SearchTimes lay down the law.

For those of you who aren't affiliates of SearchTimes this also pertains to you also.

Here is a copy of email sent to members.

Begin:

Dear affiliates,
We have paid commissions for February 2003. In the future you will also be able to request payment by another payment method, which is called Stormpay. We are checking each affiliate account very carefully. If any one is promoting our search link against our rules, we will take legal action against you and your company. Our rules are given below:


1. You cannot ask your visitors to search and click web sites in searchtimes on any pages of your web sites or emails.

2. You cannot advertise searchtimes search link in any paid emails and/or paid to click web sites.

3. You cannot advertise our search links in paid to search sites and search exchange programs.

4. You cannot put our search link in getpaidforum.com or any such incentive forums.

5. You cannot specify any key word in search link for your visitors.

6. You cannot indicate any kind of monetary award for making searches.

7. You cannot make any indication promoting a specific or high bidded keyword.

8. No webmaster of any paid email/paid to click/paid searches/search exchange program is allowed to accept incentive advetisement from any of our affiliates.

If you know any of our affiliate promoting searchtimes against the above rules, inform us and we will give you high rewards for such information.

END:
======
Now I don't know about you but basically they want you just to put their search box on your site (taking valuable real estate) in the hopes someone will stop by and happen to be looking for something.

why the heck do you want to waste a spot on your site that doesn't generate some kind of revenue.

you can't ask members to use it.

I think we should all take down the search boxes and see how many searches are done through their engine.

I am soooo mad. I have had this account for more than 2 years and I have yet to cash out because of some of the rules being so stringent. Now that I finally have some members I can ask to use their engine even that is forbidden.

Sorry so long but this is very upsetting to me.

the reason, why do they do this .. is that too many of the people out there cheat them. And their advertisers are not interested in FAKE traffic. They want to get what they pay for. Real visitors and real searchers. You want to say that you pay attention to the advertisers you search for? I don't think so .. all that most of the people do is click for money.

I do agree there are alot of searches going on that are detrimental to the advertiser on a search engine.

I have to say though I don't like these new terms. I have the search box on my sites and I put the link in my emails BUT NEVER ONCE have I EVER offered incentive for my members to use them - but by the sounds of the new terms, I am not allowed them to be in my emails or on my sites.



I hope that is just an unfortunate way they have worded it - and they will allow me to continue to have the boxes there - I hope they just mean that we're not allowed to have it up as a paid to click - but I don't think it is

I'll have to email them - I'll never reach payout if I'm not allowed to use the boxes on the sites!!

Oh well, just some more fun LOL

I understand about the cheating and how it isn't fair to the people who are paying to be listed on these search engines. I understand that there are people who click just for the money and not searching for something that interests them too. I don't understand why you can't tell people that you have that search engine on your site for their convenience to do searches and that for using the box on your site that they will be rewarded.

The main reason I put that post up though was to warn other people who aren't affiliated with them and having someone buy advertising (paid 2 click sites) asking others to do a search for them.



As it stands now ... it doesn't look as though you can even mention that you have that search available for use. Maybe I am not understanding from the wording of the message but thats what it sounds like to me.

Maybe they read your post debby ... who knows ;-)

Latest mail :
Dear affiliates,

It is time to bring uniformity in our ways to promote SearchTimes. To help you with this, our team has worked out an impressive list of promotional lines, which will help better click-thrus and in turn increase your earnings.

Please find below the list of acceptable and non-acceptable text formats for promoting SearchTimes.


********************************
Acceptable Text for Search Promotions
********************************

All webmasters and affiliates are allowed to promote our search engine with following text or any other non-incentive text. Examples of such text are given below:

Get Wise. Search with Searchtimes
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xyz

Search Better...with Searchtimes
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xyz

SearchTimes. Good Times. All the Time.
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xxx

Good Times. Better Times. SearchTimes.
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xxx

Search The Web
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xxx

Search For Quality
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xxx

Search what you need
http://www.searchtimes.com/index.php?AID=xxx


****************************************
Non Acceptable Text for searchtimes promotion:
****************************************
All webmasters and affiliates must not promote our search engine with following text or any other incentive text. These instructions violate our search rules. Examples of such text are given below:

1) Click on the link

2) Make a Valid Search

3) Click on a result

4) Wait for the page to load

5) Receive credit for that link.

If you see any one promoting our search link with above text, just inform us. Your cooperation in this regard will really help you to earn big commissions every month by keeping our top advertisers with us. If any affiliate is promoting searchtimes in an incentive manner then it results in big loss to all affiliates and you will make less money with searchtimes. We want to run searchtimes in a way, which should give quality traffic to all advertisers and regular high-income opportunity for all our affiliates. Let's work together and promote searchtimes in a way, which is according to rules so every one can benefit.


****************************************
Resources for Promotion:
****************************************
We are adding a link called "Resources of Promotion" in affiliate control panel. Under this you will be able to see places where you can advertise your search link for free. You will also be able to find many web sites where you can promote searchtimes at a low cost. We will keep on researching and update this section for you. Kindly request you to use these resources to promote searchtimes and thus increase your earning.

Searchtimes.com

A Better Way to Search & Explore

I've had communications lol.

I explained how I've been doing it - putting the link at the bottom of my paid mails (with no incentive), and they've said thats fine.

I suppose the best way about it would be to let members of paid-to sites know that any revenue from activities such as searches, will be used to fund the site, therefore there would be more funds to increase the values of links etc. That way, the members know if they search they will benefit, but they are not being given a direct incentive to make any particular search.

I've been doing it that way with SearchTimes - I let members know that any revenue produced by the site, is put back into the site - which it is! But I've never offered any member an 'incentive' to perform a search - and I've been told the way I am working is fine for their terms.

Because thats an incentive search. Let me help you out a bit. Some of the feeds that supply the results for places like SearchTimes have advertisers that pay upwards of $1-$2 sometimes more for every time someone clicks one of their links. Now would you want to be paying that much for some member of a PTR to click on something they are not even interested in so it can earn some PTR webmaster $$?

People fail to see that search engines are just that search engines with affiliate programs not paid to clicks. If the advertisers for these search engines see a bunch of clicks and no sales they arent going to come back. So I personally dont blame them.

Alot of us webmasters in PTRs try to make some $$ doing this me included but you cant blame the search engines if you get your account deleted or they change the terms to save their business...thats a chance you take.

They wouldnt even let me signup yesterday

I understand how they want it now. I see why spending $1 -$2 for someone to just click and not be even interested in what you have to sell or say would make me angry. I wouldn't mind if they were genuinely doing a search for what they really were looking for and got paid to do it. I guess just too much cheating ... what a pity.

Thanks for the update and clarifications. This stuff makes me crazy.