I keep running into blogs claiming that Chitika is better than Adsense, that as soon as someone switched from Google Adsense to Chitika, their earnings doubled or tripled or some other such unsubstantiated claim.

What is important to note in all these claims is that as of today, September 22nd, 2009, Chitika offers referrers 10% of their referrals ad revenue for 15 months, while Adsense offers absolutely nothing, nada, zip, for referrals.  What does that mean to you trying to be an educated Publisher looking for an Ad network to use on your site? Be skeptical of claims made by people who earn a referral fee.  We should decide for oneself if Chitika is better or worse than Adsense by TESTING rather than taking some possibly biased webmaster’s opinion.

We’ve tried Chitika on a couple of pages on a site or two and so far have not been particularly impressed with the results, especially compared to Adsense.  I can certainly see sites that have been Smart Priced by Adsense and getting in the $0.01 to $0.03 a click range doing better with Chitika, but if you are getting real Adsense clicks, I can not see Chitika beating Google in a head to head contest.
So we decided to do a little experiment.  We’re taking one of our niche sites that deals in consumer products that receive traffic almost exclusively from search engines, with close to 92% of the traffic coming from search queries and the rest from direct links and returning visitors.  Consumer type products is what many say Chitika is best at and seemed like a better choice than any of our other sites.
We will run one month of Chitika Premium Ads starting yesterday September 21st, two of their largest ad blocks per page, one at the top of each post right below the title bar and one at the bottom of each post, both for a full week.  Then we switch to Adsense with two of their largest Text Block ads.   The product on the site aren’t particularly seasonal, but the Christmas rush skews everything, so running one week of Chitika from September 21-September 27 then Adsense from September 28-October 4 then switching back again a couple of times running up to the week before Thanksgiving should be fairly equal.  Same exact content, about 160 different articles pulling in around 4000 unique visitors for about 9000 page views per month.  The content will continue to grow, but switching weeks will make sure it stays close to even.  I don’t know enough about statistics to know if that will be a statistically significant sample, but it’s certainly better than nothing.
As I don’t think either Chitika or Adsense particularly likes anyone giving exact numbers from either of their programs, we’ll report the results in respect to each other as a ratio.  For every $10 made with Chitika we earned $x with Adsense.
Yeah yeah, we could always use BOTH Chitika and Adsense side by side, but honestly there is a fine line between having a useful site with ads and one that is painfully over monetized.  If Adsense is head and shoulders above Chitika or vice versa, you’d be better off maximize your exposure on the winner, right?
Stay Tuned!

The Importance of Forex Trading Education

If you want to succeed in any endeavor, you need to have persistence and dedication. Even your daily life requires it because if you're the type of person who is quite lazy and wants to goof around, you'll attain nothing of importance in your life.

Ever since you were a little kid, you were already taught with the value of good education. From your nursery days, until you finally graduate in college, you have dedicated many years to get a good education. But it doesn’t end there.

Each time you encounter a new endeavor, activity, or thing, the first to come into your mind is to learn about that particular thing or activity. So you see, no matter what we do, education continues. And this is especially true with forex trading.

Statistics have shown that over 94% professional traders lose a lot of money every day in forex trading alone. But don’t be discouraged; in fact why not use that piece of information to strive hard to get a forex trading education.

The financial market changes by the minute, or even by the second. Who knows which currencies are a good buy and which aren’t. Most traders, specially the starters, believe that they can predict what is about to happen in forex trading. But you see there is more to predicting the market; you need to educate yourself still.

First things first, you must have a forex trading system which contains the key elements, namely: money management, risk, and execution. If you have a well developed system, which gives a lot of weight to money and risk management, over time you can actually carry on draw downs while expecting consistent returns.

Forex trading is not just about buying low currencies and then selling them when the price is high. Profitable traders can teach you more than just discipline, because you also need to learn about detachment. Ask a professional trader to show and guide you how it is done.

You must have the proper mindset in order to be a successful forex trader. To achieve this, your capital should have a positive return. It is not all about profits especially when you're just a beginner. You should first determine if you have a reasonable return of your capital.

Most successful forex traders have undergone some sort of education. Since forex trading is a high risk endeavor, it is not wise to instantly jump into the trade.

If you purely rely on experience and instinct, you may not likely succeed in forex trading. But if you have undergone a forex trading education, you are more capable to handle demands and the stress that comes along with the trade.

Through forex education, you can learn all about the market mechanics, reading the forex chart, how software works, how it is closed, the right time to bid, and many more. It is the best possible route to take before plunging into forex trading.

The FX market is volatile, and you can understand the situation better if you know how to read charts. It will be easier for you to understand the different reasons behind these shifts, and can greatly help in minimizing the risks that you are going to undertake.

The very first things that you'll learn in forex trading education are the basics. It includes margin concepts, order types, rollovers, bids, and leveraging. Aside from that, you can also learn about fundamental and technical analysis. And lastly, you should learn about trading psychology which can teach you about patience, discipline, and commitment.

It is also good if you can learn about the financial market's history. And knowing the past mistakes made by other traders will teach us how to avoid such circumstances. You can get a forex education online or in a traditional class.

Having a forex education is an added advantage compared to those who haven’t had any. This is especially helpful for starters, and even for those who have been in trading for some time.

Most professional traders highly recommend some form of forex education. With a little background and knowledge about the trade, it is a sure fire way to succeed in this line of trade. Instead of making wild guesses, why not take a forex education class, and make educated decisions when doing the actual trade.