Second rung pay per click search engines - worth the money?

Not many would dispute the fact that Overture, Google and to some extent FindWhat generate the maximum amount of traffic that converts. Yes - the keyword here is conversion/ROI and not the number of clicks. But at the same time, not many would dispute the fact that the big three are getting expensive every day. The competition is intense in most business segments and absolutely absurd in others.

If your business is largely dependent on pay per click search engine traffic, you should consider looking at other pay per click search engines like Ah-ha, Kanoodle, SearchFeed, Sprinks, 7Search etc. The problem with the smaller PPC search engines is that usual worries about click fraud from competitors, bots clicking on your advertiser links and so on.

The truth is that some of the smaller search engines do offer good ROI especially since they have lower minimums and the competition is lot lesser. So do you shell out $25 and "check it out"? No. It is necessary to do some amount of research before filling their coffers.

Read reviews of the search engines

Check out the major pay per click search engine review sites (type 'pay per click search engine reviews' in Google) and compare what the 'experts' have to say. But beware - do not fall for HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! verdicts that these review sites give. Generally, the idea behind setting up a pay per click search engine site is to refer advertisers to the search engines and earn commission amounts. Nothing wrong with that, of course!

If you really want independent reviews, check Alexa. To read reviews of a PPC search engine, click here and replace masteringadwords.com with the search site.

Who are the partner sites? Are they reputable?

Most pay per click search engines are just infrastructure providers - they sign up search partners and share the revenue generated through their sites. Stay away from the search engines if the partner sites look dubious (for example -  if they look like a directory with a bunch of links). If the site does not list their partner sites, drop an email to customer service. This is also a good way of checking the promptness of their customer service.

A few more pointers -

- Do NOT deposit more than $25. Never fall for "Deposit $50 and we will deposit $250 more".

- Expect your ROI to be atleast 25 to 50 percent lower than Google/Overture/FindWhat. Make sure your bid prices are much lower than what you pay elsewhere.

- Most importantly, make sure you track your ROI using a keyword tracking software like IndexTools.com