Partner With Multiple PPC Engines: Fill Your Own Inventory

[LaNMaN]

With the collapse of the banner ad market and the unreliable nature of 3rd party search engine affiliate programs (coupled with the fact that they run ads on their result pages for which you don't receive payment), the ability to partner directly with multiple pay-per-click search engines and order their results by the amount you earn, in the same format as the rest of your site, offers many advantages. Aside from maximizing earnings by avoiding 3rd party commissions and taking the top results from multiple engines, you also have the ability to distribute your earnings across multiple companies (thereby reducing your exposure should one delay payment or collapse) and ensure that visitors do not leave your site or be exposed to advertising you are not paid for.

By rotating custom search boxes into your default ad inventory or including a search box at the top of each page, you can tap a new source of revenue without causing your valuable visitors to leave your site. While the banner ad market is suffering, PPC engines are growing. Furthermore, blank custom search boxes are a great way to monetize untargetted general interest traffic (i.e. entertainment, greetings, message boards, etc.), that have difficulty selling banners, by allowing the user to type in what they are interesting and offering PPC engine advertisers targetted traffic. You can also build visitor loyalty by having them return to use the search engine on your site. Unlike affiliate programs, your visitors are not bombarded with the branding of the source search engines or the affiliate program.

I have created a set of PHP scripts that can automatically fetch results from GoClick, Sprinks, Ah-Ha, Epilot, and SearchFeed, rank the results according to the amount you earn for each clickthrough, and display them according to the options you set, in the same design as the rest of your site. I have formed a contract with each of these engines for my own site (AllYourSearch.com) and have verified that (after negotiations) the way results are presented abides by the terms of all included engines. In addition, the software can pull unpaid results from Ah-Ha and About.com to use as filler when paid results are unavailable.

I have also included an estimated earnings panel in the administration page that uses the same unique IP counts as the search engines, themselves, to determine approximately how much you are owed by each company. This allows you to quickly determine whether you are the victim of undercounting (although slight variations are to be expected) and use this knowledge to determine which search engines to partner with. The administration area also lets you quickly review search statistics, dump the databases to text files for use with 3rd party visualization tools, and change the options that affect how the results are displayed.

The software lets you specify which elements (i.e. source engine, bid price, italicized URL, etc.) that you want to include with each result and lets you provide a header and footer to ensure that result pages are consistent with the rest of your site. Furthermore, you can specify a different subset of engines to use for each search so, for example, you can make text links that only include results from search engines that allow text links.

The scripts are written in PHP (though they are in encoded form) and support persistant database connections to ensure excellent performance. They can handle a heavy load and only require Apache, MySQL, PHP, and the ability to install dynamic apache mods (to support the decoder). Support for additional search engines is planned and all future updates, fixes, and improvements will be included with a subscription.

You can see an example of the scripts in action (using my template) as they search for "computers" across GoClick, Sprinks, Ah-Ha, and Epilot at: http://www.allyoursearch.com/demo/se...hha=1&epilot=1 . Feel free to type different search terms into the box and observe the output. You can also see the administration page at (the password is: admin -- PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THE PASSWORD!) http://www.allyoursearch.com/demo/admin.php . The scripts are still in beta/development and I would appreciate any comments/feature requests/bug reports that you can offer.

I was thinking that $1,000/yr/processor/domain would be a fair price for the scripts as many medium/large sites will earn that back in a couple of weeks. Furthermore, many webmasters are losing more money than that every month through the commission, unpaid banners/popups, and lost traffic incurred by using 3rd party search affiliates like AdSearches. That would price it at what is considered the low end of banner ad rotation software; furthermore, it takes a bit of preparation to form contracts with each of the engines and if you cannot afford $1,000 for the software, the extra revenue you could earn is probably not worth your effort (or the administration required on the part of the search engines). The price would include all updates, etc. as well as installation support and help forming partnerships with the search engines. Again, I am open to feedback, though.

Please e-mail all questions, comments, feature requests, and complaints to webmaster@allyoursearch.com .

Thanks for your time,
Lenny

BTW, I originally got the idea for this software while browsing a GeekVillage thread about L90 where one person mentioned that they wouldn't mind paying setup and ad-rotation fees if they could have a good selection of advertisers and would not need to pay an ad sales commission. This software is the analogue of an ad-rotation program and can be used to fill your inventory with high paying custom search boxes that improve customer loyalty and provide a service to your visitors. However, I apologize for not including the per CPM ad-rotation fees that the poster mentioned :-). Let's just see if he was right about a market existing for this product.

[LaNMaN]

No interest at all?

Lenny

[torifan]

Lenny, very nice scripts. I think they might be worth it for sites that generally attract high-paying keyword searches. For my entertainement sites, I doubt they would offer enough improvement over stand-alone affiliate programs to justify the cost.

Playing devil's advocate, why not just use Epilot's program alone as it claims to do most of the same things as your scripts. From their web site:

With an ePilot Search Box, you’ll also give your site the variety and reliability of over 10 pay-per-click search engines! Plus, you can retain the look and feel of your own site or incorporate the ePilot brand.

Maybe since you have already negotiated contracts with these search engines that are likely better than their standard affiliate programs, you could start your own program. Just give the search box code to your affiliates and serve the search results from your server.

[LaNMaN]

Originally posted by torifan Playing devil's advocate, why not just use Epilot's program alone as it claims to do most of the same things as your scripts. From their web site:

Maybe since you have already negotiated contracts with these search engines that are likely better than their standard affiliate programs, you could start your own program. Just give the search box code to your affiliates and serve the search results from your server.

The third party results obtained through Epilot are still subject to their 60% commission. Therefore every click on a 3rd party Epilot result earns you 60% less than the same click would (through a partnership with the other engine directly), when using my software. The Epilot feed used for this software does not contain those 3rd party results, as there is no point in having the same result listed twice: once with a high bid and then again (through the Epilot feed) with a low bid. If people are interested in a cobranded search affiliate program (where I take a commission instead of a software licensing fee), I may consider offering one, but there are already a large number of such programs and, in all cases, the webmaster really gets the short end of the stick (explained below). My goal in releasing this software was to empower larger webmasters in their dealings with PPC search engines and maximize their revenue. For anybody earning a couple hundred a month through search affiliate programs, you should be able to make up the cost of the software in additional earnings within a few months.

When running a search affiliate program, you have to wait until you receive payment from the search engines before paying affiliates. Hence, the affiliates will ALWAYS experience a payment delay longer than that experienced when dealing with the search engines directly. Also, anybody capable of offering quality searches will have their earnings reduced by the large commissions that these afiiliate programs charge. Furthermore, the 2nd click programs (the 1st click programs pay FAR less than good searches can earn -- if you run some test queries on my software above, keeping in mind that the amounts listed are how much you actually earn per clickthrough, after the search engine's commission, you can see how much you are losing) all run banner/popup advertising on the results pages that you are not paid for. If the visitor ultimately clicks through on those ads, they are basically redirecting your traffic without paying you a cent. Being offered the power and flexibility of these scripts and requesting that I set up another me-too affiliate program that is inherently unfavorable to webmasters is like being offered prime rib and requesting a hamburger, instead.

Lenny
webmaster@allyoursearch.com

[Robert from SI]

Lanman,

I'm sorry but you have a number of factual inaccuracies in your posts.

>>>>
unreliable nature of 3rd party search engine affiliate programs >>>>
-SearchTraffic is completely reliable, has been in operation for longer than many PPC engines.


>>>>>>
affiliates will ALWAYS experience a payment delay longer than that experienced when dealing with the search engines directly
>>>>>>
-SearchTraffic pays net 10, faster than any PPC engine directly.



>>>>>
Furthermore, the 2nd click programsall run banner/popup advertising on the results pages that you are not paid for.
>>>>>
- SearchTraffic, ClickThruTraffic, and TextLinks.com do not run any advertisements on the results page.



Furthermore, as an opinion, webmasters need to be aware of the true nature of the majority of the searches perfomed by surfers. Folks love to point out that terms like "casino" and "data recovery" have high bids. In the real world very few people search on these terms. "Hotmail", "yahoo", and "ringtones" get searched on thosands of times more frequently that many high dollar terms and they are essentially worthless as PPC engine terms. With a guarantee per click the webmasters is getting paid on these terms as well.




I wish you success with your product but disparaging established and reputable programs is not the way to go about it.

[LaNMaN]

Originally posted by Robert from SI
Lanman,

I'm sorry but you have a number of factual inaccuracies in your posts.

>>>>
unreliable nature of 3rd party search engine affiliate programs >>>>
-SearchTraffic is completely reliable, has been in operation for longer than many PPC engines.


>>>>>>
affiliates will ALWAYS experience a payment delay longer than that experienced when dealing with the search engines directly
>>>>>>
-SearchTraffic pays net 10, faster than any PPC engine directly.



>>>>>
Furthermore, the 2nd click programsall run banner/popup advertising on the results pages that you are not paid for.
>>>>>
- SearchTraffic, ClickThruTraffic, and TextLinks.com do not run any advertisements on the results page.



Furthermore, as an opinion, webmasters need to be aware of the true nature of the majority of the searches perfomed by surfers. Folks love to point out that terms like "casino" and "data recovery" have high bids. In the real world very few people search on these terms. "Hotmail", "yahoo", and "ringtones" get searched on thosands of times more frequently that many high dollar terms and they are essentially worthless as PPC engine terms. With a guarantee per click the webmasters is getting paid on these terms as well.




I wish you success with your product but disparaging established and reputable programs is not the way to go about it.

I stand corrected. However, many popular 3rd party affiliate programs are as I described and SearchTraffic may be the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, (please correct me if I'm wrong) SearchTraffic now pays on a second click model and if SIC begins to notice that a particular affiliate only generates traffic for low bidded terms then SIC reserves the right to cancel their account. Consequently, it does not make sense that SIC would continue to support a large number of affiliates who generate less revenue for SIC than they earn. The fact that you can support the payouts you currently offer implies that you generate more revenue by working with the search engines directly than you pay affiliates (unless you're still operating in "bubble" mode).

BTW, using my script: Hotmail has a result worth 2c, yahoo has a result worth 3c, and ringtones has a result worth 1c to the webmaster.

Furthermore, webmasters are only allowed to use SIC search boxes and those that are "explicitly approved by SIC." Using my script, not only can webmasters use their own branded search boxes, but the results pages are integrated into the design of their sites. For larger sites that do not want to lose traffic to SI's search engine (have people visit there directly in the future) and have the possibility of getting repeat traffic, returning visits to the search engine can generate a significant amount of revenue as well.

Also, Robert, just one question: why do you display a few lower bidded Sprinks results above higher bidded FindWhat results systematically? Maybe you could use this script (and the associated modified contract) to improve SI's result display engine.

Lenny

[Lawrence1]

Lanman,

Two things you should keep in mind:

1. Due to the volume of searches, third party affiliate programs are able to negotiate better contract terms than most individual affiliates.

2. It is not always easy for a website to partner directly with a pay-per-click search engine. There are minimum payment amounts, and search requirements to consider.

Lawrence

[LaNMaN]

Originally posted by Lawrence1
Lanman,

Two things you should keep in mind:

1. Due to the volume of searches, third party affiliate programs are able to negotiate better contract terms than most individual affiliates.

2. It is not always easy for a website to partner directly with a pay-per-click search engine. There are minimum payment amounts, and search requirements to consider.

Lawrence

As I have already formed contracts with all of these engines using a site generating minimal traffic, I can attest to the fact that only Sprinks has a very high earnings requirement ($500) before payment is remitted. While a large affiliate program may negotiate slightly better rates with the search engines, the relatively small difference (30-50% in the case of a small to large site with Sprinks) is offset by their 50%+ commission rates (like that of Epilot, above). Any site generating enough traffic to warrant a $1,000 software purchase will likely be able to form favorable terms with each search engine.

Lenny

[LaNMaN]

As there has been no interest in purchasing the scripts at a high recurring price, with included service and support, I have decided to accept offers to purchase the software at a low single price. Furthermore, I will providers purchasers with the original PHP code and not only an encoded copy (so you do not need Apache or dynamic modules). To make this more interesting, I am allowing you to "name your own price." A good metric to estimate the script's worth is your current search affiliate revenue and the value of branding your site; the offers received will allow me to determine the actual value of the scripts to individual users and create a pricing plan that allows sites of all sizes to benefit from them.

I am also willing to take offers for the scripts (and their copyright/redistribution rights). There are probably people on this board who are far better able to market them than I am. Any offers for the copyright to the scripts will take precendence over a lower script license offer, and I will forward all interested parties to the new script owner, if the scripts are sold in this manner.

I have posted with greater detail to the geek/talk "Lets Barter, Buy, Trade, Sell" folder but it has not yet appeared (it is still in the moderation queue). I will edit this post to contain the URL as soon as it becomes available. Please e-mail all offers or expressions of interest to webmaster@allyoursearch.com .

Lenny

[nonstop]

I would prefer a licence to use the scripts

A low one for the first year
and then slightly more in the years after that.
With an option of opting out after the first year.

If your scripts really are that good, then people will
keep them after the first year, plus they'll be able to
pay you from the profits they've already made.

[MattFS218]

Lenny's scripts are not hard to make. In fact making deals with pay per position search engines isn't hard at all. These search engines really put an effort at trying to find sites like this. I btw also have scripts like lennys, except they process multiple xml search feeds in parellel, which isn't possible with php.

[nonstop]

How much would you sell your scripts for Matt?

Stu