Are CJ's EPC numbers legit?

[Numbat]

I suspect that they are legit, and that I'm doing something wrong, but I thought I'd see if anybody had any experience with this. I am trying to do PPC advertising with some of the lesser-known search engines, and I'm getting hammered with it. One of my advertisers claims an EPC of around $71 on their keyword link (keep in mind, CJ multiplies by a hundred, so it's really earnings per 100 clicks). I fed them about 500 clicks through some of the second teir search engines, nothing.

Another shows about $21 EPC - fed them 1500 clicks, nothing. Another shows $14 EPC, fed them 2,500 links, got about $66 back.

I am trying to write my ads to be fairly restrictive (that is, explaining what they get if they click and what I want them to do), and I'm also keeping my keywords pretty restrictive to find only people searching exactly for what my advertisers are offering.

So, anybody with experience in this? I'm getting pretty suspicious about things - it seems hard to believe that I'm getting such a tiny fraction of what they advertise. And I'm only looking at the earnings on the keyword links, so I think I'm comparing apples to apples.

Any ideas or opinions?

Thanks!

 

[Profecy]

I'm pretty sure they are legit. You have to remember that the quality of the traffic is key. You can't send them like those $1 for 10,000,000,000 visitor things and expect to convert. It has to be relevant and "presell" what ever the product/service is. Also, remember that one very big and sucessful publisher can greatly skew those numbers with big successes (or failures). That's probably what the problem is. I was wondering the same thing a while ago and looked into it; that's what I found.

 

[Numbat]

I'm mainly using Search123 and Kanoodle, which I believe are decent quality - anybody have any experience with them?

I think my ads should prequalify my clicks pretty well - I'm stating exactly what the link is for and what the user needs to do (For example: "Some Service for $X.XX/month. Download a free 30 day trial now!" - in this case, the user downloading the package would count as a lead for me). And, hopefully, the relevance is there. I'm using a fairly limited set of keywords that I think would be used by someone researching an upcoming purchase.

The big publisher could explain it, but now I'm 0 for 3 and it's worrying me. The EPC numbers I'm using are for the keyword links only, so it's not like somebody's got a great website that's just kicking my ass - it's just my search ads vs. everybody elses, and mine are converting like crap.

Anyhow, thank you for the response. It made me think more about what I'm doing.

 

[Andrew]

I don't have any specific experience with those two, but I suspect that is where your biggest problem is. I've bought ads on third tier networks, and while they convert they do so very poorly.

Question one -- is this US only traffic? International will suck your converisons dry.

Question two -- are you using a third party like adwatcher to monitor for click fraud?

 

[Numbat]

Question one -- is this US only traffic? International will suck your converisons dry.

Kanoodle offers geo-targeting (which I have set to US only), but Search123 does not.

Question two -- are you using a third party like adwatcher to monitor for click fraud?

No - I wasn't aware that such a program existed. I will have to research that.

I don't have any specific experience with those two, but I suspect that is where your biggest problem is. I've bought ads on third tier networks, and while they convert they do so very poorly.

Well, it looks like you're probably right - I just found this post. Brutal.
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=84115#post84115

Thanks a ton for the help - this explains a lot.