At this time I explore the potential of PPC marketing (I do PPC marketing for a year or so, but I do it in a moderate way, attracting new visitors to my websites, not promoting CPA offers or doing arbitrage) and PPC arbitrage – it is better late than never.
I admit that I am a bit discouraged by other webmaster posts that PPC arbitrage is coming to its end: the market is oversaturated and the search engines (primarily, Google, of course) do not want to bear with that anymore. But hopefully, I will be lucky to achieve some experience and success with this marketing technique before it is outdated.
I have recently read a case of successful PPC marketing (or: PPC arbitrage? Are they synonyms nowadays?) from Jeremy Shoemaker. It is hard to imagine how he generated 200K keywords, but there should be some automated way.
In the process of my research of PPC marketing technique I have come across the term the webmasters mention in their posts discussing PPC arbitrage: ‘smart pricing’. I was sure it is a term invented by some web site owners, but was enlightened that it originates from Google AdSense FAQ:
How smart pricing works
We are constantly analyzing data across our network, and if our data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), we may reduce the price you pay for that click. You may notice a reduction in the cost of clicks from content sites.
We take into account many factors such as what keywords or concepts triggered the ad, as well as the type of site on which the ad was served. For example, a click on an ad for digital cameras on a web page about photography tips may be worth less than a click on the same ad appearing next to a review of digital cameras.
Google saves you time and hassle by estimating the value of clicks and adjusting prices on an ongoing basis. With improved smart pricing, you should automatically get greater value for clicks from ad impressions across our network, all with no change in how you bid.
Another smart pricing explanation for newbies like me comes from Jensense:
Smart pricing is triggered by all sites/ pages, and affects your whole account. So one site that is impacted heavily by smart pricing and another that is barely touched by it will balance out the overall impact. It doesn’t just take the lowest/ highest and use that.
Smart pricing adjusts once a week.
Your entire account is smart priced the same, it is not site by site.
EPC depends on the market area, not a fluctuation of site-by-site smart pricing. So because your EPC varies per site does not mean you are smart priced differently, it just means that advertisers are willing to spend a different EPC for each.
Summary: As I run Google AdSense on all my web sites and smart pricing is likely to affect my entire account (not site by site approach) I will thoroughly contemplate before experimenting with Google arbitrage.
[tags]google, adsense, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]