Are people still doing arbitrage or has Google killed it with the "quality score" on adwords? Was thinking about experimenting with this but before I do I'd like to know if its still possible.
LOL. I still haven't looked into google arbitrage much. Are you just trading adwords clicks for higher value adsense clicks? How do you ensure your adsense clicks are worth more? And how can you be certain you will get a high enough conversion rate? They are the questions which have always plagued me with the idea.
Conversion requires a very, very optimized layout of ads to get a 20% or higher CTR. And it has to be high payout topics that will generate at least about $1, on average, per Adsense click. And as for buying traffic there are other PPC networks besides Adwords. My Adword campaigns produce next to nothing in terms of traffic, but other networks work well. But every page, and the PPC ad you use to purchase traffic to it, requires testing to find a formula that works.
They're still viable... they just changed FORM Add some custom content on that puppy. Put an about page, a contact page, etc.
I'm doin fine without an About or a Contact page. But its is original content, thin (about 300 to 500 words per page) but original.
So really it is just a process of optimising your value per click vs your cost per click. Keep the value higher than the costs, you make money. Shame it isn't exactly scale-able though....I mean, you have little control over how much you can bid, you have little control over how much people search for your key phrase, and you have no control over how many people actually use the service you are targetting your ppc compaign at.
Uhm it's still profitable. ROI of 3:1 or 4:1 is pretty easy to get. But if you write custom content or rewrite articles for niches that don't have articles written then there's also too much work involved for me to keep making arbi sites.
It works for me, and it works very well actually. I'm currently getting an average of about 50% CTR on my arbitrage pages and get a ROI of about 300%. People that tell you that it's dead probably tried it and failed miserably.
It's easy to fail in this game. Took me a couple of weeks of testing ad layouts and bid pricing to get to profitable. Total spend on testing was $100, so not a big deal. And am just starting to scale up.
Good point. Like most things I have seen online that involve making money, it actually requires 'learning' something *gasp*. People tend to complain and give up shortly after trying their first draft and having it not work exactly as wanted. Strange concept of 'trying' the internet has bred into us.