Blackhat Friendly PPC
2007 was the year that Google took the A out of MFA. This sucks if you’re a blackhatter trying to make a buck, especially if you’ve already built a hands-free MFA generator/link-builder that is continually bringing in long-tail traffic.
I’ve talked before about how YPN sucks and now with the recent Adsense changes it’s becoming evident Google’s goal is to keep their publishers in the poor house too.
So, what is the Adsense alternative for blackhat SEO? Well, I’ve been using Peakclick and I’ve been extremely surprised at how well it’s working, especially since I never thought I would ever use them.
I signed up with Peakclick a couple of years ago just to get an idea of how the second-tier PPC programs worked. Those were the “good old days” when Adsense wasn’t banning MFA accounts and Adsense was still new enough that your users gave you 60% CTR. I was naive enough to believe that it would never end when I scoffed at how much Peakclick was paying per click compared to my Adsense numbers; I wrote them off and didn’t login to my account for many months.
However, now that Adsense is dead, PPC is more popular, and the dollar has crashed (Peakclick benefits because they are an Austrian company) I’m seeing Peakclick’s payout at about 60-75% of Adsense. While it’s true I’m giving up 25-40% of my revenue, what I’m getting in return is worth it.
Here’s the rundown:
1. Bid Transparency
The best thing about Peakclick is that I can see how much a keyword is paying before I buy any domains. I don’t have to worry about an advertiser I see on a Google search opting out of the content network or Google keeping all the high paying ads for themselves. What you see is what you get with Peakclick.
2. Longer SERP Domination
Do you have your Adsense code published on thousands of sites across different servers with different templates? Ever wonder how Google can wipe them all out at once? The answer is simple: your adsense code is your footprint. It’s very easy for them to find all the sites that your code has ever run on and wipe them out. I’m seeing my sites get Google traffic for months instead of weeks since I moved away from Adsense. Even though the clicks are worth less, I’m making more money because my sites are getting four times as much traffic.
3. Better Sleep at Night
I no longer worry about waking up to find an email from my PPC company telling me to take a hike.
4. Better Stats
You can have an infinite amount of Peakclick subaccounts (like Adsense channels) for tracking purposes. Peakclick also tells you what keywords are making you the most money, allowing you to break down your stats by CPC and total money made. This is vital information when you’re looking for a new niche to destroy. They also let you see stats for each of your domains and by your users’ geo-location. Very cool stuff that Google would NEVER let you see!
5. 15-day Payouts with Net 0
I used to hate waiting 30 days for Google to send me my money. It is particularly stressful if they owe you five figures and you’re nervous about them banning your account in the meantime. Peakclick lets you cash your money every 15 days, and they don’t use the net 30 system like Google and Yahoo (where you have to wait 30 days to get your money). When you cash with Peakclick you’re cashing money you made just 24 hours beforehand.
6. International Ads
I know Google supports international ads, but I’ve never been impressed with their inventory for the smaller markets. Just looking at my country stats for yesterday shows that I am monetizing traffic from Croatia, Slovakia, and Iran.
7. Targeting
Adsense has really great ad targeting, especially when compared to YPN. However, every once in a while they get it wrong. They either get confused and show PSAs or see some high paying keyword that is mentioned once in an article and show ads for that. The great thing about Peakclick is that you send them a query with your keywords and they return targeted ads. This allows me to experiment with variations to find the most profitable keywords. YPN, are you paying attention?
8. Different Ad Formats
Adsense, YPN, Chitika, etc. all offer the same boring ad formats and they expect us to be happy when they add rounded corners. Yawn. Because Peakclick delivers the ads in a feed you are free to format them any way you want. Put images next to them if you’d like. Or format them so they no longer look like ads. If you’re not technical enough to use the feed they also offer the old JavaScript-style ads as well so you just replace your Adsense code with no worries. (I just checked their website and they say they will help you install their feed if you need it!)
9. Payment Methods
Peakclick pays with PayPal, which is much easier than jumping through all the hoops to verify your bank account. They also support check, wire transfer, ePassporte, Western Union, Fethard, or WebMoney, although I’ve never used anything besides PayPal. And yes, they absorb the PayPal fees.
10. More tools
You can send your traffic to their optimized PPC landing pages (they offer several different types, including adult) if you find that your own pages aren’t getting enough clicks. I’ve honestly never done this, but I should try it! They also offer a toolbar install which sets the user’s homepage to your landing page and you get paid for every click. I’ve never tried this either…time to get to work!
11. Great Customer Support
I asked a question at 10am ET on a Saturday and had a detailed response from a knowledgeable person within a half-hour.
12. Negotiate Your Rate
Part of having great customer support is they know how to take care of their publishers who send them traffic. Once you start sending them search engine traffic be sure to contact them and have them bump your payout percentage higher.
13. Get Paid In Euros
With the dollar plummeting into oblivion, I wish I had setup my account in Euros to begin with. The small amount of money I made a couple years ago would be worth alot more now! Oh well. If you’re in Europe I’m sure having your PPC company pay in Euros is going to save you a TON of money, especially considering that by the time Google finally sends you your money it’s worth less than toilet paper.
14. Webmaster Contests
Every month Peakclick gives away $5,000.00 to their publishers. The publisher who sends the greatest number of referrals gets $1,000.00. The publisher who is the most improved gets $1,000.00. One publisher chosen at random gets $1,000.00 and two others get $500.00 each. The Rookie Of The Month, which is the publisher who makes the most money in their first month, also gets $1,000.00. This could be you, but you have to sign up first!
So, how much can you make with Peakclick? Well, part of them being transparent is that they let you see how much the top webmasters are making. The top publisher today has made $4,913.48. Their average CPC is $.56. Not too shabby for a day’s work! Just to show that it’s not a fluke, the 10th best webmaster made $587.47 today with a CPC of $.46.
This is the most sales-pitchy post I’ve ever done on this blog, but I’m not just doing it for the sake of it. I really am using this network and think it’s pretty damn good. Besides, if more people use this network, it will attract more advertisers, and the ads I’m showing will pay me more.
Why not sign up just to enter your name in the monthly contest for $2,000.00?
If you have any specific questions about Peakclick let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
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I dont use adsense either. I have a blog that I might try peakclick on, the payouts sound better than exoclick.