Miva is a TOTAL fraud
saddly must agree. There was a time when Findwhat was half-decent but those times are far in the past (in my experience).
I just got thru writing them because I’d started some non-gambling keyword campaigns with them only to see the budget I’d deposited into their site .. be eaten up in 24 hours because I reduced the gambling campaigns to the lowest possible bid instead of turning them off.
MIVA responded
I checked your account and you have successfully placed all of your gambling ads OFFLINE. If you can provide your referrer logs, I can complete a traffic review and see if there was any fraudulent activity. If we do find anything out of the ordinary, we will issue a refund.
Here’s what I wrote them:
Hi, how do I pause my gambling campaigns? It never fails no matter how much I deposit … and despite the fact that I make very low bids … the next day my money is gone and I’ve nothing or little to show for it. That said: i don’t want to delete the campaigns because maybe someday you guys will figure out how to get the click fraud/or whatever it is that causes this … fixed and provide decent traffic.
Its absolutely unbelievable to me that so much (gambling) traffic can be generated on such low bids when if the traffic was worthy it would demand click prices similar to that of Overture’s a few years back when clicks were as much as $25 to $40. Apparently there is no safe positioning left anymore at Miva when I can go thru so much money at $.15 a click. I would think Miva would be extremely concerned such results occur as whether you know it or not your reputation amongst the gambling industry has fallen from being a place that was okay if you stayed away from major keywords that demanded high prices to having traffic the equivalent of nothing short of a parade of fraudulent clicks. I’m not unreasonable and have not complained all these years but its gotten so bad that I can’t even have a gambling site listed at Miva because regardless how low I bid …. every single time my budget is used up within 24 to 48 hours.
MIVA sucks. Too bad too because once again its not being able to see the dollar for the dime in front of them that they’re trying to steal.
Currently you can rank #1 for many fairly common keywords while bidding the minimum. That tells me they’re income from gambling is dwindling to near nothing … when you compare to the $25+ per click Overture was getting about 4 years ago …
I wonder how they’d be sitting now if they’d bothered to police their traffic in even the smallest honest attempt to cut out frauds?
Reputation is an EXTREMELY hard thing to recover once it has become so worn with time and exposure to those that it should matter most …. and do you think the casino sponsors will take note of this?
Not most of them. They’re too busy scheming on how to cheat you out of what little you’ve got left coming to you to bother to see that if they think things are tough now while they still have a few quality affiliates left to their credit … what things are going to be like in another year or so.
Call it Karma, or “what goes around comes around” or whatever you want … but taking the low road will always result in eventual situations which are much, much worse than they would have been if the program had just kept plucking along … INCREASING that reputation instead of drowning it …. to see the kind of quality results that will happen for sponsers smart enough to not run-off the very people who have earned them the money to get them where they are now … in a year or two’s time later down the road when they’ll not only be enjoying the continued earnings from their loyal affiliates but also all the earnings which will be coming in from all the new partners they will have accumulated thru word of mouth via recommendations.
The time will come when places that have cheated us or that are intending to cheat us … when they will no longer see the money coming in that is currently blinding them to choose to take the low road.
well I have to go have another session with my anger control doctor.
Dr Smirnoff may have to call in additional help for me from Dr Bacardi.