Marketing Defined

The Chitika fraudsters and opportunists have quickly put up their *Splogs* on the w.w.w. going for maximum returns by playing on the uninitiated

For starters there is now a Chitika.org who at first glance appear to be the original and reputable Chitika.com

You can read all about the unsuspecting webmaster who unwittingly gave the fraudsters a 10% affiliate referral for 12 months by signing up through the wrong Chitika.org !

Scroll down to the comments once you click on the “unsuspecting webmaster” URL, to find out how red faced this webmaster must be.

Then read on for the opportunists as I see them.. those who think of nothing more than lining their pockets only, for the short term.

There is now the eminimalls.org offering the “Free Chitika eMiniMalls Tool” to help you earn the most revenue from Chitika. Whatever!

Their claim for the “Chitika keyphrase tool” they have engineered is - “this tool allows you to peek at which ads from Chitika eMiniMalls may be displayed on your site” (not unlike what you would do on Chitika’s home page for “nothing”, to gauge if your products/keyphrases return a result).

Naturally, every inadvertent click on the URL’s in the only Chitika Ad block offered as their “Chitika keyphrase tool”, will earn the opportunists another “valid” or “paid” click through. I wonder if such websites comply with Chitika’s TOS.

Then there’s chitikatips.com and chitika.ca and so on, whose one page “redirect” web sites exist for no other purpose than short-term gain; to earn them an affiliate referral!

Update: chitikatips.com now appears to be a website with real tips for Chitika users, and I offer them my apologies.

I wonder what kind of customer service you will get from the other “opportunists” if you write in asking for help in setting up your Chitika eMiniMalls.

Coincidentally I wrote to one of these “opportunists” (I believe they are a husband and wife team) who have been in the SEO field for a long many years, asking for clarification on a concern via a forum, and to date they have not bothered to answer.. I think you get the point.

The web is full of such opportunists.. who seriously need to look up the meaning of “ethics” in the Dictionary. The current epidemic of Splogs and “short-term” one page websites, currently corrupting the efforts of genuine webmasters will only be stopped if we do a mass boycott of such garbage.

On the other hand, take people like Darren Rowse , Robin Good or Rok Hrastnik whose websites I don’t even need to highlight here… write to one of them, and as succesful as they are, I guarantee you will have a “human” and helpful response to your email.. in a relatively short period of time.

Earning “credibility” and long-term survival on the w.w.w. will only come from a genuine desire to educate, heed and meet the needs of your web site audience by serving up unique, rich and relevant content and offering a professional level of customer service (ie. a relevant reply in under 24 hours). A concept which obviously escapes some of these opportunists.

I’ll save you the time and money. Here’s a thorough review on how to apply and use Chitika (yep! the real mob) eMiniMalls with comprehensive “free” guidance on:

• correct code and hacks
• how to find keyphrases directly from Chitika
• optimizing and placement tips
• available Wordpress and Movable Type plug-ins to effortlessly insert Chitika eMiniMalls in your web pages

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