Arbitrage Experiment: Day 1

Discussion in 'Reporting & Stats' started by Anteros, Dec 4, 2006.

  1. #1
    3 days ago I started a new site with a long unique article written by me about making money online in spanish. I got a good domain related to the keyword and after proof reading the article and making a simple layout, I started an adwords campaign for the keywords related to my site.

    I got 200 keywords and 1 CPM ad on a link farm site I know in my country.

    3 days after, adwords ads kicked in (they didn't show until today) and after the end of the 1st day the stats are the following:

    Earned: $7
    Spent on adwords: $2.91

    Profit: $4.09

    Of course, this is just the 1st day so there are many things to improve and also I still need for google to make the ads more contextual. I think the CTR will improve and when the ads get contextual I will also increase my marketing and SEO budget to start getting some organic traffic.

    What I've learned today:

    - Long contextual articles = Lots of clicks on the top ads and very few clicks on bottom ads.

    - Even without adwords you can get some traffic but you can't depend on that unless your site has a lot of visitors and you have long term plans for the site.

    - Think outside your country if your country is small like mine. Very few ads show on google when I search. For optimum results, search google using a proxy from a country you want to target and see how many ads for that keyword show up on that country. Also use overture keyword and bid tool and google keyword tool / trends, etc.

    - Hardest part is writing. Don't write for search engine, write for people. Just make sure that the main keyword is between 3% and 6% of the site content and included in title, description, keywords and article title.

    - Love google and google will love you. Don't violate the TOS and you will get millionare off advertisers and advertisers will get millionare off you by getting targeted visitors.

    I will post when I get more results :D
     
    Anteros, Dec 4, 2006 IP
    iskandar and ReadyToGo like this.
  2. candle21428

    candle21428 Well-Known Member

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    #2
    interesting! Do you use any affiliate program? or just adwords ---> adsense?
     
    candle21428, Dec 4, 2006 IP
  3. jazzbass10

    jazzbass10 Peon

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    #3
    people can also do it by searching on local google sites in that countries google.countrycode in their language such as google.de in german, google.pl in polski and etc.
     
    jazzbass10, Dec 5, 2006 IP
  4. Anteros

    Anteros Peon

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    #4
    Just Adwords > adsense

    I tried it and doesn't work even if I set google to the desired language/country, but it's true that it also shows some other results.
     
    Anteros, Dec 5, 2006 IP
  5. Sockmoney

    Sockmoney Peon

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    #5
    Isn't this against Google's TOS?
     
    Sockmoney, Dec 5, 2006 IP
  6. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #6
    No. Arbitrage has been around for a long time. There are a lot of existing strategies out there if you google around. Essentially, what he's doing is paying for traffic and hoping that the traffic "converts" - and by converting in this case, that means responding to on page ads rather than a purchase.
     
    nevetS, Dec 5, 2006 IP
  7. qwestcommunications

    qwestcommunications Notable Member

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    #7
    Its not a game everyone succeeds at. Even if they do succeed at first, most realise they cannot maintain this over the long run.
     
    qwestcommunications, Dec 5, 2006 IP
  8. Anteros

    Anteros Peon

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    #8
    That's true. That's why it's an experiment. I'm spending money I can afford to lose if it doesn't work. Of course, I hope I will make it work but you never know.
     
    Anteros, Dec 5, 2006 IP
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  9. Futures_Equity

    Futures_Equity Well-Known Member

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    #9
    Interesting. This is less than 2 weeks old so if you feel like updating I wouldn't mind reading.
     
    Futures_Equity, Dec 17, 2006 IP
  10. scubita

    scubita Peon

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    #10
    Great thread. hope to hear from you. how things going? good? bad? so and so?
    I believe there´s a lot of people in the arbitrage business with adsense, adwords and others. Are they winners? I really don´t know! But love to. :)

    I once tried but , went wrong... :(
     
    scubita, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  11. ReadyToGo

    ReadyToGo Peon

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    #11
    Very interesting experiment. Keep it up.
     
    ReadyToGo, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  12. Anteros

    Anteros Peon

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    #12
    Ok here are some updates:

    day 2-3: Ads got contextual and EPC dropped to 10-15 cents. I was paying up to 0.1 in some words so I ended losing money for 2 days.

    day 4-14: I lowered the max cpc in adwords to 0.01 and started making new sites. After some optimization, I'm getting $1-$3 profit/day for each site. Profit ranges from 30% to 60% of the amount spent.

    Also, the sites are all in spanish so EPC and CPC is lower than english sites but there is also a less competitive market.

    Best EPC and CTR for me is in the next format:

    Article title:

    336x280

    Article

    728x90

    White background, black text, body between 750 and 800px wide, justified text.

    Some Key improvements in EPC/CTR:

    - Change keywords that are getting wrong ads with similar words that don't give search results in google.

    - Only 1 336x280 on top. 2 gives a little higher CTR but far less EPC.

    - keyword density between 4% and 6%.

    And again, I'm just a beginner on this so if you have tips post your own results.
     
    Anteros, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  13. candle21428

    candle21428 Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Thanks for the update. Keep it up! I am a subscriber of this thread :)
     
    candle21428, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  14. sandyseo

    sandyseo Banned

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    #14
    Nice analysis
     
    sandyseo, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  15. danfirst

    danfirst Active Member

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    #15
    I've just started with arbitraging too.
    Still can't get the hang of it, just made a few cents (profit though).

    Wish more ppl would share their techniques.
     
    danfirst, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  16. ReadyToGo

    ReadyToGo Peon

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    #16
    Sounds like a good start. Something is better than nothing.
     
    ReadyToGo, Dec 18, 2006 IP
  17. Rasputin

    Rasputin Peon

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    #17
    Very interesting. I tried adwords-adsense arbitrage once but couldn't get it to work, perhaps I'll try again and read up a bit more first

    when you say
    can everyone do that or is that because you are choosing very obscure phrases? - I always get an 'inactive for search' warning if I don't enter more than that.
     
    Rasputin, Dec 19, 2006 IP
  18. Anteros

    Anteros Peon

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    #18
    once you get your ads contextual you can start increasing cost cent by cent until you get the most profit per dollar spent.
     
    Anteros, Dec 19, 2006 IP
  19. thedark

    thedark Well-Known Member

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    #19
    does your website looks like a MFA site ?
     
    thedark, Dec 19, 2006 IP
  20. Anteros

    Anteros Peon

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    #20
    nope because the information is useful and unique on each page. The "writing quality" might not be the best since I'm not specifically a writer but the articles are written for people AND search engine, also they are pretty long, 1000+words and each site is 4/5 screens long
     
    Anteros, Dec 19, 2006 IP