Each of us, who has at least once asked ourselves the question of how it is possible to make money on the Internet, has probably come across such terms as affiliate program, traffic flow, offer. All these words refer to an industry called traffic arbitrage. And the people involved in this area are called arbitrage specialists.

So, who are these arbitrators, how much do they earn and is it easy to enter this profession?

Traffic arbitrage is attracting buyers through affiliate networks. Let’s imagine that you produce/sell a set of weight loss pills. Maintaining your own marketing department, if you are not a large company, is quite expensive. Of course, you can be listed on marketplaces, but often this is not enough, competition there is high and in addition to the placement itself, you will still need to invest in advertising.

What else can be done? Contact the affiliate network. An affiliate network is a platform on which advertisers (product owners) leave offers to perform any actions: registering on a website, filling out a form, purchasing a product, and webmasters redirect traffic to them by placing these offers on their (or any other, but already paid) sites and receive a reward from the advertiser. The basic idea is to buy traffic (visitors) on one platform and send it to another platform where those visitors can be monetized.

It would seem that all this looks very simple, as in any trade, I bought it cheaper, sold it more expensive, put the difference in my pocket. But this is only at first glance.

How much can you earn from traffic arbitrage?

This question, unfortunately, does not have a clear answer. Those who want to “raise money” invest their own funds and purchase traffic. Creates and places advertisements on various advertising platforms. Spends money creating landing pages, various creatives and banners. And everything is fine if this attracted flow of visitors is well converted into applications, leads and other actions important for the advertiser. But it also happens differently: ads are set up, creatives are placed, traffic flows – but the output is zero. In such situations, if you do not stop the process immediately, there is a risk of losing your budget.

In order not to lose money, an affiliate marketer must have data analysis skills, have a sense and understanding of how this or that creative will affect the target audience, understand the settings of contextual advertising systems, be able to create/design a simple website and do all this at the same time.

All these actions are necessary because for each advertising campaign, as a rule, several creatives are created that differ in details. This method is called split testing or A/B testing, in this way the arbitrator finds out which creative converts (monetizes) traffic better.

By the way, don’t think that you’ve done it all once, created landing pages, set up advertising and that’s it – sit and count your money. Nope. The situation changes regularly and it is important for a good traffic getter to constantly keep his finger on the pulse.

So, we can say with confidence that there is some money in traffic arbitrage. However, you will have to work hard for this. In other matters, as everywhere else.