First Time Arbitrageur could use some advice!

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pyrhho

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Aug 29, 2006
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Alright, so I've tried to set up my first arbitrage site. It's at: http://www.studenttourist.com/
(I had the domain sitting around for something else, but that won't happen for a while)

I set it up about 1.5 days ago now, with two listings on searchfeed.com. One listing is for 2 keywords, another for 4 keywords. (I thought I would start small, and see how it goes, then maybe scale up, with more sites, more keywords, etc.)

So far, the results. 7 visitors (from who knows where),with 0.00% CTR, and no clicks on my listings (so at least I haven't lost any money).

Now, I'm not sure, did I completely bugger up my research? are my keywords completely useless?

The keywords I targetted are:
student travel
cheap student travel
international student travel
student travel usa
discount student travel
discount student air travel

I set it to bid $0.05 for each of these keywords.

Should I wait longer, and see if it picks up?

(and yes I know I just posted all my keywords, and bids, etc. but I'm just learning, so even if it is any good, and someone heists it, I'm ok with it. As long as I learn something.)

Well.. Any advice on this?

Thanks so much,
pyrhho
 


Your site took a long time to load... not sure if it was just me though.

Your AdSense was just showing one PSA for me, and the rest of your AdSense blocks were blank. You'd want to get that worked out before you start throwing traffic at it.

From my little bit of experience with searchfeed (and 7search)... you're going to need to build a sizeable keyword list (thousands) to get any kind of measurable traffic with $.05 bids.

So get your AdSense figured out, build up your keyword list, and tweak and tune from there.

Once you get your site dialed in, I'd pursue some other streams of traffic as well. The searchfeed and 7search traffic that I've gotten doesn’t convert like I'd expect it to.
 
ok. thanks for the advice.

I'll work on that. I've heard Dreamhost does load really slow. I'll try to find another host that might be faster.

It's odd about the add blocks. I just loaded it on my computer here, and they load fine. I'll double-check the code and everything, I guess.

thanks very much for your help.
i'll post how it goes in a few days/weeks

pyrhho
 
If you just added the adsense, it will take a while to get targetted ads. Dreamhost is slow off and on. I think it depends on what shared server you are on and what other sites are on it.
 
Just tried it again, all the AdSense is showing up fine for me now... sometimes it takes a bit, like Jdog said.

I'd probably get rid of the vertical dashed line, and make the margin between the content text and the skyscraper ads smaller. No sense in isolating the ads from the content on an arbitrage site.
 
Never tried a color scheme like that, but your going in the right direction. Try adding more keywords to your SF campaign, 7 clicks isn't enough.
 
try hitting keywords on the tail end of that niche, or more specific.. like maybe

Student Travel in Holland,
Student Travel in Europe
Student travel to Carribean ( then mix them up also such as)
Carribean Student Travel
Europe Student Travel
Holland Student Travel ( and again)

Holland for Traveling Students
Carribean for Traveling Students
Europe for traveling Students

Use your imagination, and think how some less than savvy interent users would type a search into google or other SE's. Hit the tailend and see where that goes. On the 2nd tier SE's it seems that 7 keywords want get the same reach ,, so if you make you a list of a few hundred specific keywords you have a higher target ability and a wider reach.

Now where is my fukn rep.... j/k

Hope that helps you out a little.
 
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You might try throwing in some "college student" phrases in there too. I don't know what ppc your using, but it might not treat "college student travel" the same as "student travel".

Edit to add- How about "spring break getaways" and such? never too early to start planning.
 
woooh! so i finally got a click-through! I've had 2 clicks so far, but no one has reached my site from searchfeed, so, who knows. still first money I've made, so I'm not complaining. So far I've gotten about 50 impressions, with 2 clicks, so about 4% CTR. Now, if I'm paying 0.05 per click, and getting 4% CTR for about 0.80 each, that means I'm losing money.. dangit.
Hopefully once my keywords get approved my CTR will pick up.

I submitteda list of about 800 keyords related to college, students, travel, and discount travel. so as soon as those get approved it might pick up, (hopefully).

I had looked up spring break, but mostly got porn or Girls Gone Wild searches, so I decided not to include them (was that a bad idea?)

Lol, and yes I rep'd you Mill. :)
 
Try adding some pictures above the adsense block on the bottom of the page, but other than that it looks pretty good. Keep us posted.
 
I'd tone the blue down and lose the gradient - the whole effect is too strong and makes me want to close the page (although I always wonder with pages like that if other people will click a link to get out, which would be a good thing)
But, yes, you're going to have to bid on more phrases to get more traffic to work out your percentages from real numbers before you can see how you are doing!
HIH!
 
I was sorta actually going for a somewhat terrible colour scheme, lol. In the hopes it would make you want to escape. :zzwhip: GET OFF MY PAGE! (through my link!) kinda thing.. might be resulting in closed windows though.. hmmm.. will re-think that when I'm getting more traffic.

I'm still waiting for those 800+ keywords I submitted to searcfeed to get approved. argh.. I'm assuming it's cause I sent 'em in Friday night, and they're not open again till monday.

So far though it's been making me about $0.80-$1.10 per day. lmao. for zero cost. so the site's hosting has actually almost paid for itself already.

I'll let ya know when I get some results with the new keywords. should I make more than 2 listings? or is only 2 listings, for tons of keywords ok?

pyrhho

edit: I keep getting like ~100 hits per day, from somewhere (not searchfeed, since I haven't been charged).. not sure where. I installed some Google Analytics today, to hopefully tell me where they're coming from.. Did I just maybe pick an awesome domain name? I put the nofollow tag in the header, so it shouldn'be showing up in search engines. (googled www.studenttourist.com, to 0 results)
 
ok, dang. I'm getting sorta aggravated.. How long should an 800 keyword file take to get reviewed and activated? I sent my file into searchfeed on friday afternoon, and no response yet. and I sent it to 7search on monday, so I'm not expecting that for another day. should it normally take this long?

thanks. i'm sorta frustrated, cause I'd like to see this working.
 
Searchfeed once you have an active account along with 7search should be no longer then a day to send traffic. Depending on your niche though there minght not be masses of traffic.

Also you need to be carefull of the traffic you are sending. You dont want to whore out your keywords if they arent at least somewhat related. If you send traffic to your arbitrage site that doesnt really relate to well. It really wont matter how much they click on your ad's, because if they dont convert in some ways you will be smartpriced (if using adsense).

Smartpricing sucks because it takes a bit to get the rates on your account back to normal. Also, smartpricing will affect all you adsense account not just that one site. Just be carefull on the keywords it is a fineline to walk.
Also check this suggestion out
Good Luck.
 
dxearner said:
Searchfeed once you have an active account along with 7search should be no longer then a day to send traffic. Depending on your niche though there minght not be masses of traffic.

Also you need to be carefull of the traffic you are sending. You dont want to whore out your keywords if they arent at least somewhat related. If you send traffic to your arbitrage site that doesnt really relate to well. It really wont matter how much they click on your ad's, because if they dont convert in some ways you will be smartpriced (if using adsense).

Smartpricing sucks because it takes a bit to get the rates on your account back to normal. Also, smartpricing will affect all you adsense account not just that one site. Just be carefull on the keywords it is a fineline to walk.
Also check this suggestion out
Good Luck.
Click to expand...

ok.. so on smart-pricing. YPN doesn't do smart-pricing does it? So, if Adsense starts screwing me over with it I'll switch to YPN. This is the only Adsense site I have thus far, so yeah I'm not terribly scared of smart-pricing.

My Searchfeed list finally kicked in this morning. (hella slow, kinda weird). so far about 7 clicks, but no conversions, kinda disspointed with that. I was expecting a lot more traffic with that many keywords. I may try re-writing my ads to make them more enticing/etc.

Not sure what you mean by having the pictures "fill out" the content better, sorry. Can you explain a bit more?
 
pyrhho said:
ok.. so on smart-pricing. YPN doesn't do smart-pricing does it? So, if Adsense starts screwing me over with it I'll switch to YPN. This is the only Adsense site I have thus far, so yeah I'm not terribly scared of smart-pricing.

My Searchfeed list finally kicked in this morning. (hella slow, kinda weird). so far about 7 clicks, but no conversions, kinda disspointed with that. I was expecting a lot more traffic with that many keywords. I may try re-writing my ads to make them more enticing/etc.

Not sure what you mean by having the pictures "fill out" the content better, sorry. Can you explain a bit more?
Click to expand...
First, do you have YPN. It isnt just as easy to switch over. YPN is in beta right now and not taking any new people so smart pricing should be a concern of yours if you dont have ypn. Regardless, why just piss money away by not addressing smart pricing. I have never ran into someone who goes aw screw profit.

Second, I my experence (not saying this happens with everyone but in my experence) Searchfeed traffic is crappy. It never really converted for me. I am suspecious myself that it is bot traffic but that is neither here nor there.

Third sorry abou tthe cyrptic writing on the image. I was on no sleep. What I ment to say is when applying images to the ad's like you did with the farris wheel jet etc. Make them proportioned to the ad's. make them look like they are actually part of the ad's not just stuck there. FOr example the ad's are displayed horizontally. Additionally, Make you photos horozontially oriented. For example look at these ad's http://www.howtobuyjoesjeans.com/
You see how the photos are intergrated with the rectangle and look a part of the ad's. However since you are displaying a different adsense box you will ahve to adjust your pics accordingly. Hope that helps
 
Ah, I guess I wasn't really aware of the full situation when I made my last post. I wasn't aware that YPN was currently closed, and thus wasn't sure how smart-pricing would have any impact on me. I'll have to do some more reading on YPN and smart-pricing. I was under the impression that YPN was merely an alternative to Adsense. I wasn't intentionally saying "srew profit", lol. Thanks for bringing that up.
Damn newb-ness.

I can't pass judgement on searchfeed traffic yet. I got my keywords approved, etc, but so far hardly any clicks (4 in 2 days). I'm thinking I need rewrite my ads (I have 2 running).

Thanks for the tips on the pictures, I'll try fiddling around with that once I actually get some traffic flowing, so I can have a basis to compare CTRs.

I've also been looking at trying Adbrite for some traffic, but haven't had a chance yet since my day job has been hectic lately.

Will let you know. Thanks again.
 
For most sites, AdSense is still the way to go. I get more per click with YPN, but it seems like they have hardly any ads corresponding to my topics. AdBrite ads haven't made much for me at all. But I am not doing arbitrage and I am not in the same niche as you. Just my 2 cents on the ad networks mentioned.
 
If it helps, take a look at the City Visits site in my sig. Go to the Dubai site and have a look at the 728x90 adsense block with the pics above it. I think that's what dxearner means about the pics filling out the ad more.

For what it's worth, that adsense block is getting respectible double figures CTR. The one on the Paris site is even better.

Good luck.
 
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