By Danny Wirken

Company Overview: Chitika is a comparatively new company that offers an affiliate program for its interactive product merchandising service, the eMiniMalls. With eMiniMalls’ slick JavaScript codes, you can simply embed product-related reviews, shopping links, images and more into your website. From the total sale revenues generated by your website, Chitika is currently paying 60% on a pay-per-click basis. This is relatively high in the internet community making eMiniMalls a wise choice for webmasters’ extra income opportunity and a practical and convenient advertisement program for web surfers, customers, and suppliers.

Program Details: What makes Chitika’s eMiniMalls a hit since it was launched middle of 2005, two years after its founding? Affiliate members’ feedback on ease of use, easy setup, and revenue potential are strong come ons for this e-business. Chitika, meaning “in a snap” in a South Indian language, is indeed advertising, shopping, and earning in a snap!

The eMiniMalls presents a shopping window that is informative, interactive, and revolutionary… a delightfully new experience that web users can explore without having to leave the website on which these ads are placed. For webmasters, this is a great way to keep your visitors’ attention while increasing your earning chances as you promote products online. This is at no cost to you – no setup fees, hosting, or membership fees at all.

The default setting of eMiniMalls employs manual targeting of products to your pages, letting you promote products that are related to your website. To illustrate: for each webpage, you can enter a keyword or series of keywords that match the products you intend to promote. From these keywords, Chitika will show the best matches. You can just select one product to promote or rotate various products.

This manual targeting is in compliance with the Terms and Conditions for Google’s Adsense, making eMiniMalls a terrific complement. For those who are not running Adsense, do not fret. eMiniMalls offers a contextual matching option, which you can activate by contacting them once you get approved as an affiliate member. If you’re already a member of other affiliate programs, why not increase your earning potentials by becoming an eMiniMalls affiliate as well? An online application is readily available.

As the name implies, eMiniMalls allows you to embed a small product shopping area on any page of your website – no sweat. Once you have your Java code, you can then place it to its desired location in your webpage. Then you can go on with your usual business and wait for these revenues as visitors of your webpage click on eMiniMalls products. For you, this also means earnings in a snap.

Plus, eMiniMalls can be customized to your website’s appearance. Webmasters are presented with a variety of banner sizes, shapes, and colors to choose from. By inputting keywords, you can program what to advertise so that it matches your website content.

The best feature of eMiniMalls is that surfers do not need to leave the webpage they are browsing in order to explore the product being advertised. This highly remarkable feature is a warm welcome for both webmasters and web users.

The eMiniMall includes a photo of the product plus rollover tabs pertaining to the product’s brief descriptions, links to Best Deals, and a search capability. You can even customize these rollover tabs like, for instance, if you want the Best Deals tab to come in first, or if you want to remove the search button.

The use of ad photos is an effective marketing tool that will be to your advantage. Ad photos have been proven to significantly augment selling potential, which in turn means increase in your revenue potential as well. Users can click on any of these tabs – read product descriptions, view reviews, probably purchase on one of the Best Deals links – right in your web page.

For webmasters, this interactive feature that is distinctively eMiniMalls means you retain your visitors’ attention to your website. They do not need to leave you website even as they browse through the various product information neatly presented and wonderfully blended to your website’s look and feel. Because you dictate what to advertise on your website using your chosen keywords, you can synergize these product ads to your website’s contents.

Using pay-per-click basis, you earn revenue when your visitors click on the links in the Best Deals section, or on the product itself. At present, Chitika pays 60% of total revenues generated by an affiliate’s website at the start of the month for the previous months’ clicks. Monthly payouts should be a minimum of $1 for PayPal and $50 if check. Click values are reported to be in the value between $0.20 and $0.50 although there are cases where it is worth $1.00. In general, monthly earnings are in the $4 to $60 range. All payments are made in US dollars and PayPal or check options are provided in the “Edit Your Information” in your affiliate page.

Revenue reports are available but for the moment, are basic that can and should certainly be improved upon in the future. However since these are updated daily although unaudited, they are satisfactory for most needs. Fully audited numbers are updated and become available at the end of the month during the pay cycle. You can access these reports using your login affiliate page.

Visitor Feedback: Users comment positively on Chitika’s eMiniMalls because of what its revolutionary and interactive internet shopping experience can offer. Very slick.

For one, it feels great to have the convenience of window-shopping (and even the actual e-shopping itself) without having to open so many other windows. The proliferation of distracting pop-up windows has somehow become repulsive to most e-shoppers.

With eMiniMalls, you can learn about a product’s reviews, best deals, and other important information right in the web page you are browsing. It’s like taking a commercial break but staying tuned to the same channel. No need to open another window. No chance of losing track of the very purpose of your internet use.

Plus, here’s a big plus, the ad being advertised is related to the contents of the website you are browsing. An online contextual advertisement indeed!

Now, wouldn’t it be nice to see products that appeal to your interests? Thanks to Chitika’s target-specific advertisement program. If you’re pouring over articles on the latest audio gadgets, how about seeing the latest audio products being advertised right on that same page? Internet advertising has never been this good, timely, and convenient.