Advice for 7Search and CPA?

[Nat]

I have some money in a 7Search account that I'm looking to use to promote a/some CPA offer(s). I'm completely new to this. I've read several different blog posts about 7search, but I'm still not super confident about setting up a campaign. Most people have said to pick an email submit offer and then find some related keywords on 7search, pick about 12-20, and then place a bid bigger than a few pennies. Anyways, I'd love any advice anyone can give me, or examples of successful campaigns.

I did set up a campaign with a CPA offer and I've had quite a few impressions, but no clicks yet.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I did this once when I first wanted to toy with PPC without losing my wallet.

I tried all kinds of random stuff from what they had available. I think I broke even in the end. The impressions and clicks and email submits were so slow and low, despite the bids I was offering. There simply wasn't that much traffic. By the time you optimize by shedding bad keywords, you're not getting enough traffic to justify bothering with it. You can't even pay extra for enough, it's just not there, even with the bot traffic.

I didn't know what 7Search was or care, but later on I did investigate a bit and it looked like it was solely fake search engines and ads in parked domains, and you're either paying for bot impressions and clicks or old people who have no idea what they're doing.

I later moved on to Plenty of Fish where they had lots of data on the users, although much of the accounts weren't being honest or were flat out bots. I got sour when I started what I knew was a killer campaign through POF and PeerFly, only to find that POF refused my campaign. About a month later, one of PeerFly's employees had a case study for my exact same campaign, offer, and nearly the same creatives available on his blog. So either we both thought the same thing, I came in right after him, or they ripped my campaign. Either way, I got sour about being blocked from running a completely within-the-rules campaign that someone else used to make big enough money to brag about after they ran it into the ground.

My point is, 7Search is a good place to get comfortable with the concepts of PPC, but in the end it's trash. POF is decent but they're willing to play dirty with their bed buddies. Of course it depends on what you're trying to do (direct to lander, etc.) but I'd jump right on up to Bing / Facebook and ultimately Adwords, if you can afford to collect the data you'll need to turn it profitable.

 

[Nat]

@Ryuzaki thanks for the response! I'm doing something similar, trying to get comfortable with PPC without breaking my wallet.

I was hoping to find a niche on 7search that could at least give enough traffic to make it 'fun.' ...and I would really like to break even if possible.

 

[Nat]

Update: The campaign that I started got 1,736 impressions and 3 clicks (each .05 cents) over 3 days and I've had one $1.50 conversion. Wouldn't it be amazing if I got a conversion for every 3 clicks... The sucky thing is that I don't think I'll be able to add anymore worthwhile keywords, so its going to take forever to figure out if the one conversion was a fluke or if its worth it to keep sending traffic.

Also, since its an email submit offer, I'm assuming it would be a bad idea to try direct linking the offer on AdWords?

 

[Nat]

I've got a question about 7Search, hopefully someone will notice it down here so I don't have to make a new thread.

So, I decided to bid on a keyword that should have a LOT of competition. But I figured I would give it a try since I have an offer that should convert really easily. So, I make the ad and added 10 keywords and left my bid at .05 because that is the default. Then, I go into the campaign and see that the average network bit is about $0.50 per click for all the keywords I added. However, ALL of my keywords say "Your Bid Rank 1." Which makes no sense to me?

 

[ryandiscord]

I'm guessing 7Search has similar targeting options as Adwords, if so it could be a competition dayparting, geotargeting or they ran out of budget, etc this allows you to bid lower because they aren't targeting the same traffic.

Also in my experience with other PPC networks, Adwords, Bing and Amazon, you can sometimes get away with bidding lower than suggested bids and still get a good position.

 

[delarathe]

It sounds strange that 7search would say you're ranked #1 when you're not. Usually it's the other way around.

After making multiple changes over the last few years, I've seen that they will show the keyword rank based on other people that have active accounts even if they aren't bidding or if they ran out of budget. It gets frustrating. What I've been doing is geotargeting my ads, checking their user intended search engine for the country to see who's ranked in the top 10, then comparing it in the advertiser area. I then bid accordingly, and I make sure to do this early in the morning to ensure there are no burned out budgets.

If I saw the same problem you've experienced, I would email 7search support. They answer pretty fast.