I read a post over on Shoemoney.com about a week and a half ago called Arbitraging Twitter Traffic that I found pretty interesting. The basic gist of the idea was to find CPC offers on SocialSpark, buy traffic on Twitter networks like RevTWT and make money on the difference. Basic Twitter arbitrage taking advantage of the market imbalance that currently exists in the Twitter world.
I usually read about these little ideas, bookmark them, and even print them out once in a while with great intentions of trying them out, but never get to them. I decided to give this one a try and here’s what I ended up with…
SocialSpark Stats
Offer: Sears CampusReady
CPC Payout: $0.27
Time Running: About 20 hours
Pending Clicks: 35 (SocialSpark takes 5 days to give you credit for your clicks)
Invalid Clicks: 143
Anticipated Revenue: $9.45
RevTWT Stats
Links: 309
Clicks: 166
Bid Per Click: $0.16
Cost: $26.56
At first I couldn’t figure out why I had such a high Invalid Clicks to Pending Clicks ratio. I knew SocialSpark’s scrubbing techniques are some of the toughest in Affiliate Networks bordering on shady by many people’s experiences. Then it became clear when they suspended my Affiliate Service account on SocialSpark for violating their Terms of Service. Turns out they don’t allow traffic from networks like RevTWT even though Shoemoney is on their board of advisors, used the same arbitrage tactics AND wrote about it on his blog.
I find it funny that a high profile guy like that can get away with so much more than us little guys. Personally I think the double standard is ridiculous, but that’s life.
More importantly are the things I took away from my brief experiment.
1. There is money to be made on some of these untapped markets like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. We’re just starting to see the potential and there are likely HUGE payoffs for people willing to be persistent, lose a little money here and there, and maybe even get shut down once or twice in the process of learning. The key is persistence.
2. High conversion rates. I was pretty pleased with the conversion rates I saw from my brief experiment. Especially since I had no chance to test other ads or tune my ads. Definitely fun playing in a world where ads are still new enough that people click without giving it a whole lot of thought. Again, some serious opportunity represented here for the early adopters.
3. Users of the platform reaching out to potential visitors will have a leg up. For instance, if you’re advertising on Twitter AND you’re actually a user of Twitter, you’re going to stand a much better chance of reaching the Twitter audience more effectively than someone who’s never used the Twitter platform before. This makes a great case for getting out there and trying new social media/network platforms on a regular basis. You don’t have to spend every waking moment sending out Tweets, but you need to understand how people communicate on and use a particular platform to make the most of the dollars you’re going to spend attempting to reach those people. Bottom line: Educate yourself.
All in all, I’m pretty happy to have had tried this method, even though I, along with pretty much everyone else I read about who tried it other than Shoemoney, got shut down shortly after firing things up. If there was not such a high invalid clicks rate and it was more in line with the 17% rate SocialSpark claims is typical, I would have grossed about $39.96 which would have left me with a $13.40 profit. Not bad on a really really low volume campaign.
I’m definitely going to continue looking for the angle to use networks like Twitter to drive traffic to blogs or offers I have.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Have used it but the problem is my users consider it spam and you can lose a lot of followers.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Especially bad right now when you factor in that Twitter now has new ways to combat spammers and get rid of your followers. Sign-up with beware.
July 25th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I tried out the CPC on one of my twitter accounts using tweetlater to auto post my "tweet ads" by only tweeting one ad per day. I got much less traffic to the offer but my account is fine. I made a post about it. At the time of the post I made $1.89 with 4 clicks pending and my ads are still set to go once per day. I think its a very easy way to make money from twitter without working at it. A few tweets here and there and bring in my ads per day. I think I can start making $0.10 – $1 per follower are month.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:15 am
One week ago we started an arbitrage experiment and I heard a lot of things about arbitrage with ad sense, After one week I got some results.It is hard to find right keywords and create a good eye catchy title for your ad. Luckily I made a profit with it after 1 week, it is not big, but at least it is profit.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:20 am
An interesting post. I'm thinking of taking my myspace profile to more profitable level. Maybe I would try some of Your tips. The amount of money looks pretty realistic. Thanks.
July 27th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Yes Twitter can play a massive role in bringing targeted traffic to your blog or website. Thanks you mentioned socialspark and revtwt because I wasn't aware. I just tried both and found revTWT easier to use. I'll definitely try to make up some cash with Twitter posts.
July 27th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Facebook has a completely new layout that many users don't like
July 27th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
yes, i used this too.. but lost alot of followers!
July 27th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
High profile bloggers can get away with these tactics because they continually plug the company. Not that they don't know the arbitrage is going on, but they just see it as an acceptable cost for the advertising they read on the blog. No cool at all, but the way it is.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:07 am
yeah, I liked that post too since it gave me a practical idea… I never thought that we could do twitter arbitrate… lol
July 30th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Nice article. In fact, arbitrage can be hugely profitable, or at least it used to be. Now many networks (and this happened to me as well) will suspend your account for such practices. A word of advice: be particularly careful if you do this with adsense, you may lose your account!
July 31st, 2009 at 9:28 am
There is only one thing missing in this post: the number of followers? It is hard to draw any conclusion on the profit and click rate without knowing how many people you have send your links too;-)
July 31st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I also used this too but it make me looks like a spammer
July 31st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Getting money for your tweets seems pretty "spammy" but it is definitely getting at the concept that Twitter can be an effective way to drive traffic to your site and/or its blogs (if done correctly)!
August 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Really very nice post. I also have an account on revtwt and my twitter account is really working good with it. Till today i have earned 30$ from it. Max 20 dolloar is the limit for withdraw.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
I've used RevTwt and until now I've not earned anything. I am aware that it takes time to yield the fruit. So, I'll wait and see…
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
No doubt: arbitrage can be very profitable (no surprise, it's and old concept after all, isn't stock trading, for example some sort of arbitrage in the end), just need to be done the right way not to lose your adsense account (if you are using adsense…)
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Its sounds like an interesting way to make some money. I will have to look into it deeper.
Don't know why shoemoney managed to get away with it, sounds very shady that he can get away with it!
August 4th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Thank you very much for this useful information. I am very interested in learning more about arbitrage and was wondering where i could get some information. Nice post and keep up the great work.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I have earned 5$ through it, but i still i have to wait to withdraw because 20$ is the basic limit.
Below 20$ dollar no one can withdraw their earnings. Thanks for this nice informative post buddy..
August 9th, 2009 at 7:53 am
How long have you been doing it, and how many followers do you have? It would be good to have some numbers on the table:)
August 13th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Thanks for providing stats, they always help when looking at a test campaign. It looks like it went OK but it's still bad that they treat a super affiliate completely differently to an affiliate who is less experienced in that area.
I expected a slight difference but not an effective ignoring of the terms of service.
August 17th, 2009 at 1:44 am
interesting read, it's a shame your account got suspended…maybe you could try some sort of arbitrage with twitter and other social networks?
August 17th, 2009 at 1:57 am
great read, your suspension must have been disappointing. Maybe there is some sort of arbitrage to be performed across social networks.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am
I heard about this the other day when a friend called me that he was using a service to charge people to make tweets on his account. I think he called it sponsored tweets or something, I couldn't remember the name of the company he was talking about but I'm guessing it was one of these so thank you.
September 12th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
yes, i used this too.. but lost alot of followers!
October 8th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Thanks for removing my doubt and putting on the track of sucess!