Chitika Oh Chitika

On 10 April 2007 I tried to apply for Chitika eMiniMalls just to try out my luck even though my number of visitors is much lower back then. I received a reply which I totally understand and accepted:

In an effort to bring value to our publishers, we carefully consider each submission. During our review process we have determined that Chitika | eMiniMalls might not be a good match for your website.

On 27 June 2008 I received an email from Chitika:

Hi Ady,

Great news! There have been a lot of changes over at Chitika recently – so although our ads were not a good match for your website in the past, we believe that we may be a much better fit for you now. Why? Because the Chitika network now serves Premium ads for ALL types of site content like: Finance, Health, Travel, Family, & more. (Previously we focused mainly on product-related websites.)

We now offer a LOT more than eMiniMalls too – our new Chitika|Premium ads target your search traffic, and are showing extremely high CTRs and eCPMs for our publishers. So if you have a good amount of US search traffic, Chitika|Premium will be a great fit for your site!

Re-open your Chitika application here, to get started. (You will be able to edit your information such as website, email, and PayPal info before you submit) or head over to the “Chitika | Premium” page for more information.

And I received a reply:

Hello,

The email address you used doesn’t match the domain that you submitted, and it also does not match the email that was used to register the domain, so we cannot tell if you actually own this website.

If you do own this site, please re-open your application using the link below and supply an email address from the domain, or the email address that was used to register the domain.

If you cannot do this, then please re-open your application and tell us why in the “Comments” field. Thanks. Looking forward to your comments.

This is because I used my GMail address for the registration. If I enter my email address for this blog domain I immediately get “Invalid Email ID!”. I stated in the comment field of the registration form but I guess it was not taken into anyone’s attention. But then again, the reply did mention “If you cannot do this, then please re-open your application and tell us why in the “Comments” field. Thanks. Looking forward to your comments.” WTH?

Not that Chitika is bad or anything but as an Internet user I expect an established site updates the list of TLD frequently. I also had the email not matching problem with Nuffnang but they received my application without any problem.