Since you can arbitrage anything I got to thinking why not do an offer to offer arbitrage. The idea was basically a PPA to CPA arbitrage, essentially just CPA to CPA. The beauty of the PPA/CPA system is that it puts the burden of advertising on the publishers, in this case Adsense publishers. You set your conversion action amount you are willing to pay that publisher for brining you the sale. The number of clicks are irrelevant because you don’t pay for them (but more on that later).

So in this example I had a CPA offer that paid $12 per lead. I set the PPA action amount for $7. So for each completed lead I netted $5 after giving $7 to the adsense publisher. The high payout generated a lot of action for publishers, I tried lower amounts but that led to less interest by publishers.

Now the big problem with this type of setup is technical. You have to have a white label or self hosted offer, because the action confirmation code Google used need to be a static and final confirmation page. The dynamic pages that most affilite networks use to place normal Google tracking code or other pixels did not work for the PPA network code. Luckily I had an offer I could have total control over, so this worked.

So how did it go? Very well. Once publishers started running the ad the clicks started pouring in. Since the action amount was higher than most, a lot of people tried it. The conversion rate was low, but that wasn’t where the majority of the money was made. Which brings us to the part about the free clicks. Finding a way to monetize the free (non converting) traffic is the key to the whole thing.

The defined action was not the only exit point on the landing page. There was a small email signup link to grab double opted in emails for future selling. There were thousands of clicks coming into that page that didn’t convert well on the primary action, but did sign up for the email. Then I was able to convert these free clicks into sales via newsletters. In fact, when I calculated a CPC cost, using the paid out actions I was charged for against the free clicks – I was effectively paying .002 a click. That’s over 100,000 Google clicks for $200

Even though the Google PPA network is gone, there are lots of similar things you can do like this (not the Google Conversion Optimizer though, because that does charge you for all clicks). Hopefully lightbulbs are going off in your head as you read this

Well here’s an example of just how good it can be on the other side of the equation. We have had a PPA (Pay Per Action) campaign set up on Google for a while now, sending traffic to a customer site that we are managing in the Aviation market. (See our visual guide of setting up a PPA campaign) . This PPA campaign is mostly for testing purposes, and not our main driver of traffic at all. So anything we get from it is basically a bonus. As you can see from the screenshot below, it does not convert very well at all for the action that we have set up. However, the traffic does end up staying on the site and looking around, which is great.

For the 1,499 click of Google traffic, we have paid a whopping $9.00. That breaks out to a CPC of $ 0.0060 per click! Now do I feel guilty about all the Adsense advertisers on the content network sending me this traffic and for essentially free? Not at all! I am on that losing side of the equation most of the time, so it’s nice to be the one on the receiving side.

I’m sure all the savvy readers of this blog can think of some very “grayhat” ways to exploit this kind of thing. That’s not how we roll at CDF Networks, but rest assured we have thought of them too.

In January of this year, I posted my extensive test results of 12 PPC networks. Since 8 months is an eternity in affiliate marketing, I decided to revisit this test with a brand new niche and see who performed best and worst. I also added 1 more network, Ask.com, into the mix. The test ran for most of the month of August, and it took me the last 10 days to really analyze the data. Please don’t ask what the offer or niche was, I still need to make a living guys! The keyword list and ads were kept as close as possible on all the different networks. Some minor changes had to be made based on ad copy length restrictions. All landing pages were identical. Bid prices were adjusted to try to keep ad positions as close as possible throughout the duration of the test.

Scoring system:

I rated each network on 3 criteria. Traffic, conversions, and pricing. I had a scoring framework for the different point levels, but obviously some subjective decisions were made in determining each score. Traffic and concerversion rate were given the highest weight, and click pricing was give half weight.

• Traffic Volume (Highest volume = 10 out of possible 10)
• Conversion Rate (Best conversion rate = 10 out of possible 10)
• Click Pricing (Lowest pricing = 5 out of possible 5)

For a best possible total score of 25

The Results:

Overall Winner:

Yahoo came out on top. With their strong traffic volume, and strong conversions, Yahoo surged to past rivals MSN and Google. Their moderately priced traffic and more lenient quality score (compared to Adwords) also helped Yahoo grab the top spot.

Traffic Volume Winner:

No suprise that Google Adwords is the leader in this category. As the king of search and a 2/3 market share for most keyword searches, they reign supreme as the volume leader.

Conversion Rate Winner:

Yahoo and MSN tied for the top conversion rates. The traffic from both of theses networks continues to convert better than Google for most of the niches we have tested. This may be surprising to some, but our data clearly shows big G behind the other 2. Also notable, Looksmart produced strong conversion rates.

Recommended list:

Based on the test results, these are the networks that I would consider testing any offer on:

• MSN
• Yahoo
• Google
• ASK
• Looksmart
• Miva

Avoid list!

These are the networks that are probably not worth your time. But you never know until you test!

• Adbrite
• 7Search
• Enhance
• Kanoodle
• Searchfeed
• Search 123
• Bidvertiser

Want to test these for yourself?  Check out these PPC coupons for some free seed money.

1. First step is to create your action and setup conversion tracking. By going into the conversion tracking section and choosing “Create New Action”.

(Click images to see full size)

2. Then you define your action and set a price for each completed action.

3. Next you will be presented with your conversion code.

4. Paste the conversion code on the “thank you” page of your site.

5. Now tell Google the URL of you thank you page to verify the code installation.

6. If you set it up correctly, Google will verify that tracking is installed.

7. Now it’s time to set up the campaign. Here is where you describe the details that Adsense publishers will see when selecting to run your offer. Be sure to always include an image to set your offer apart from the rest.

8. Create your adgroup.

9. Set up your Geo-targeting and languages.

10. Here is where you write your ads. We will show the standard text ad and the new text link ads. First the standard text ad.

11. Now we will write a text link ad that publishers can drop into paragraphs of text.

12. Google shows you a summary of your approved ads.

13. Now it’s time to set the daily budget.

14. Finally you are presented with the campaign review page where you can make any changes you would like. If it looks good, hit save, and your campaign is good to go!

You are done!