If you’re a blogger, you’re probably familiar with Chitika.
If you aren’t familiar with them, they’re very similar to Google’s popular Adsense contextual ad service.
In fact, Chitika is where many bloggers who were turned down for admission to the Adsense program (or got booted from it) ended up turning to earn revenue from their blogs.
Although Chitika never really gained a lot of traction against the ultra-popular Adsense, they did serve as a vital source of income for quite a few bloggers who were unable to take advantage of the Adsense program for whatever reason.
If you currently have Chitika ads running on your blog(s), I have some bad news for you: The service has been shut down, effective immediately.
I received an email from them this morning announcing the closure and a quick visit to their website confirmed it.
Quite honestly, I had pretty much forgotten about Chitika myself.
I remember opening an account with them back when they first launched their service just to check it out, but I quickly removed their ads after I saw how little they paid.
I suppose they must still have my email address on file since I received a notification of the closure.
Just in case you have Chitika ads on your site but didn’t receive an email about the shutdown, here’s the text of the message I received:
Chitika Is Shutting Down Effective Immediately
Dear Publisher,
After 15+ years in business and millions of publisher relationships, Chitika is hereby shutting down and closing its business. Our sincere thanks to all our publishers with whom we have enjoyed wonderful relationships over the years. We wish you the best of luck and success as you continue to grow your traffic and revenue.
What’s Next?
Q: What action do I need to take?
A: Please remove all Chitika ad code from all your websites on or before April 30th 2019. Any Chitika ad code or other calls to Chitika ad services after this time period will cease to operate.
Q: What about earnings for last month and current month?
A: Unfortunately, due to termination of our partnership with our biggest exchange partner, no earnings accumulated after March 1st 2019 will be paid out. All earnings after March 1st 2019 have been chargebacked by the exchange and money has been returned to the advertisers.
Q: How can I get paid if I have an outstanding balance ?
A: Please make sure you meet the payment requirements (Payoneer and Tax Forms) and then follow these instructions to get paid your final balance. We will be issuing one final payment on April 30th 2019.
As you can see, the shutdown was both abrupt and brutal.
Bottom line: Although it’s unfair, any ad revenue you earned after March 1 will not be paid.
What’s more, you’ll need to remove all Chitaka ad code from your blog ASAP to prevent an error from occurring when your pages try to contact Chitika’s servers.
I know this comes as an unpleasant shock to many of you who depended on Chitika for your blog earnings, but things are what they are.
At this point about all you can do is remove the Chitika ad code from your blog(s) and start seeking out new streams of revenue.
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