like you’re forwarding your domains to the service? I set up PosterNook.com yesterday and used their nameservers and it’s not resolving.
Hi Andrew,
It is not forwarding, try www record CNAME to parking.chitika.net
This should do the trick.
Cheers,
emil
Understand it is still Beta – But, sites checked using this program seem to be Very Slow Loading. Surfers will Not wait for slow load times.
Also, it seems that no matter what Type of store it is, the left nav and links only seem to be computer related.
For example, a clothing/fashion store with “computer related” navigation. Search functions does not target related products very well.
IF these things are fixed, this program has the potential to draw domainers away from standard parking in droves (depending on earnings of course)!
Also notice some sites not loading unless you enter the www. in front of the domain.
Maybe high volume, untargeted traffic might work better with this model as opposed to PPC. But outside this, I really don’t see it working as it stands currently. Surfers are more adept these days and having all the affiliate links on the right side to every different type of retailer and all the computer links on the left side does not make for high conversion ratios. It reminds me of experimental affiliate pages I tried in 1997 and 1998 that did not work.
The “everything to everybody” approach does not make many sales, so I’m actually expecting Chitika to pay out really, really low to make sure they cover costs and make some money on this.
This said, all this can be improved quite easily if they just do a little work on it. And, kudos to them for at least providing an alternative to what domainers have currently, and at the right time I might add.
All,
Thanks for taking time to take a look at our service! Please let me know if I can be of service in helping you to get set up. Also, as you have any “wish list” items for functionality, please share those as well.
Thanks again.
jeff at chitika dot com
Jeff,
I couple questions/comments:
1. Domains on your nameservers appear to only resolve when you type www. before them. For example, Posternook.com doesn’t resolve but http://www.posternook.com does. Much of direct navigation traffic doesn’t include the www.
2. As one of the comments above suggests, I’d like to see the categories on the left side related to the high level category of the domain.
What I did, www CNAME to their parking domain. Then redirect @ and * record to http://www.buy.nu
Cheers.
Hey everyone Karla from Chitika here, I just wanted to clear up confusion (if any) about the Chitika Domain Stores. They are CPC not CPA- you do not have to have purchase conversions to earn revenue, you are paid on the clicks.
Also @ Andrew I am not having the same issue when typing in Posternook.com in my browser as apposed to http://www.posternook.com BUT I will have an engineer look into it and see if this is happening on occasion for an unknown reason.
And also customizing sections of the domain page like which categories shown IS one of the features coming very soon for domains along with some others, you can read more about it here: http://chitika.com/blog/2008/03/28/domains-craze-your-questions-answered/
-Karla Escolas, Chitika Inc.
Sounds and looks very good. I like the pages. Your posternook is pretty clean as well. I might try it out.
Are they still doing domain parking? For the life of me I cannot find anything on their website about it.
this information doesn’t update, they still doing parking service?