on what PPC should i spend my $25?

[shamrock]

can anyone help me?

my site carries affilate links if it matters,

btw, do ppc's manually review each page before they air it up?

if it does, how much time does it take?

and does it crawl my whole website, or only the pages i choose?

what's the procedure?

Thanks

[roargirl]

I can't speak for all ppc engines, but here at Roar.com we do manually review each site that is submitted to us. Our customer-care unit usually takes around 12-24hrs to review and approve a site.

Once you are approved, your bids and listings go live
straightaway. I would imagine most ppc's conduct a similar review process.

It is usually no problem to have affilate links on your website. However, if your site is merely an affilate banner farm (i.e. no content, just banners), a ppc will likely reject it, as it provides no real value to its users.

As for crawling, to my knowledge, ppc's do not crawl. You may be confusing them with search engines, which do crawl websites.

Ppc's rank their sites according to the bid price the advertiser sets for each of their keywords. The higher you set your bid price, the higher your ranking for that keyword.

Hope this helps you out, shamrock. Good luck!

[highman]

As RoarGirl says, the page you submit to the PPC will go for review to make sure it is appropriate for the keyword or phrase you are bidding on, also to make sure it is not a 'trade name'

Welcome to the forums RoarGirl :hi:

[hong_lewis]

IMHO, The most important PPC search engines are Google Ad Select, Overture and ESpotting. They should be your first choice at any time. Optionally, you may choose Overture UK, Sprinks ...

I think editor does review your website before publish it out, and PPC SE dosn't crawl your entire website.

[1Lit.com]

You can also submit and list your keywords to scores of these pccses for free as they give you $10 or $25 credit. The ppcses offering free credit might be relatively unknown, but at least there is a possibility of getting up to 2,500 targetted visitors for free.

[Advisor]

1lit, but where does the traffic come from? Who's using those engines?

I just don't get that kind of PPC. Unless your google, overture or espotting, it makes no sense to me.

Someone explain to me what it is I'm missing that could make these small PPCs worth advertising with!

Jill

[1Lit.com]

I agree the traffic to these sites must be relatively low. It might take you two or three years to get those 2,500 visitors. But at least it's free to list with them if you get free credit. Therefore there's no harm. The only thing it'll cost you is time.

[roargirl]

Smaller or unknown ppc's ususally have lower bid prices (and some also have free offers) so this makes it possible to run test campaigns on these ppc's without forking out the big bucks.

If your test is unsuccessful, then you haven't lost a large amount
of money. But if it IS successful, you've stumbled onto a good thing. :D

So, it is definitely worth testing with smaller ppc's. Just because
they are unknown certainly doesn't mean their traffic is any less
qualified. :)

[Matt B]

Just my opinion,

Save your money. The vast majority of visitors will find your site through 5-6 search sites. Your best investment is to work on optimizing and ranking in those engines and the traffic will naturally follow. Simply, follow where the traffic is coming from and invest your time and (maybe) money there.

Anything else can take a lot of time and money, but will never, ever, give you the return on your investment compared to the popular SE players.

[Kal]

Yes - traditional SEO of your site will bring you more cost-effective traffic in the longer term, IMO.

But if you are in a hurry for traffic, there's no reason why you can't set up a couple of PPC campaigns to fill in the gap until your site is well optimized and picked up by the crawlers. Also I think some crawlers are biased against affiliate sites in the SERPs, so you may be limited to PPC's for the most competitive keywords.

Make sure you do your keyword research carefully so you bid on keywords that are going to give you the most traffic for the least $ outlay. I thought roargirl's idea to test campaigns on smaller PPC players was a good idea too - if you can afford the time.

[ncpapi]

Shamrock, what I have learned is the smaller ppc like mine accept all listings when they start. It doesn't matter what the keyword listing is. As they grow, they have to delete listings for keywords that don't fit. Roar girl is very correct as testing the smaller ppc's doesn't mean the traffic is not there. If you signup with one small ppc a week and get $10 to try them, over a year it works out to 52 000 hits. 2 a week is 104 000. Not to bad for 10 minutes of work a week. Now as they grow, they have to concentrate on more direct keywords as I am doing now. I changed my script to only allow 20 advertisers per keyword so I chose what I think are the best sites. I don't spider but I am now very careful on keywords I accept. As for how long it takes, I have not had anyone wait over twelve hours.
I hope this is a help.
Welcome roargirl

[datten]

I was about to say that the smaller ppc's were just as worthwhile as the larger ones, as you only pay for the traffic you actually recieve from each of them.

Although the purpose of most ppc campains (I think) is to get traffic quickly, and you generally get more traffic in less time from bigger ppcs, these tend to cost more per term - so it probably works out about the same value for your cash.

... but ncpapi has just thrown some doubt in my mind.

If the smaller ppc's accept all listings, even for badly fitting keywords, then surely this makes their traffic less qualified..? The good thing about the larger, more picky ppc's is that they'll only allow you to bid for highly relevant keywords - meaning that each click you pay for is sure to be from someone looking for exactly the services you provide. This is quite a good safety net for novice ppc campaigners - as it makes it harder to waste your money on the wrong keywords.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use smaller ppc's, but IMO you have to know a bit more about managing an effective ppc campain to get the same returns on your time/money.

What does everyone else think?

[ncpapi]

Please let me clarify. As to accepting all listings for keywords, there is a "catch all" listing that members can list under when they signup. It is completely up to the advertiser to list with this. What this does is put the listing under all keywords where there is not any paid listings. As soon as an advertiser lists under a keyword with a paid listing the catch all is gone. Again this is completely up to the advertiser if they want to list this way. Also it is completely up to the advertiser to list under keywords that are appropriate. I did accept almost all listings when I started and have since changed. I scrutinize listings very carefully now and do not accept catch all listings anymore.

[jodinoye]

I agree with roargirl - test smaller ppc's (bid prices are lower, plus, since they are small you have a better chance of getting on the first landing page at a lower cost then Google or Overtrue).

I think people who choose to only use the big PPC's are not using there money effectively. Distibution of your money will offer you more of a variety.

However, before deciding do you homework. Contact people personally - most have a toll free number - ask questions? Monitor results to ensure you are getting what you paid for.

People should not be scared to use smaller PPC's. Yes, there are ones that prove to be ilegitment but that shouldn't ruin it for the rest of them.

Do what you think is best for you!

[Allen]

Hi.Including major Search engines we have campaigns in some search engines like ah-ha.com, roar, Findwhat, looksmart, lycos etc

I would like to run test campaign's on some smaller Search engines.Please help me out telling which of them are good or bad.

brainfox.com
surftheweb.com
rolist.com
search123.com
towersearch.com
xtremesearch.com
wisenut.com
searchhole.com

Thanks in advance.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Allen! :hi:

From what we read in these forums, all of those are bad. Fraud and affiliate fraud run rampant with tiny ppc engines.

Further, the ones you noted of ahhaahhhaa, roar, etc are just as bad.

[Dan0]

Wisenut.com is owned by Looksmart.

[Bernard]

Here's an interesting analysis of PPC fraud (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10192) across many different PPC providers.

[Allen]

Thank you all for the help. I agree that we get major traffic from Google & overture. If none of these small search engines work properly how do i expand my business with out burning money :confused:. I want to try out new search engines to increase my traffic. Are there any other ways to increase traffic.Please suggest me ways to increase traffic and any other search engines that are not in my list & doing well.

[ihelpyou]

Hi Allen, Sure is. Optimize your site for your targeted keyphrases to do well in the regular search engine listings. That's what this forum is all about. OR, simply call me to help you. :)

[Allen]

Hi Doug,
Thanks for the prompt reply.We have optimised our site for some major targeted keyphrases in Google. We appear in regular listings of google in top 10 positions.Other than SEO is there any other way left out for me to increase traffic.I know i am being too avid but please help me.

[Dan0]

Have you considered any options besides search engines? Email marketing, advertising, joint ventures, affiliate program, public relations, etc. etc?

[Allen]

Besides web promotion/Internet Marketing in search engines we have affiliate programs also.Can u brief me on other Strategies.

[dave989]

Before I chose what ppc search engine to use for advertising my site, I first signed up with most of the ones that offers $5 - $25 FREE in advertising credits.

Once I had listed my site with them, I kept a close look at my sites statistics. I monitored my statistics each day so that I could see where the most traffic was coming from and what ppc search engine was giving me the most targeted traffic.

Once I had done that I then invested in the best performing search engine.

I found that most of the ppc search engines that had an alexa ranking of 0 - 30,000 where quite good, but any ppc search engine with an alexa ranking of 30,001 plus, were not sending much traffic to my site.

[Bernard]

Jonathan,

Traffic alone is not enough infomation to guage a PPC engine's worth. It's easy to send meaningless (bogus) traffic.

You should use a conversion tracking tool to make sure that some of the traffic is converting (to ensure that it is real people), or monitor your server logs carefully.