7Search as a Traffic Source

[Rvfamily]

7Search as a Traffic Source

What kind of traffic do you get from 7Search? Is it a viable source for your campaigns? How hard is it to get started with 7Search?

7Search

These are the kinds of questions I hope to answer in this case study.

I see many questions about 7Search as a traffic source here in the forum, and decided to provide a concise document detailing my experiences with them as a traffic source. From October 20th until December 25th, I have run 5 campaigns, with several variants. I will provide screenshots for everything so that you can see exactly how I used the platform.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive look at 7Search, but rather a look at them through the eyes of a newbie, just getting started in CPA marketing. I will provide the details of my campaigns, so that you might see where you could do better in some area, which might improve your results on the platform.

Let's start with a quick check of Alexa about 7Search. We see two key statistics that stand out to me. First, the companies website has fallen in ranking over the last year. Second (image not shown), the top three geos to access the site were: USA, India, UK.

To me this says that fewer people are utilizing the ad platform. You can draw your own conclusions about why this might be. But also indicates that there might be opportunity in certain markets/offers if you are willing to do a little experimenting.

So first, a few stats before we get into the campaign specific details.

View attachment 5395

As you can see, I generated a total of 326,959 impressions with 2,721 clicks. I spent a grand total of $269.34 for an avg. CPC of about $0.10 per click. This gives us a CTR% of .83%. As you will see in the shots below, with each successive campaign, I got better at a few critical skills that helped determine this number. These are:

1. Keyword selection- keyword selection and angle selection are two sides of the same coin
2. The angle used in the copywriting- what unique way are you promoting the offer and determines (in part) what keywords you are bidding on
3. Copywriting (both headlines and ad copy)
4. Bidding strategies- are you utilizing bidding strategies to maximize your ROI?

From 2,721 clicks on my ads, I generated 2 conversions with a revenue of $3.60. This gives us a ROI of -98.77%.

I did not spend time blacklisting traffic sources. From what I understand, you need about 100 clicks from a traffic source to feel comfortable deleting it (I must admit this is an area of weakness for me), and I never had enough clicks from a traffic source to do so.

So let's begin with the breakdown from the campaigns page:

Campaign 1

My first campaign was conducted over 4 days (Tues. thru Fri.). The offer was from Peerfly, was for a $500 gift card to use towards the Madden and was a lead gen offer. I utilized three different headline/copy combinations as follows:

Grab Your Copy of the New Madden 16!
Use your complimentary Visa gift card to get a copy of the new Madden 16

Grab Your Copy of the New Madden 16!
Get the all new Madden 16 with your complimentary Visa Gift Card. Enter email for details.

See How Your Team Ranks in Madden NFL 16!
Grab your copy with a complimentary Visa gift card and see how your favorite team ranks in Madden 16.

I ran 658 clicks to this offer, from 81,358 impressions. I used a very small set of very targeted keywords (11 keywords total). The cost for this campaign was $26.82 with a single conversion which netted $1.60.

From the eleven keywords, all but a few of the clicks came from the single keyword (the playstation).

Campaign 2

My second campaign was conducted for an offer from MaxBounty. The offer was for an official team jersey from your favorite NFL team, and had a payout of $1.60 per lead.

I utilized the following two headline/copy combinations:

Are You Fanatical About Your NFL Team!!!
Show your support by picking up an NFL team jersey with and sporting it on game day. Take the short survey and participate to get your official NFL Team Jersey.

Wear Your Favorite Team Jersey For The Next Game!
Show your support by picking up an NFL team jersey with and sporting it on game day. Take the short survey and participate to get your official NFL Team Jersey.

I ran 349 clicks to this offer from 9,503 impressions. Once again, I used a very small set of very targeted keywords (7 keywords total). The total cost of the campaign was $20.97 and did not convert a single conversion.

As you can see, 336 of the 349 clicks came from two of the seven keywords.

Campaign 3

In the third campaign, I worked an offer from MaxBounty. The offer was for Vindale Research (lead gen) and had a payout of $2.00 per lead.

I utilized two different headline/copy combinations, which were as follows:

###INCOME FROM HOME###
Earn an income at home or on the go, from anywhere. Receive up to $100 per survey completed or review products and choose to keep the products that you review.

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD AND EARN UP TO $100 PER PAID SURVEY
A young college student between classes or a mom between feedings; both have limited time and need extra money for new responsibilities. You can receive up to $100 per survey completed or review products and choose to keep the ones you review.

I used a broader set of keywords (25 keywords), and used angle specific keywords as well as others directly related to the offer.

I ran 286 clicks to the offer from 44,674 impressions. The total cost of the campaign was $38.37, and I netted a single conversion for a return of $2.00.

Campaign 4

I worked an offer from MaxBounty for the Salewa Get Vertical Challenge, with a payout of $2.40 per lead. This offer, had perhaps the best landing page of any of the other offers I worked on.

I used two different headline/copy combinations, which were as follows:

GET VERTICAL AND EXTREME SKI FROM YOUR BASECAMP WITH SALEWA
Get Vertical! Win an adrenaline basecamp adventure and extreme ski Grindewald, San Martino Di Castrozza or Alta Badia. Enter and you'll have the chance to instantly win gear from Salewa and Polartec every week.

ESCAPE THE CUBICLE THIS WINTER: EXTREME SKI GRINDEWALD
Get Vertical! Win an adrenaline basecamp adventure and extreme ski Grindewald, San Martino Di Castrozza or Alta Badia. Enter and you'll have the chance to instantly win gear from Salewa and Polartec every week.

I used a set of 35 keywords for this campaign, with the following breakdown of impressions and clicks:

I ran a total of 279 clicks to the offer from 57,254 impressions. The total cost of the campaign was $19.44 with no conversions.

Campaign 5

The next campaign I ran was using an offer from G4 offers (I wanted to test the direct integration feature in P202) for a survey/comparison page for the Samsung Galaxy/Galaxy S6. The offer had a payout of $1.50 per lead.

I used two headline/copy combinations, as follows:

CELL PHONE GOT YOU ON A LEASH?
Is your cell phone on the charger all day? The new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge can charge up to four hours of battery use in just TEN MINUTES! Participate in our survey and you could get your choice and kick the cord habit.

TIRED OF WAITING FOREVER FOR YOU CELL PHONE TO CHARGE?
Is your cell phone on the charger all day? The new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge can charge up to four hours of battery use in just TEN MINUTES! Participate in our survey and you could get your choice and kick the cord habit.

I used the following keyword sets:

I generated a total of 8,704 impressions with a total of 108 clicks. The total spend for this offer test was $18.55, with no conversions.

Campaign 6

This campaign was the most expensive campaign I ran on the 7Search platform, in part because of the data that I got from the initial test. I tested an offer from MaxBounty, for the TripHobo hotel/travel booking platform. The payout for this offer was $14 per action.

I used a total of 6 headline/copy combinations for this offer, working a couple of different angles, over about 6 days. They were:

I COULDN'T BELIEVE HOW CHEAP MY LAST MINUTE HOTEL DEAL WAS!
Looking for the best deals on last minute travel stays? Hotels, Condos, Apts. and more around the world at rates you have to see to believe. In most instances, I can cancel if I need to, with no fee!

HOTEL PRICES SO LOW, YOU'VE GOT TO SEE THEM FOR YOURSELF!
Type in your destination and get the best deals on Condos, Villas, Hotels or Apartments at your travel destination. Accommodations anywhere in the world at the best prices you'll find. Give it a try and see for yourself!

ESCAPE TO KERALA OR GOA THIS WINTER!
Whether your looking to find a beach in Kerala or Goa, you can find fantastic done for you itineraries and unbelievable deals on Villas, Apartments and Hotels when you search TripHobo. Enter your getaway location and see how little it will cost you!

LOOKING TO SKI AULI OR MANALI THIS WINTER?
Whether you're looking to ski the slopes in Auli or Manali you can find fantastic done for you itineraries and unbelievable deals on Villas, Apartments and Hotels when you search TripHobo. Enter your getaway location and see how little it will cost you!

The keywords I used, with a breakdown of clicks and impressions below:

As you can see, India travel was the top clicked kw and also had the most impressions. So I decided to use a more targeted set of keywords and focus on travel within India (ads 3 and 4). The kw breakdown for this below:

From feedback in my follow along, I decided to focus even more with additional targeting and the same set of keywords with the following ads:

HOTEL PRICES SO LOW, YOU'LL HAVE EXTRA MONEY FOR SUNBURN GOA
Find incredible last minute deals on Villas, Hotels and Apartments. Use the money you'll save to celebrate and dance the night away!

YOU HAVEN'T BOOKED YOUR HOTEL FOR SUNBURN GOA YET?
Find incredible last minute deals on Villas, Hotels and Apartments. Use the money you'll save to celebrate and dance the night away!

I spent a total of $130.18 on this campaign, with no conversions.

Conclusions

In conclusion, I would like to provide a few more details I learned along the way about the platform and provide my likes/dislikes about it.

So 7Search is a RTB (Real Time Bid) platform. I like this kind of platform, as it seems to be the easiest for me to understand as a newbie. It's pretty straightforward. You set what your current bid is, and once you update your bids, the position you're bid is in is displayed.

LIKES

I like the fact that you can select a specific keyword and create a completely different ad (See 2 images below). First you click on the "TDU" tab for that keyword (1),

then once the box appears, you can enter your keyword specific ad title and copy.

I didn't use this feature much, but it is nice to know that as you become more advanced, you can use it to really target specific ads to specific keywords.

I like the fact that you can blacklist referrers, when you see that they are not performing well. However it is a little bit of a nuisance that you have to contact them to get them to initiate this for your account (though I understand the reasoning for doing so).

It is very easy to create and post ads to 7Search. There is no quality score, or review process that I know of in order to get your ads posted. This does allow you a little bit of freedom to try some different angles that are a bit out of the box (where the kw and angle are not necessarily directly related to the offer). This is very handy.

Finally, the fact that you can get a 50% increase in your initial account (up to 50 dollars, I believe) is nice. My initial deposit to 7Search was for $100 and they put in an additional $50 for me to get started.

DISLIKES

Now, the dislikes about 7Search.

As stated above, I ran 2,721 clicks through the various ads and offers posted above with only 2 conversions. If you see where there might be significant opportunity in how I conducted these campaigns, then perhaps you might have much better results. This is up to you to decide.

Since I don't have a lot of experience with different platforms, I don't know for sure, but it seems like I've read that when you bid on traffic from other countries, you can get better bids. This was not my experience with traffic from 7Search. In my last campaign, I focused exclusively on traffic from/to India. The bids for the top spots on the specific keywords were the same as when I bid on US traffic. This was a little disappointing.

I received an email pretty early on in my campaigns from the 7Search support team. In the email, they told me that if they could help/answer questions, just let them know. I sent a detailed email, asking them what types of offers seemed to convert well with 7Search. I also told them I knew that it would be unethical for them to provide specific offers, but if they could provide any direction about offer types/verticals, it would be appreciated. I never heard back from them.

I was unable to utilize some of the long tail keywords, which might allow more targeted traffic. If you try to set these, they just simply don't appear as an option to place in your keyword set to bid on.

I would like to conclude by saying that I have found it a useful and easy platform to learn the ropes of PPC advertising. I wonder about the traffic, but read in several places that it was a platform with which you would have to do some searching/testing to find a winner.

It seems to be slower than other platforms and this allows for mistakes to be small (from a financial standpoint), while you're learning the ropes.

If you would like a little more detail about the different campaigns I have run on 7Search, please see my follow along here.

 

[sinam10]

Good casestudy

so , you are not advise to run a campaign through 7sesrch ?

 

[Rvfamily]

The reason I provided this was not to encourage nor discourage people from using 7Search. I have nothing against them. I simply wanted to provide some detailed information based upon my own experiences, which might help others make informed decisions.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[MSI Sakib]

First of all thanks for sharing your experience. We all have something to learn from both successful and failed campaigns.

I usually prefer SEO to promote CPA offer although it takes more time and skill. You can try either RON networks or Search engine based PPC programs (Google ads and Bing ads) for better result.

Thanks

 

[Rvfamily]

First of all thanks for sharing your experience. We all have something to learn from both successful and failed campaigns.

I usually prefer SEO to promote CPA offer although it takes more time and skill. You can try either RON networks or Search engine based PPC programs (Google ads and Bing ads) for better result.

Thanks

@MSI Sakib,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Most of what I've been doing is direct link, so not really much opportunity for SEO (at least as I understand it). I have been working on getting some landing pages set up for different types of offer verticals, but haven't implemented them yet. I work a full time+ job as primary income, and so when I have bits of time, I try to get what I can up and going. I know, short term focus rather than long term focus. An area of improvement for myself in the new year.

Could you provide a little insight into RON Networks (I thought RON was Run of the Network- ad spend type)? Sorry, newbie type question perhaps.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[MSI Sakib]

Hi,
RON networks are good for promoting freebies, app downloading, giveaway etc. type of CPA offers. In case of RON ads you may not have much control over your type of traffic. PPV networks mainly provide RON ads such as directcpv.com, adf.ly, leadimpact.com etc.

 

[gabibeowulf]

While I believe this case study is great and thank you op for providing real data, I also think it's invalid unfortunately.

Here's why...

Problem # 1
=========

This experiment tries to demonstrate if the 7search traffic source is viable by measuring up conversions. (I personally don't think it's good source, but I haven't used it)

The big problem here is that you've tried to promote email submit offers, which are scrubbed hard by advertisers. It's just the nature of this industry.

Here's what you should have done if you just wanted to test out for conversions...

You should've copied the CPA landing page, put it under your own hosting, change the code to integrate your own autoresponder to see the conversions. If you don't know how to do that, someone with a bit of skill could do it in 15 minutes and it wouldn't cost more than $10-$20.

If the offer converts on email submit, that's all you need to set up really. If the offer converts after the lead giving out the address on the next page and also has to get (select) other offers on the offer wall that comes after that, then you're going to have replicate those pages as well and measure the conversions on the last one.

You can't really measure conversions until you're absolutely sure they are tracked and the only way to do that is to have control over the funnel.

If I were a betting man, I would bet that the results would be different if you were in control of the offer.

Problem # 2
=========

You can't really demonstrate a source of traffic is not viable, if you're bidding on broad, unrelated terms.

I mean, you're bidding on "travel agent" and expecting it to convert for "ESCAPE TO KERALA OR GOA THIS WINTER!"

People that search for travel agent are in research mode. I can't see how it could convert to something that's so specific as you're trying to do in your ad. If they were searching for "goa travel december", I would've been very surprised if didn't convert.

Best wishes,
Gabi

 

[Rvfamily]

@gabibeowulf,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. As I stated in the beginning, this was not meant to be a comprehensive look at 7Search as a traffic source, but rather, the experiences of a newbie. Over a period of time, I've seen many people in this forum ask questions about 7S and I tried to provide my own experiences with the platform as a guide. There is no pride here, I just want to learn everything I can, and get better at CPA.

I also stated in the guide, that if someone more experienced could see the flaw in my work, they would perhaps have better results than those I got. After all, I'm not out to promote or malign the traffic platform, just to provide a case study of my experiences.

I realize the limitations of my knowledge in CPA. But could you point out to me how else one would measure the viability of a traffic source other than conversions? I am not sure how else you would analyze viability, since after all, what we are after is a conversion.

The first four offers I tested were indeed leadgen, SOI or DOI offers. However, the last one (and the one I ran the most traffic to and spent the most money on) was for a booking on the site. Not simple SOI leadgen.

If you have been on the 7S platform, you know that there are many long tail keywords that don't have any traffic (they have no suggestions when you enter them). You are correct, that a very targeted keyword; one would use when further down the funnel would be significantly better. If you can't drive any traffic with those, you have no opportunity to scale even if you get a conversion or two.

I admit that I'm pretty new to CPA. Perhaps you could provide a little direction on a question I have had. If you are looking for keywords to use, is it better to use super targeted, down the funnel keywords when running a test, even though you know it means you'll have to test for quite some time, because the traffic for those is very limited on the platform you're using? In each case, I started with a broad set of kw and worked down to a smaller set over time. I used a mix of long tail and short tail kw, in most cases. The number of impressions and clicks was very small from many of the ltkw, which led me to believe even if you found a good converter, you'd never be able to scale. Can you show me the error in this thinking?

Thanks again for taking the time to read and comment.

As always,
Here's to your success!