Any experience with Cheaper PPC Networks?

Sorry, I've had campaigns that worked great in G, B and Y, but I've never been able to get ANY campaing working in one of those bottom tier PPC networks.

They are simply to rife with click fraud, Miva especially. I had server logs showing click after click after click, sometimes as many as 40 - 50, all taking place in a few minutes, all on the same keyword and all from the same IP. Miva didn't refund my money until I sent the the logs.

Does that mean they lack the technology to detect it? No, it means they don't care and just want your money. I wonder how many non technical people are getting ripped off by them.

7Search used to be the PPC of chouce for arbitrage, but I never tried them.

Someone referred me to Look smart but i haven't tried it yet

Most of these have very low quality traffic, sometimes if you look enough you can find a winner though

A few weeks ago there was a thread where people were talking about 7Search. Many people said that their biggest problem is volume. Even if you get a positive ROI, there is a chance that you won't be able to make more than a couple dollars a day with them.

About MIVA, I have tried them once, couldn't find a profitable campaign, but I was just starting and it probably happened because I was doing everything wrong. However, their system and support were not good, so I wouldn't recommend them.

A company that I have used in the past and still use is Bidvertiser. They don't have a lot of volume, but I have found some profitable campaigns promoting email and short form submits. Also, AOL can be interesting. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm planning to test a few campaigns with them soon.


William

I usually avoid them - a lot of poor quality traffic is there and it's oftentimes hard to optimize. Surprisingly, I gave 7search another chance and had success recently on a campaign.

Thanks guys for all your contribution. I tried Google before but didn't have great success. It's so hard to find a cheap keyword for your niche, sometimes even with using 3 word phrases.

Hey everyone,

I thought I would chime in here as I work for LookSmart. Tier 2 ad networks have gotten a bit of a bad rap in the past for having "bad" traffic. At LookSmart we are really committed to providing our search advertisers with a clean network - we have internal tools to filter out invalid traffic, and we also partner with a number of 3rd parties (Click Forensics, Anchor Intelligence) to help monitor the quality of our network. As other posters have mentioned, not all advertisers work on all networks, but I'd recommend giving us a shot. To help you "test drive" the network, I can offer you $50 in matched clicks - just use coupon code ls-match50 at checkout when you sign up via our AdCenter (adcenter.looksmart.com).

If you (or anyone else) need assistance setting up a PPC campaign with LookSmart, please feel free to contatc our customer service department at 877-512-5665.

I hope that helped. Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

Cheaper will be expensive.

Cheaper is relative term. Do you want to burn money @ 1 cent per click or make money while paying $1 per click ...

Choice is yours.

AB

The click quality on a lot of the second tier search engines is pretty low - but at the same time the clicks are fairly cheap as well.

I've had success on 7Search - and I still have a few active campaigns there. It took some time weeding out crappy keywords and traffic but I was able to turn them positive.

The biggest issue - which has been said - is the huge lack of volume.

I have tried 7Search and works well for me.

It's usually loaded with poor quality traffic, but if you can work through and optimize off bad sources you can pull in some good profit. If I find an exceptional campaign I always try it.

7Search is great, and they usually do 50% matching.

eg: you put up 100 dollars, they'll give you 50 dollars credit.