There seems to be a lot of questions
and confusion about Adsense arbitrage. It has been made out to
be a bad thing and people have become weary to adopt the
technique as an online business. There are also those who say
that sending traffic to affiliate links is much more profitable
than Adsense arbitrage. Lastly there are those who believe that
Adsense arbitrage is easy money just waiting to be picked up.
| What is
Adsense Arbitrage?
Adsense Arbitrage is buying traffic (PPC)
from search engines at a low cost and selling the traffic
to an advertiser at higher price.
Here is how you go about
achieving this:
You identify keywords in a niche market
with a low cost per-click. You direct the visitor to your
landing page where your ads are. The visitor clicks on
your ads which pay more than the ones you bought hence
your profit is the difference between the two. |
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Is
Adsense arbitrage a bad thing?
Firstly Adsense arbitrage is a legal way
of making money online; there is nothing black hat about
the concept. The problem occurred with the misuse of
Adsense arbitrage, and just like the word alchemy (which
for all realistic purposes means nothing more than
chemistry, and was the term used for chemistry in the
early middle ages) now has an occult or wizardry
connotation to it.
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The bad name came about with the advent of the made for
Adsense websites. As their popularity as a form of online income
increased, sales of ready made Adsense websites went through the
roof and the quality of many of these sites were bad, to say the
least. Content on many of the pages was nothing more that a few
words, if that much.
The focus was on getting people to click the ads on the page,
without giving them any other alternative. With the focus
squarely on the click there was no thought for the adwords
advertiser, all he should do is fork out money for the Adsense
website owners pocket.
The net result of this is that the first warning you read in
most information ebooks on adwords is not to advertise on the
Google content network. Why is this? It became totally
untargeted traffic which was of no use and worth zero profit for
the advertiser. So away went loads of cash from the content
network.
Is this still the case?
In broad terms no, there is still some of it around but after
Googles slap and changing the way in which it gave quality score
to landing pages from adword ads it was clear that this practice
has gone out the window, and if you still want to do it be ready
to hand over some serious cash for every click.
To quote Google directly from their page:
Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and
relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for
Google and the search network. This score is determined by your
keywords click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance
of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.
This means everything has to be relevant and Google will
check it. End of story.
Sending traffic to affiliate links, sales pages, does bring
in sales. But in many cases the sales made on the first visit to
a page are very low. So if you are sending traffic directly to
your sales page without getting email details for follow up your
ROI will be very low.
Unless you get a subscription or offer a quality bonus for
buying through your link it does not make a lot of financial
sense. This is why Adsense arbitrage is a good option to follow
if you are not well acquainted with writing squeeze pages or
creating bonus products for your affiliate products.
For those who think making money with Adsense arbitrage is
easy, think again. Yes it is a constant inflow of cash, but you
are paying for that cash, and if you are paying more for your
click that what you are getting paid you will have some serious
cash flow problems to cope with.
A good knowledge of Adsense, adwords and the right business
model is essential for your success with Adsense arbitrage.
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