What is traffic arbitrage?

Traffic arbitrage is one of the popular ways to make money online in Ukraine. It is worth remembering that all those who are now TOP arbitrageurs once started from scratch. Although the unknown concept of traffic arbitration and how to work with it can frighten beginners, everyone can figure it out, even if they heard these words for the first time.

The number of Internet users and Google is growing every day, and the faster advertising technology develops, the more popular arbitration will be. That is why investments in the field are constantly increasing, and according to Ukrainian experts, the budget for arbitration traffic will grow by 15% every year, at least until 2025.

In this article, we explain as clearly as possible what arbitrage and traffic is, and how to make a significant profit from it.

What is traffic arbitrage?

In simple words, traffic arbitrage is one of the ways to save budgetary funds for advertising goods or services. The whole point boils down to the fact that the specialist is paid only after attracting users to the site and receiving customers from the customer.

An arbitrator is a specialist who simultaneously increases the amount of traffic to the customer’s website through Google and other Internet resources in several ways. The customer, in turn, receives sales and pays a percentage of his profit to the arbitrator. The specialist independently chooses an advertising strategy that, in his opinion, is suitable for each individual case, involving different channels.

Let’s look at examples of how an affiliate manager works.

• The customer knits unique handmade swimsuits worth UAH 2,500 each. The arbitrator chooses social networks to attract customers: Facebook, Instagram and additionally upload videos on Tik-Tok. Creates or edits existing accounts, publishes posts, and configures targeting. For each buyer, he receives UAH 500, which he adds to the cost of the swimsuit. Thus, the product is sold for UAH 3,000, and the difference is the specialist’s reward for the work done.
• There is another option – the use of intermediary platforms (CPA networks). Such services are a kind of guarantee that the partners, the customer and the arbitrator will perform their work honestly. CRA networks are paid and charge a commission of approximately 30% of sales for their services. Here the earnings are calculated as follows: UAH 2500 – UAH 750 (platform commission) – UAH 500 (arbitrator’s commission) = UAH 1250.

In the second option, such cooperation is less profitable for the customer, but on the other hand, there are guarantees that the number of received orders will be more stable. Which method of work to choose is up to each individual, but first you should try both to understand all the pros and cons.

6 types of arbitrage traffic

Let’s consider what types of traffic arbitrage exist and what exactly they differ from each other. In general, the differences are in how users get to the customer’s site.

1. Direct is when users manually enter the address of your web resource or go to the site from their bookmarks every time.
2. Organic means that users search for goods or services in a Google-type search engine and go directly to the customer’s site to view and familiarize themselves with the offered goods or services, and then place an order.
3. Referral brings potential customers through links on third-party resources, such as partner portals, mobile applications or messengers.
4. Paid is an option when users click on ads that are competently created by an arbitrator in contextual advertising, targeted on social networks, banners, etc.
5. Traffic from social networks brings interested users from pages to social networks. As already indicated in the example above, it can be, for example, Instagram, Facebook, Tick-tock and the like.
6. Undefined arbitrage traffic is the most mysterious phenomenon. Users come to the customer’s site, but it is impossible to trace from were. This happens because of their use of VPNs, anonymizers or proxies.

Usually, in order to obtain the best and fastest possible result, the webmaster-arbitrageur uses paid traffic, setting up advertising of goods and services, which brings the maximum number of interested “warm” customers to the customer. But in order to reach the target audience in this way, you need to have a starting budget that can be spent on paying for promotion.

It is also important to be able to analyze the effectiveness of all types of created advertising and optimize it in order to increase the number of conversions to the customer’s site while spending less of your own money. It is possible to save money only if the arbitrator has been promoting himself or others on the Internet for a long time and has a previously developed base – his active Telegram channel, website or blog, pages in social networks. Such traffic will be either very cheap or even free, which is very profitable and allows you to make money on arbitrage easier and faster.

Returning to those who have just begun to learn what arbitration is and decided to try themselves in the profession, we note: it is never too late to start from scratch. The competition in the niche in Ukraine is not so great, and a competent specialist will always have a queue of those wishing to use the services.

How to make money on traffic arbitrage

If you have a desire to get a new Internet profession and earn money online, then arbitrage profit is one of the most relevant and effective ways in Ukraine.

For example, consider the arbitrage network scheme for earning on an advertising campaign, where payment for clicks is defined. Let the cost of one click on an ad be $0.2. You can place such an ad or banner on third-party sites or on your own landing page, which was promoted in advance. The arbitrator offers his customer to buy a click at a price that is 1 dollar more, that is, for 1.2 dollars. In this way, you get traffic cheaper and sell it more expensively – the difference will be your profit.

Three ways to arbitrate traffic

On the Internet, many people express the opinion that arbitration is something illegal, but this is written by people who do not understand what it is and why it is necessary at all.

Redirection of traffic between resources is in no way related to spam or intrusive advertising, provided that the arbitrator uses “white” methods, which we will talk about below.

There are 3 main methods of arbitration:

1. Subjects permitted by Ukrainian law are easy to promote, and such traffic arbitration performs its functions efficiently and brings leads to the customer’s site. For example, you can redirect users from a web resource that sells dermatological products to a site for decorative cosmetics, showing the latter’s favorable offers.
2. Next comes the method, which involves small tricks on the part of the webmaster. It is called gray, because a specialist can attract the attention of users with unusual banners, which will have a picture and an intriguing inscription. This will interest the visitor and he will click on the created creative, thereby going to the site required by the customer.
3. The last, least desirable to use is black ice generation. It involves the deliberate deception of users who, due to ignorance, will click on a link to a resource that will harm them.

Next, we will analyze in more detail how “white” traffic differs from “black” traffic.

What is white and black arbitration

The entire stream of potential customers going to the site is divided into “white” and “black”. The difference between the methods is their legality and transparency.

“White” is safe and stable, but to use it, you need to have a good background of knowledge and skills, and spend more time and effort on its implementation.

The method is suitable for qualitative and effective advertising and promotion of companies on Google and other resources, various online stores and service providers that work as transparently as possible. Such customers of arbitrator services always provide their potential customers with complete and up-to-date information about their activity and its features, so the specialist does not need to invent something and cheat when attracting traffic. “White” arbitration is relevant, for example, for the promotion of training courses, online stores selling clothes or shoes, children’s goods or household items.

At first glance, “black” traffic is more profitable, because it can bring more profit in a shorter time, but the risks are too great.

It’s easy to get blocked and penalized by the search engine. This method is used to promote web resources in Google that aim to deceive their users in any way or even contain viruses. On the Internet, you can find sites that promote gambling, casinos or resources that offer bookmaking services, that is, accept bets on various events. It is clear that these services do not provide the user with any guarantees of success, which is considered illegal appropriation of funds. In order to avoid prohibitions from the law, the owners of such resources have to evade and attract the attention of customers by deception.

Traffic arbitrage: where to start and what to pay attention to

To make money on traffic arbitrage, you need to understand some nuances. First of all, it is an understanding of who, how and where to show advertising. To get the desired result, you should start with advertising campaigns with a minimal advertising budget, test and find the most profitable options and use them in your work.

The stages of the arbitrator’s work are as follows:

1. Define a niche. Study the market and find out which niches are currently the most in demand for arbitrage traffic. For example, in 2022 in Ukraine, the most popular for advertising on Google were fashion, electronics and home goods. A niche can be anything from marketing and education to specific pet or sports products. There is only one important rule here – remember that a higher price per click will give you a higher profit.
2. Choose tools to engage your target audience. If you’re not familiar with them yet, learn and test. SEO promotion, analytical services such as Google Analytics, paid advertising on Google, social networks and YouTube, platforms for buying advertising and other tools will come in handy. Do not forget that it is better to start advertising campaigns with a minimum budget at first to avoid high costs and disappointments.
3. Choose the affiliate marketing model you want to work with. There are four of them:

• CPC (cost per click) – profit due to clicking on an advertisement;
• CPA (cost per action) – payment for a targeted action performed by a visitor on your customer’s website (subscription to a newsletter, adding a product to the cart);
• CPI (cost per install) – the arbitrator will receive money only after the user installs the customer’s application;
• CPL (cost per lead) – funds are received after the registration of the visitor is completed.

Please note that there is no hard and fast rule for choosing only one model. It all depends on the overall project promotion strategy that you have chosen for yourself.

      4. Create interesting and unique content for the project with which they decided to work. Such a resource, which not only works with blind seo with key queries, but is also useful for people, will be interested in a larger number of potential customers, and high-quality visuals and text content will contribute to native advertising – voluntary reposts that will increase the profit of the arbitrator and the customer.

      5. Optimize and scale ad campaigns after testing. Without analyzing the results and improving them, high-quality traffic arbitration is impossible.

Last but not least, invest money and time in self-development. The arbitrage market is constantly changing, and to get more income, you should familiarize yourself with new tools, algorithms, and follow trends.

To summarize

Affiliate marketing is interesting due to the variety of tasks for the arbitrator and profitable for the customer due to the presence of a flow of customers without any effort on his part. But this tool is not very stable and the output result, i.e., profit, will depend on many factors.

An experienced arbitrator must have knowledge in various areas:

• understand how to identify the target audience;
• select the necessary sources of the flow of potential customers and be able to analyze their effectiveness;
• create advertising messages or set up advertising campaigns according to all sales rules;
• optimize the received conversion and the rate of return;
• quickly make changes to your advertising campaigns to improve profitability.

At first glance, everything is difficult, but it is quite possible to figure it out and eventually earn more than $1000 per month. Testing several product promotions options at once, having technical skills and creativity will give the desired result. If you have a budget for initial investments and a little adventurousness – definitely try yourself in this interesting and profitable field.

Olha Tyshchenko

Editor

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