PPC advertising question

I'd say it is just bad luck...BTW sending 50 clicks and making 4 sales is awesome.

Complete Article, worth a read http://www.marketingcynic.com/ppcfraud/



SOMEONE'S MAKING A LOT OF MONEY FROM YOUR PPC BUDGET

WHAT A PITY IT ISN'T YOU
"Have you ever wondered where all your non-converting traffic is coming from?"

This article explains where your Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) budget really ends up.

I really don't know why people bother with PPC engines when all their advertising money ends up here anyway.
-Carole Stacey, Paid-to-Read program owner

The Paid To Read Email biz, IS In Fact, a ppc Parisite, and I Really think we'd All do ourselves, And our Industry a Great Service, if we were to, On a Mass Scale, Accept this, if somewhat putrid, Stark Reality. -MadMeikal, member of Paid-to-Read programs

A little background
I was using several of the top feeds to advertise various affiliate and lead generation programs when I noticed that my results were steadily worsening to the point where the advertising was becoming unprofitable.

Being somewhat technically inclined, I traced back the logs - to smaller "partner engines" - but I still couldn't figure out where they were getting their terrible-quality traffic from. There was a lot of it, but there were no specific usage spikes pointing to click fraud and nothing I could complain about - and all the while my accounts were steadily dwindling to the point where I had to pull them because all my ad money was being wasted with nothing to show for it.

I started looking into alternative advertising, and found something called "Paid-to-Read-E-mail" (PTR) that promised targeted advertising to an interested user base.

Well, mailing lists are cool, right? Just to be on the safe side, I joined some programs to see what was being advertised through them - always good advice to keep up on what's being repeatedly advertised through programs, right?

I also found a forum dedicated to this "industry," as it likes to call itself.

And suddenly I realized where all my non-converting traffic was coming from.

Much of the information here has been compiled by both joining Paid-to-Read programs myself, and by reading through Getpaidforum.com and quoting comments made by members.

Usernames on that forum are not readily traceable back to "offline" identities. Where possible I have traced back usernames of Paid-to-Read (PTR) program owners. Quotes in this article are attributed to forum usernames. The quotes have been left "as is," without correction to grammar or spelling.

Problem Summary
1. Intro - PPC Profit Sharing.
A nice idea in theory, offer an incentive for webmasters to place search boxes on their web sites.

2. Feeds.
Offer a way to bid on PPC placement on multiple search engines since their results feed out to many smaller engines.

3. Third-Tier Search Engines.
Accept search feed results from the larger feeds to supplement their own results.

4. Affiliates of These Engines.
Get a share of the profits based on click-through rates, with a higher profit share for people who deliver more traffic through their sites.

5. PTR.
People being paid to be traffic. Nobody takes this crap seriously, do they?

I check my traffic logs too, but virtually all traffic originates from google.com. Google won't distribute via unchecked partners, and furthermore I have content ads disabled.

A KRL 'drama' thread gets three pages and 2500 views, this serious doesn't even get one tenth of it? Yes, I'm a troll too but sometimes I want helpful information. Anyone out there?

I have the same exact problem on adwords.
I usually push webcam program. It makes lots of sign ups the first few days, then goes down to 0.
I then restart a new campaign with a slightly different add and linking to a url with different variable but going to the same sponsor and the same thing happens.
If I let it run, it just kills my profit margin.
So, I just change it once a week.
I also have a non-adult campaign that never runs through that problem.
It does look weird, maybe Google has some kind of hitbot that targets adult adwords campaign?

If you use adwords make sure you disable the use of ads through the google network (webmasters using adsense). Much lowtech fraud going on there and still not really target.

Great Post! THANK YOU

-No pages through the google network (adsense), just google search, you can disable it (too many lowtech fraud, less relevance etc.).

-Accurate description including price (will save you lots of money)

-Don't bid for the top spots, it's wasted money

-Don't waste your money on the big keywords in your category (if they exist) before you know what you're doing.

Success - depends, after some trial and error big profit for an online shop and loss for a mainstream gay paysite (didn't convert for whatever reason) discontinued after wasting 50 bucks.

Great post thanks herbal logic...