IMHO, AdSense arbitrage is likely to go the way of boilerplate affiliate sites. It's like croissant shops, tattoo parlors, and body piercing: There will always be a residual demand (and therefore an oportunity) for a handful of entrepreneurs who really know what they're doing, but rank-and-file participants will go broke and/or move on to the next business opportunity du jour.

Hobbs wrote..

"Excuse my inability to comprehend, please do explain more. "

May I just say.... that many good sites cannot reach the no.1 page of organic results (quickly) and are unable to get free traffic for quite a while. PPC provides traffic which is monetised by adSense. The extra layer may be beneficial because a well written article or content analysing pro and cons of a product/subject can provide direction to the surfer. Unfortunately webmasters with well established high ranking websites tend to view all sites seeking PPC traffic in a negative way. This may not necessarily be true.

PPC visitors are necessarily targetted. A good arbitrageur can further sharpen the focus of the surfer and help the advertiser convert better. ( otherwise all gains will be wiped out by smart pricing )

However as I said.. the line dividing a pure MFA and an quality arbitrageur is very tenuous at best.

Ofcourse an established website can lose highly paying clicks to such websites and may feel offended. That is the nature of the beast.

Interestingly with the introduction of QS , a good arbitrageur is forced to provide value to the surfer or he will not get any traffic. Pure MFA sites will die out in the long run. However good content will still survive.

The arbitrageur is still alive and well.

PPC visitors are necessarily targetted. A good arbitrageur can further sharpen the focus of the surfer and help the advertiser convert better.

Those visitors may be targeted, but are they necessarily motivated to buy? Chances are, the arbitrageur's site will have little or no content of intrinsic value, and the user may click an ad simply to find the information that was unavailable on the site. For example, the user may be interested in reading reviews of "Frigico FR-1 refrigerator," but that doesn't mean he's a hot prospect for an online purchase.

In my opinion, most arbitrage sites are like the zero-added-value affiliate sites that clogged Google's SERPs a few years ago, and it isn't in Google's long-term interests to let them take over the AdWords/AdSense content network.

"have little or no content of intrinsic value, and the user may click an ad simply to find the information that was unavailable on the site."

This kind of a site ofcourse provides no value and will die out in the long run.

let me add..

A good aribtraging site will slowly move up in SERPS and will no longer require paid traffic over the long run to make money. A good arbitarging site will use PPC as a stop gap measure till it finds it feet.

An MFA can never hope to get organic traffic and will die out in the long run as PPC become stoo expensive for him/her.

IMHO ,this is a good way to judge, the quality of the site.

Don't forget that AdWords isn't the only way to perform AdSense arbitrage.

Try YPN and AdCenter to bring in the traffic as well.

A good aribtraging site will slowly move up in SERPS and will no longer require paid traffic over the long run to make money. A good arbitarging site will use PPC as a stop gap measure till it finds it feet.

I think it's more likely that made-for-AdSense sites will need to do what "pure play" affiliate sites do (or have done): rely on PPC traffic as organic search rankings wither and search referrals dry up.

> " good aribtraging site will slowly move up in SERPS and will no longer require paid traffic "

Sounds like academics lost in reality. ;-) Sadly what makes something rank well in the SERPs has nothing to do with quality or reader interest level and nearly everything to do with inbound links these days...which just doesn't happen in the build in and they will come eutopia. I've learned this one the hard way.

Done right...done badly...The dividing line is very thin....It can and does get blurred.. often..

I think, when the page has little, if any, useful content but Adsense blocks, and no other exits, there's no need to talk about blurred lines of division, and of few tens of Adwords>Adsense arbitrage systems at work that I've seen, 100% were exactly that kind of crap.

* Useful content. Pieces like "Songs are created by people. Songs are sung by other people. People sing songs on occasions" are not considered useful content by me, well, at least on MFA pages, as I do understand the real purpose of such "content" ;)

A good arbitraging site will slowly move up in SERPS and will no longer require paid traffic over the long run

This statement could not be more false. Sites that can profitably arbitrage and sites that get good SERPs are of vastly different kinds and don't overlap at all.

That's not to say that legit sites can't use AdWords or other advertising methods to build awareness and create a user base. But that's totally different from arbitrage, it's a longterm investment.

Don't forget that AdWords isn't the only way to perform AdSense arbitrage.

Try YPN and AdCenter to bring in the traffic as well.

Similarly most large scale arbitrage does not use adsense as a revenue tool. It is must easier arbitraging to search results provided by someone like YSM.

This stuff is obsolete. It worked well pre-QS, but you are wasting your time if you are trying to play this game today. There are much better ways to make money online.

"This stuff is obsolete. It worked well pre-QS, but you are wasting your time if you are trying to play this game today"

PRECISELY.

Rules have changed. But webamasters are still living in the pre QS era. You may read the diffn. comments on this thread to get an idea.

The net is not black or white , it is Grey, and nature of arbitraging is changing.

Good content , precisely targetted, still leads to good money.

I have experimented with things like product & service reviews and note that with a high enough QS on the landing page, there is still good money. However it is hard work and not easy money.

Thank God , I have my e-commerce site to go back to.. ;-)