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"I placed a block of money with them thinking that I had nothing to worry about. Now here's the kicker, the amount of funds I put in which normally takes at least a week to be used up by a major player like Overture.com got completely used up by the very next day with Kanoodle with not one sale as a result! Basically I was averaging about 1% conversion ratio on my business site when it happened. I got over 3500 clicks showing the very next day with no one sale resulting from those clicks. When I talked to their company about what had happened they basically tried to make up all kinds of excuses to try and explain it away. Was it a fluke or random accident that somehow out of 3500 visitors showed up the very next day, from this smaller PPC engine resulting in not one ordered? I think not. And after doing my research after the fact I found out that infact there were many others that were complaining as well. Needless to say I did a chargeback, as that kind of thing never has happed with all the other 30 odd pay per click engines I use regularly."
[edited by: seth_wilde at 8:52 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]
[edit reason] Multiple TOS violations [/edit]
Some experiences:
I have a poorly performing AdWords campaign. No matter what I try my costs are too high and my conversions are too low. But that doesn't make it a fault of AdWords, it's my own inability to optimize the campaign. And I haven't given up on it yet, either.
The owner of this company signed up up for a CPV program. It sounded good - for mere pennies we could expose our products to new potential customers. Over a 3 day period our trial account was depleted, and we received thousands of page views. But of all those views, only 4 ever moved beyond the initial page. There was not a single conversion. Was I scammed? I don't think so. What I tend to believe is that this particular program is not suited for my business. It was attracting non-qualified leads, and I don't care if it's just a penny a lead - if those leads aren't qualified they aren't worth a penny. People buy our widgets because they know what they want, and we offer options once they get to the site.
What it comes down to then is that each program has pro's and con's, and some are more suited to your objectives than others may be.
Why? Simply like this. One traffic source works well for one product and not so well for another.
[edited by: seth_wilde at 2:19 pm (utc) on June 6, 2005]
Here's a real Corker they've Recently ummm, 'acquired', lol.
Don't think I'm allowed to put links here? well, just kinda, if it's ok to do this, drop ibux into your browser url spot, and add the .net.
This is a vast 'improvement', over the traffic that comes from paidtoRead email progs, as it's harder to force peeps to search at the ptr's.
This 'new wave', there are 4 now in operation I think, is a Purely paid-to-search. no search - no cash.
rofl, they call it 'profit-sharing'. ummm, sorry to mention it's you guys/gals profits they're 'sharing', but then again, maybe kanoodle could Do something, ya never know.
The one I cited, I think they allow a search per ip, every 45 Seconds, rofl, so the human bots there can make a pretty decent buck, for a long days work 'sharing-profits'.
Now, one could give Kanoodle the benifit of the doubt, and assert that they didn't Know. Sure, I'm up for that. ummm, far as I'm concerned though, they Know NOW....
Again, I Sincerely Appoligize to the forum owners/moderators, if I've violated any of the terms here, but This, Really Burns my Back Burner if ya'll catch my drift: have a pail handy, when you read this, from this ibux junkshops' tos:
""""What constitutes a paid search?
A paid search must be real words. It cannot be "kjasdi siswaes" or anything similar. In fact, repeated searches such as this will put your account under suspicion and possibly lead to a suspension. A paid search must be made from the ibux.net homepage, not from within the results of a previous search. Unfortunately, I have no way of tracking searches you make once you leave my website. The current maximum for paid searches is 40 in any given day. This may be changed in the future, depending on how the server load is in relation to my Paid searches must be a minimum of 45 seconds apart, in order to ensure that the system is not being abused. You are encouraged to search as often as wish, as long as you understand that you will only receive a credit once per 45-second duration. You will simply be required to start a new search once the timer is up, in order to be credited with your next paid search."""
Why do *I*, Submit this stuff? Well, because Someone Has To!
-The ptr biz, is sustained by your 2nd tier budgets, so They ain't about to tell you.
-The Feeds are Raking in a Literal Killing on the Masses of 3rd tier portal page exposures, Per Day, so it certainly is not in Their best interest to.
-You, the Advertiser Paying the Shot for this kind of stuff, Don't appear to take it very seriously as yet, which leaves, um, Me.
This 'paid-to-search' site, is nothing 'new'. They have come and gone over the course of the past couple of years or so.
Just that right Now, there is a new Wave of them springing up.
*Most of them, seem to Start, rofl, with exploiting Google, which Generally doesn't last too long, lol.
They Lose their google accounts as soon as google catches them, leaving them to Make up the loses, (and come up with the money their 'searchers' Earned), from the 2nd tiers, Before they become labeled scams by their members, lol.
As you can see from the site, The one I cite here, is feeding off of kanoodle, dictionary, and Technorati. for now......
But it Doesn't Matter, WHO they are feeding off of, if you are Spending on the 2nd tier, you ARE a victum of this gem, from the vast cross/inter-feeding of your keyword bids, accross the 2nd tier, and God Only knows what the 'wm', term used loosely herein, of that site is Doing from There.
I Submit this, to coin a line from the tos of the horse's mouth, as it were, """ ... to ensure that the system is not being abused. ... """
You found my secret. Everyone busts on FindWhat and our network virtually owns one niche (NATION WIDE) on thier pay per call and are extremely contented.
Yes people, they are bad, very bad :-)
Problem:
Only 4 of them stayed on the landing page for more than 3 seconds.
Most of the clicks came from a search engine called gocousin and go.startnow.com
It seems a real shame.
