It’s the end of an era.  A very profitable era.  Congratulations to the Google team who finally made it completely unworthwhile for me to buy cheap Adwords traffic and arbitrage it with lucrative Adsense inventory.  My strategy had weathered many a Quality Score and Smart Pricing update but now it’s about as dry as an 80 year old hooker.

Just about all my fishing spots are barren.   I can no longer count on 3x to 5x ROI on nickel and dime clicks.  I do find it somewhat suspicious, though, that my current minimum bids are almost spot on to my previous margin.  Anyways, as much as I knock Google for some of their horseshit, I am equally as willing to point out what they are doing right.

So, my traffic acquisitions equation changes.  I don’t have the time to do much more in the way of link building to build organic traffic to those sites.  Yahoo and MSN don’t have nearly the reach.  Most of the other content ad networks where I buy traffic suck.  Argh.  I think I’ll take some of the cash out of the Pushbutton Arbitrage Coffers and go buy some old ass sites with nice links and undermonetized ad inventory. 

Arbitraging is so 2006.  2007 is all about defensible traffic (see definition: defensible traffic). 

PS.  Good luck and Godspeed to the arbitragers who are still making it happen!

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