Getting raped in arbitrage

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cadmium said:
Reading posts for the past week inspired me to try my hand at PPC arbitrage. You guys seem like you know how to arbi, especially chrislingle and setec. I only have 3 pages so far. I've been getting decent CTR, but my adsense isn't getting more than $.15 CPC.

I thought the digital camera niche would pay out, but I'm getting $.12 CPC for this page. I'm even targeting the keyphrase 'sony digital camera' which costs $4.65-$3.85 according to adWords. I was expecting at least $.50 CPC for adSense.

Does this have to do with smart pricing? I've heard the term, but am not too familiar with it. I'm using 7search.com for my traffic.
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Did you try other niches besides that one?
 
Intranet said:
Did you try other niches besides that one?
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Yeah, but just a few. I realize testing and experimenting is a major part of PPC arbitrage.

It's time I start making lots of pages and testing tons of niches. Now that I have some suggestions I'll waste less time.

Balls to the wall...
 
Your ad layout blows dude.. no wonder you are getting killed. Also, which traffic sources are you buying from, you should never pay more than $0.06 at most for a click. The whole idea is to take cheap as shit traffic that doesn't convert for anything else, and send it to an information, content saturated page/site. Also, a key feature is melding the ads into the content, not putting ads on the side, everyone knows those are ads! Put a 468 or a 728 in between the paragraphs so they each have 3-4 text ads per ad bar. Use a different font color too or layout color, and make sure the ad blocks look EXACTLY like the content. Don't make the ads have a background color different from the content.

You fools!
 
Maybe we should have a contest to see who can create the worst-looking arbitrage layout. Bonus points if it actually converts ;)
 
Jon said:
Your ad layout blows dude.. no wonder you are getting killed. Also, which traffic sources are you buying from, you should never pay more than $0.06 at most for a click. The whole idea is to take cheap as shit traffic that doesn't convert for anything else, and send it to an information, content saturated page/site. Also, a key feature is melding the ads into the content, not putting ads on the side, everyone knows those are ads! Put a 468 or a 728 in between the paragraphs so they each have 3-4 text ads per ad bar. Use a different font color too or layout color, and make sure the ad blocks look EXACTLY like the content. Don't make the ads have a background color different from the content.

You fools!
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I was getting 50-75% on that template I gave out.. not the best but its just ads with content wrapped around and the now against the rules image placement.. meh
 
Jon said:
Your ad layout blows dude.. no wonder you are getting killed. Also, which traffic sources are you buying from, you should never pay more than $0.06 at most for a click. The whole idea is to take cheap as shit traffic that doesn't convert for anything else, and send it to an information, content saturated page/site. Also, a key feature is melding the ads into the content, not putting ads on the side, everyone knows those are ads! Put a 468 or a 728 in between the paragraphs so they each have 3-4 text ads per ad bar. Use a different font color too or layout color, and make sure the ad blocks look EXACTLY like the content. Don't make the ads have a background color different from the content.

You fools!
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Ok, here it is:
http://gametell.com/layout4.JPG

I'm an adsense newb also, so thanks for holding my dick while I piss.
 
Layout3.jpg is definitely better than the earlier ones. I haven't tested one like Layout4 to be sure but it might be worth a try. I've done better with large rectangles and wide skyscrapers though.

I thought of one more little blending tip: make your paragraphs about the same height as the individual ads in your ad block, and space them about the same distance apart as your ads. That works best for me. It makes it harder to tune out the ads on the first visual scan of the page.

You definitely have way more text than you need. Early on especially, when your page creation isn't automated, it's a good idea to come up with a layout that uses barely enough text to target the ads and make the page look legitimate at first glance. That way you can try more niches faster.

you should never pay more than $0.06 at most for a click.
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I think it's a good rule of thumb to not start out paying more than $0.06/click for most untested niches, but most of my profit though comes from tweaking my bids higher to get more traffic once I know the page is paying well.

My best niche is making me about $10/day while I'm paying $0.30 for clicks, and if I were to lower my bids to $0.06, I would only be getting a couple visits a day. You can make a lot more money with really high volume and a 2:1 ROI than with almost no volume and a 20:1 ROI.
 
Setec said:
Hahaha. I'm pretty sure I'm making < 5% of what he's making on arbi... still, it's more than enough to pay the rent. There are lots of people here making way way more than me. Those people seem to have two things in common: a very high degree of automation, and multiple source of PPC traffic. I've just taken a couple steps in that direction so far. Anyway, here are my $0.02:

On your layout: It's too easy to tell your ads apart from your content at first glance. They're spaced about 50 pixels apart and in completely different visual blocks, and the content block is more eye-catching because it's obviously the meat of the page. You want the ads to either look like they are your primary content, or blend in with your content more seamlessly. Try having your text wrapped around an ad to the left of it, with no padding around the ad unit, so when the eye reaches the end of a line of text it naturally continue onto the ad. You should try to match the font and line-spacing of the ads with your text, too. Also, I like to throw some bold words into my text, so that they have the exact same font as the ad titles. I haven't done testing to see if that really helps but it does feel a little better.

Some niche selection tips, all very general and open to lots of exceptions:
  • Look for topics people mostly only search for if they're planning to spend some money. Lots of people searching for digital cameras are just browsing to see what's new or to compare, and the odds are even if they're shopping they're just looking for information on which model to buy and already know where they're going to buy it. On the other hand, if somebody's searching for toaster ovens, they're probably looking for a toaster oven to buy. Nobody's into browsing the latest and greatest toaster ovens for fun. (By the way, toaster ovens pays like shit -- it's an example from my list of scrapped niches, but it's the sort of inconspicuous product that often does well for me.)
  • Try lots of niches at first, not just 2 or 3. My first instinct when I started was to build just a few and tweak them until I had optimal CTR and everything, then build more. That was wrong. Even well-researched niches are so hit-or-miss that you should really have at least 10 or 20 before you start spending much time tweaking other aspects.
  • Stay away from niches with too much of a local component, because the CTR is horrible. One niche like this that I gave up on was flowers. At least on YPN, nobody was advertising national flower delivery services. All the ads are "Flower Delivery Houston" or something like that. Unless the visitor happens to be in Houston, why would they click? (Disclaimer: AdSense sometimes does a good job geotargeting by IP, so local stuff might be fine. My bad experiences with this are from YPN which shows untargeted local ads to everyone, and I've heard AdSense does that sometimes too.)
  • Stay away from broad niches when the visitor is looking for something specific. Example I gave up on: Diabetes Supply. The ads paid well but the CTR was horrible because all the ads were for individual types of supply and the visitors were looking for some individual supply -- usually not the one advertised.
Hope this helps a bit.
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Wicked info Setec, I learned some new shit!
 
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