In the last days I've felt treated badly by revenuepilot's support, so I thought I would share my experience with you. I run some adult websites, (I won't disclose the urls) but even though my traffic is high, I don't get a lot of money from clicks since I'm using adbrite So I thought I could test revenuepilot using high paying keywords, even if they're not relevant to my website. Note that the FAQ on their website reads: "3. Which keywords should I use? You can choose keywords that are relevant to your site’s content, but you are not bound to do so.[...] " Also note that they only pay you for traffic from UK, US Canada and Australia, and nothing else. Meaning I was getting clicks from perfectly civilized countries like Germany and France and I was getting paid 0. So I set up geotargeting to only serve their ads to US people, and started getting some high-paying clicks (around 10-15 clicks so small stuff). The day after I wake up to see that those "high-paying" clicks were paying me 0 or 1 cent (max)...they had disabled the "premium" advertisers without telling me anything This is my mail to them: Ken: All the keywords are now paying 0 - 1cent whereas some hours ago they used to pay way more, what's happening? did you pull the advertisers from my account without telling me anything? RP Support:Our system takes off premium ads from any account that is doing something suspicious. And then we have a live representative to inspect the traffic. Here are the problems that we noticed with your traffic: 1)None of your pages have our ads but the clicks are coming from them somehow 2)You are using keywords that aren't related to your web site 3)There were a lot of strange clicks from IP 4.224.249.27 You need to resolve all 3 of these problems until we can let you use our premium advertisers again. This was clearly ridiculous, 1) is because I was geotargeting and they were probably not using a US IP, 2) is clearly stated in their own website and 3) is just an idiot who kept clicking on the same ad over and over, and I have no power over that... so I told all this stuff to RP support and their answer was.. RP Support:Our FAQ says: "You can choose keywords that are relevant to your site's content, but you are not bound to do so." We strongly suggest using keywords that ARE relevant but we wont do anything to prevent you from using other keywords. The problem with Gambling keywords is that advertisers are very sensitive about traffic since they are paying so much for it. So gambling advertisers watch traffic very careful and if they complain about your traffic we'll have to refund their money. This is why we are suggesting to you some other type of keywords not dealing with gambling. We are turning on our premium ads now and let us know when you activated our ads on your web site so we can see it. So I activated back their ads, and sent them a mail, and got about 10 more clicks. Note that IN TOTAL I got around 20 clicks in 2 days The following day, I wake up and the good advertisers are gone once again, and I had been getting 0-1cent clicks all night. Obviously, nobody told me the advertisers were disabled, so I sent them this mail: Ken:This morning the advertisers are disabled again, and there's no mail from you... I've pulled the ads again until I hear back from you.. Note that some of the advertisers that were paying 1cent are the SAME that the day before were paying way more...Draw your own conclusions, if you're smart you'll quickly realize what this means Anyway, the answer from their support was: DP Support:The traffic quality from your web site is very low and our premium advertisers have complained about it. We are still giving you other advertisers and if you stop using casino/gambling keywords you'll be able to find some good bid prices. This is a joke... 1)I don't believe that people who are paying 1$ per click manually check every referral, every day, and get upset+send a mail if a person sends them 20 clicks (20 clicks damnit, not 2 million) 2) Maybe my traffic wasn't relevant, but it still was fully US traffic, and their TERMS OF SERVICE clearl say I'm allowed to use irrelevant keywords, you can't just silently pay a publisher 1cent on 1$ clicks hoping he won't notice, and when he complains make up fluff stories about "upset advertisers", this is insulting to my intelligence, I'm sorry 3) Even more insulting to my intelligence was that the "some good bid prices" were this: Mortgage - Max Bid: 0.01$ Loans - Max Bid: 0.01$ Viagra - Max Bid: 0.03$ Phentermine - Max Bid: 0.02$ Frankly, I'm tired of Ad networks that behave like bullies trying to get free clicks from us publishers, this is not serious business...
wow thnaks for bringing that to the table, i am new tot he ad game and feel that this is very useful thanks once again for such a useful post
just for the sake of honesty, they have sent me an email with high-paying keywords to "apologize" for what happened..
Hi Chad, I've had good results with Allfeeds.com - they always pay (and pay on time), and don't "major in the minors" like it sounds RevenuePilot does. You can click the link in my signature if you'd like more information. HTH, Sam
Is there some easy way to know or a reference somewhere that spells out what I can put with Adsense and what I can't? I am so afraid of violating TOS that I don't think I am using my site to it's best $ advantage. I was reading an old post about Amazon affiliates and even though they supposedly don't pay as well, I feel safe putting them with adsense! I also have Revenue Pilot and I somehow knew I could put that with Adsense but it's only on one page. I just checked it, hovered over the your ad here and this huge adbrite ad came up which was really unattractive ( didn't click it, just waved the mouse over and it took over the screen). I think that made my site look bad. I just applied for Chikita and have seen them with Google adsense I think so can that work together like Amazon and adsense? If any of you know a good reference link I'll read it. Thanks
Good to know about RP. I have applied for it. Chitika refused to take me in reasoning I have less traffic.
I'm not aware of any comprehensive reference, but you may want to check out Joel Comm's 'Adsense Chat' forum - he's done a lot of research on what can and can not be used in conjunction with AdSense, so you may find some answers there. If you simply can't find an answer relating to a particular service, I'd suggest contacting AdSense Support - they're usually very quick in responding, and then you'll know for sure. HTH, Sam
Dont know but something have happened with RP in last two months.Every1 is getting same problem.The clicks which were generating 0.2$ to 1.2$ now are around 0.02.....what a downfall...m shocked and surprised...And in check prices also they are showing only cents of all keywords.Havenot mailed them yet cause my site is quite small and very few visitors.But i think they were distributors of 7search and most probably now 7 search have kicked them or they themselves have broken their partnership.So this could be the only reason for a network to comedown from $ to cents.Any publisher here still getting good $/click..Please input their feeds so that matter gets clarified
Kendothpro, I completely agree with you as I have made the exact same bad experience just a couple of days ago. I setup revenuepilot ads mostly using the keywords gambling, viagra, insurance and the such. As soon as I reached 10$ a day, revenuepilot disabled the so called premium advertisers making my income less than peanuts (now around 0.01$, before around 0.5-1.2$) Then I tried to contact their support through their contact form, only to get a "undelivered mail returned to sender" in my mailbox. Luckily I could locate someone called revenuepilot on another webmaster forum. This is what I wrote him: This was his answer:
best to send them targeted traffic even if it's not in their toc... and yes, gambling advertisers do check referrals daily/weekly
I don't see how you could be so angry with them. If they suspect suspicious activity and or their advertisers complain about quality of traffic, then they have every right to downgrade your account. I'm sure they don't do this intentionally to rip you off. They are out there to make money just as much as the rest of us. It's not as if they let you rake up $1000's and disabled your account before payment was to be made. The thing that most likely happend was, whoever their XML partner is, noticed suspicious activity, contacted RP and told them to disable xyz affiliate. So thats what they had to do. Thats just my opinion though.
Sorry, I'm with MikeG. It is unfortunate that it happened but they have to do what their advertisers ask. Although that is only 20 or so clicks per day, it still represents an investment to the advertiser in question... I don't think what happened was unreasonable. At least, it's comparable to smart pricing.