Good Post from Finch about Traffic Arbitrage

This guy produces some solid posts. You should keep checking his blog when you got time:

http://finchsells.com/2011/06/12/the-worst-converting-campaign-of-all-time

Above is another post where he talks about spamming world and what it takes for them to generate a sale. You can read full article in NYTimes. What’s interesting is that it takes around 12 million spam emails for a spammer to generate one sale of Viagra pills for $100. I had no idea what their conversion rate was, but I definitely thought it’s much higher than that. Nevertheless spam still exists. And the reason is, despite the shittiest conversion rates like this, they still make money. The point here is no matter what your EPC’s, CR’s, ECPM’s are… if you can get traffic cheap enough to profit, you’re in business.

Finch put it this way:

It hardly matters if you convert at 10% or 1% on an affiliate offer, only that you understand the mechanics of the equation better than your competition. You could be the best sales writer in the world but if you have no understanding of the arbitrage attached to your work, you can never be a successful affiliate marketer.

You don’t need to jump on Pulse360 and bid $2 a click to get any impressions on MSNBC.com. Maybe it’s time to look at the neglected traffic sources? I won’t recommend you to make another deposit at Adbrite.com. Playing Russian roulette would be safer that this. But there are shitloads of advertising sources that folks don’t take advantage of.

For example, I once was making money pushing physical products on TrafficJunky.net. Yep, that’s the network that pushes traffic through Pornhub.com, Keezmovies.com and all other filthy porn sites around. The number of traffic is impressive. Quality is also in a negative way. But only if you look at conversion rates. With their low CPM’s, I was still able to break even and profit a little. I don’t advertise there anymore, but many folks still do. It’s obviously hard to convert anything non porn related there, but if you can make it work, that’s some under the radar money for you. Or you could push porn affiliate programs, why not. If you’re not ashamed to tell your grandma how you make money, do it. Especially if you take clips of your grandma and post them on some of these sites lol.

Ok, little too far…

But my point is, there’s lots of poor quality traffic around, but it’s also priced accordingly. (Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t negotiate). If you can take a campaign on some of these low key traffic sources and make profit, I can bet you can keep your profit pipe pumpin’ a little longer.

So think about those ad networks you haven’t touched before, and start testing if you have some spare cash around. You may be surprised to discover a new decent ROI campaign that’s not being scanned/copied by every affiliate around.