Affiliate Arbitrage and Google Adwords

Affiliate Marketing Programs :: Affiliate Arbitrage and Google Adwords

Google Adwords, unlike Overture and many other pay per click search engines, currently allows you to send traffic directly to your affiliate link for a program. If you can buy the traffic through Google for less than you make in commissions per click, then you have an arbitrage situation. Basically you're buying advertising on a per click basis and reselling it on a rev share or CPA basis. It's not as easy to do as it sounds, but it can be very profitable if you can find a niche that isn't already full of affiliate arbitrage experts.

I got my start in affiliate marketing doing pay per click arbitrage, and I still rely heavily on pay per click advertising to an extent to generate traffic. Search engine optimization is something I'm learning to do, and it's something I'm pretty excited about. Some of the industries I market have outrageous costs per click associated with them, so if I can get any free traffic at all, then I'm tickled pink.

So there are different strategies to succeed in affiliate marketing. One is the search engine optimization strategy, where you build pages in order to rank them in the search engines. Another is the pay per click arbitrage strategy, where you buy clicks and hope you make more per click than you've spent. Another strategy would be to have an ezine or regular newsletter that goes out via email. There are even some programs that you could promote fairly easily offline. (Party Poker is an example; you give a referral a bonus code, and that code tracks the player back to you so you get your revenue share.)

Google Cash is the ebook I started with. It taught me the basics of affiliate pay per click arbitrage. I then later read James Martell's Affiliate Handbook. He focuses almost exclusively on getting free traffic from the SERP's. I prefer the latter method now, because the ROI on free traffic is always going to be better than the ROI on paid traffic. I recommend both books very highly--they're full of factual how-to nitty gritty action plans that will get you started making money. But don't let anyone tell you that affiliate marketing isn't hard work. No matter which strategy you decide to use, it's real work, and it can be frustrating work.

But believe me it's worth it.

PS The rumors are running hot and heavy that Google is going to change their policy of allowing affiliates to send traffic directly to affiliate links. Probably going to change in the next few days. Which means that a lot of the affiliate arbitrage people will move into something else.