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AdSense Arbitrage: In Praise of Former Arbitrageurs

Posted by Admin | March 7, 2008 .

Advice

WiseGeek make even greater efforts at transforming into a real website.

Why?

It wasn’t the other day when until I wanted to know the temperature of space that I ran across our old arbitrage buddies, WiseGeek.  “Back in the day” of fast and frenzied AdSense arbitrage, WiseGeek reigned as the best of the arbitrageurs pushing traffic from PPC.

 Wise Geek - Best of the Former PPC Arbitrageurs

Arbitrage was a brief period when it was possible to buy cheap clicks on AdWords, send them to AdSense-filled pages with higher payouts, and pocketing the difference.

You knew arbitrage was the 7BestSites and 5TopReviews-type thing that plagued your searches.  But WiseGeek always stood higher because they:

–Displayed staff first names (no last names) and photos.

–Several staff members were attractive, not the the typical knuckle-headed SEM apes.

–All appeared to be fancy-schmantzy U.C. Berkeley graduates.

–Covered weird topics like “what is sandblasting” - in addition to the usual Viagra-Diet-Sex outlay of topics.

WiseGeek is still around and thriving.  Only difference now - when’s the last time you saw Wise Geek advertise with PPC?  Notice, though, that the real bottom-feeders like 7 Best Sites are no longer around.

Sure, WiseGeek, you have cleaned up your act a little - now you have a Comment section.  But notice how you still have the classic “AdSense corner” (in the so-called “golden triangle” of the upper left)?  And the dark gray background, scientifically designed to discourage visitors from reading the article and encouraging AdSense clicks?  Since WiseGeek is out of the PPC game now, why now just style as a legit, feature-rich site?

  • Cleaner interface, more features.
  • Drop that AdSense block - it’s a Scarlet Letter shouting “Arbitrage!”
  • For God’s sake - no more iStock photos.
  • Expand topics, dig in.  Is the Peet’s Coffee your staff drinking causing office-wide ADD?
  • Kill the interstitial ads.  Put in real links instead.
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