In the world of arbitrage, where every click can be the key to wealth and every mistake can be a priceless experience, the path to success is sometimes built through unexpected twists and turns and obstacles. For a webmaster, the day not only marks a professional milestone, but also serves as a moment to reflect on how every successful media buyer once started with initial experiments, mistakes, and miscalculations that later formed the basis of their great triumphs.
Learning financial planning
When entering the field of arbitrage traffic, develop an economic model based on the return on investment (ROI) figures from colleagues and friends. The forecasts in the model may look very favorable, but consider the following key aspects:
- Cost of operational resources (landing pages, tracking systems, designs, user accounts). These costs should be foreseen in the model from the very beginning, as they can absorb all the income.
- Expenses for experiments. At the beginning of your journey, only one offer out of ten may turn out to be effective. The costs of initial testing can offset any benefits.
- The amount of initial capital. Even with a successful offer, it is impossible to invest significant amounts of money right away. It is important to build trusting relationships with advertisers, while fixed costs and the search for new offers reduce the budget.
As a result, the first four months with an ambitious ROI of +50% on successful campaigns can lead to monthly losses of -30%, which will quickly deplete your fund.
Advice for beginners: act like a real startup. Test everything yourself first before expanding your infrastructure and scale. This will allow you to significantly reduce costs.
Creatives are the key to success
At the beginning of our journey, many newcomers do not focus on creative content, adhering to the principle of “do as everyone else does.” Choosing a region, analyzing competitors, uploading ready-made advertising materials, and launching seemed like a guaranteed success! But then the result can be the opposite. Using a popular advertising creative often leads to a loss of budget.
Many factors influence the success of an advertising campaign, from the proposal to the budget, and the role of creativity should not be overlooked from the outset. Studying this topic led us to several important realizations.
First, not all advertising materials end up in competitors’ reviews.
The second is that there is a delay in the appearance of PPC in analyses, and when you find them, they may already be ineffective.
Thirdly, why did you decide that the frequent appearance of creativity in analyzes guarantees its high return? Perhaps many people, just like you, have launched a lot of campaigns with this ad image, conducted tests, and spent money, and now analytics shows +100 ineffective ad images.
Only with practice and analysis will you begin to better understand the specifics of regions, color preferences, and motivational triggers for different countries, which will significantly improve your results.
What we learned: Creative solutions are crucial.
Creating market connections
At the beginning of your journey, inspired by the stories of other market participants, you may be skeptical: it seems that everyone around you is trying to set you up and get the most out of you. Being in a state of constant complaints to partners, advertising platforms, and services, you may not understand why you are denied the best working conditions, including higher limits and offers, and complain about the low quality of traffic. It may seem that privileges in the form of favorable offers are available only to those close to you or those who work directly, and you are only given the leftovers.
Having almost lost faith in the effectiveness of arbitration, your view will change dramatically after meeting with a team leader at a professional meeting. He or she will help you see the value of dialog with the market and creating mutually beneficial partnerships. Arbitrage is in many ways similar to traditional marketing, where the advertiser plays the role of the client, the affiliate program plays the role of the client manager, and the arbitrager plays the role of the executor. It is important to decide which partners to expand cooperation with, and the lack of attention to their needs, payment offers, and strengthening of cooperation will not allow you to achieve high results.
Each step in arbitration is a unique combination of challenges, insights, and victories. Learn from other people’s mistakes and don’t be afraid of your failures: every mistake contains a lesson that can lead to valuable discoveries and radical changes.
There is always room for discoveries in the world of traffic arbitration. You may be the one who shares your secrets of success at a major conference in your own McLaren in a little while.
