In this episode, we're going to meet a viewer of this channel. I gave him the chance to ask me anything he wants about search arbitrage. And maybe I revealed too much. I don't know. You're going to find out. How much revenue per click we see from Search Arb, but what we pay on the Facebook side, if you use automations, how we view the situation with leads. And much, much more. It's a jam packed episode. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:we're on, we're live. Yeah.
Track 1:We are live.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:to meet you virtually.
Track 1:Yeah. Nice to meet you too. And thanks for reaching out. The channel is so new, so very happy about every feedback that I'm getting. It's so fresh, just had the theory that people would appreciate and now it's working out, so
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah, I've been doing this a d like a different version of, what you're doing since 2016. And it was I feel like back in the day, like fight club, don't talk about arbitrage,
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:it's still if you go out and look. And if you go out and look for information, there's like maybe blackout world. Some people who actually know what they're talking about are talking about it there. And there's the the optimizer io, those guys just kind like in the last year or two I didn't know they were putting out content, but they're putting out some pretty in depth, um, helpful content. And then other than that, it's like a lot of spam, like
Track 1:There's not that much.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:actually Uhuh. Yeah. So you're one of the only people really talking about it.
Track 1:Yeah. Yeah. And because of this, what you described as this fight club mentality, like where, when we started way back then, it was like we didn't even dare to use our own emails, like anonymous emails to communicate about it. So then of course we never get the idea like, Hey, let's publish what we're doing on YouTube. But
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I bet.
Track 1:yeah, but I found that like this year. I haven't gone to so many, or Yeah, I went to conference last year, also a few, but this year when I went to affiliate summit in Barcelona, it was crazy. There was a search a track and people advertising broadly were doing search A and Google representatives showing up at those at those,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:No way.
Track 1:masterminds. And so yeah, that was like unthinkable in the past. I was like, wow, things have changed.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:yeah, why not share a little bit then
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. It's appre appreciated and you guys are putting out some really good helpful info. I think a lot of nuggets in between
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:that if you know what you're looking for, they're really helpful.
Track 1:Yeah. Nice. Okay, so you said you got started in 2016. How what.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:So I had just I had a physical product company and that came to an end. We sold on Amazon. We were in big box stores in the us We were in Nordstrom Rack, like 150 locations across the us. And,
Track 1:Oh, wow.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:in Urban Outfitters online. And we were at one point Amazon, top 100, kitchen and Dining ranking. So we were selling up to a thousand units a day and but it was a really low price item. You have to sell a lot of them to really make a lot of money. So that kind of ended in end of 2015, had a bad partnership and moved on from that as you do in
Track 1:It happens to many people.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yep. No. So then I had a friend who was like you might want to check this out. Maybe you could make some money on the side to keep you going until you figure out the next thing. And so I was like, oh, this is interesting. And just was like, oh yeah, I can definitely make, pay my bills with this in the meantime. And then just kept iterating and grew it pretty fast, grew it up to 20 KA month within probably four or five months. And kept getting the reporting better. so Like originally the person who said check this out, wasn't doing any reporting on a URL level. So it was just basically the site and who knows what was happening or what page was losing money or so so started using Supermetrics because they're APIs. And they were actually one of the only ones at the time that had an AdSense API. Um, and like just kept tried to grow it and just had a really difficult time. The, like controlling the AdSense RPMs, um, was really difficult. Could get the traffic. And that got more difficult, and I think you guys have talked about it, how, the market has gotten more competitive. I know inflation this last year raised sort of the default lowest bid. So we got squeezed on both ends.'cause ad rates this last year were pretty bad and for most of the year. And
Track 1:So were buying from Google and sending to Google? Was that the setup? Okay
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah.
Track 1:so you did AdWords To AdSense.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of
Track 1:easy, huh? Ah, Bing. Bing was the moneymaker. I.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:easier. Yeah. Yeah. Bing's easier. Google back in the day, like 2017, 2018, We could get 12 cent clicks.
Track 1:Uhhuh.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:And that kind of, yeah. That's not happening anymore. And I feel like, yeah, real difficult. And I think that my, like my version of it versus what you guys are doing with the search arb is that oh, what was I gonna say? Buying traffic oh, I have to buy traffic that's like adjacent to the money ads. So like I can't go if I'm gonna run something on dentures, uh, or like the, what you guys talk about, is that right? Dentures?
Track 1:Yeah. Dental implants.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Dental implants. I can't come close. Yeah. Yeah. I can't come close to buying traffic on that keyword.
Track 1:No, it's too,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:to buy,
Track 1:yeah, too contested.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:To way there's no way that model would work. So I would have to go here's an example. I would find a brand term in that space, maybe as seen on TV product or something that's very similar and then run on that traffic. For you guys, it's a lot of, like the ad itself, for me, it wasn't so much the ad. What was difficult was finding the adjacent to traffic that
Track 1:I get it.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:AnD then on the AdSense side it was like, manipulating the content enough and the ad placement so that it inspired a click. Essentially above the fold.
Track 1:You need
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:and
Track 1:yeah, you need some
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:so there's just it was, I launched probably like 200 different. Pages at, and
Track 1:Different pages also
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah.
Track 1:uhhuh, so you didn't have one big page that had all your articles
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:No.
Track 1:You can't do that. You
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:other problem too, is it just, it didn't, I guess work that way. And the other problem was,'cause I had to have very focused, like basically with what the model I was doing, I needed the search term to be in the ad and then the term to be on the landing page.
Track 1:Oh. So for every keyword you were bidding on,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yes.
Track 1:oh my god. it's complicated.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. But it's funny'cause I look what I, look at what you guys are doing, I was like, Jesus, that's complicated.
Track 1:It's not I, but my journey started the same. That's when we started with Yahoo and Google, but that was, yeah, that was like in 2009. But then the problems were different and
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah,
Track 1:yeah, it worked. But yeah, it's a, it was definitely gray hat at least. And that's then the problem that you don't have the stability. So luckily now
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah.
Track 1:there's white had things you can do at a large scale, so it's much more relaxing. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I have not known that life. I have known a very up and down. And when it's good. Like I said, I'll do like on a really good month, I'll do 30 k, profit. It. I also have months where it's seven or eight,
Track 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I know that phase. That's I've been through it
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:but you don't have to, you don't have to do it that way. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:It's like maybe you have a better way.
Track 1:it's just, I had the chance to look at a lot of different examples and learn along the way. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Are you still is that still your, that's your bread and butter, this model that you described? Okay.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:it's and so I, it got a little complacent. I know you guys talked about, that Being coming into play. So I got a little complacent. And then, um, I've been trying to do other stuff. So I have a background in SEO. So I've launched a handful of new organic sites, but that space is changing so rapidly with AI and SGE or whatever. And just the way people interact with search is going to be a lot different in the next year or two. So I have a background in that. So I started launching a few projects there. But then, yeah, it was like I had come across sort of the search arbitrage. And I had come across, uh, the optimizer io, And I didn't know how to get to me the biggest hurdle was getting one of these accounts, like the f the domain ads for domains
Track 1:like an account with, or which monetizer
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:But I did, I didn't know, so I'm just using straight Google AdSense, so I didn't know tonic or System one existed.
Track 1:okay.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. Not clear. And
Track 1:upside as well because you, you have the chance to be paid much better that way.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:so that's, so these are some of my questions that when I reached out to you, I was like, I'm interested, like I know, like what my math looks like From being in Google and AdSense and how that sort of maths out. But, I was curious sort of what What the numbers look like. What kind of and clearly it differs from niche to niche, but just what do clicks look like on Facebook or, cost per click or CPAs. And then the, because I'm unfamiliar with AF a FD, is that right? Add ads four domains. That's the, their program.
Track 1:You know those terms, they get used back. Yes. A FD like way back it was when you had a page for those providers, you could either have it directly display ads, that's a FD feed for domains, but like the two click, it triggers search ads also. So you could say that's that, that, that is a FS, but it gets mixed around all the time. But for sure, you're getting better, you're getting better rates through the two click model than if you would just have your AdSense account and display ads straight away. It's a different bucket. The advertisers see it. They perceive it as this is someone that has typed in the search, and hence they're paying more for that kind of click than a straight up display click. They anticipate the higher intent, and that's why the prices per click are much, much higher for that kind of traffic.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:So for example on one, I run a significant amount of traffic on one page. The average cost per click on the ad sent side is 40 to 45 cents.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:And then I'm buying the traffic at 11 cents.
Track 1:Okay. You have a good model, right?
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:So
Track 1:I'm, trying to answer your
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:hard to, it's hard to get that, so I'm, so how much what does that pay, whether say Facebook and then what sort of
Track 1:yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:pay on the
Track 1:I'm going to try to answer your question, but I know already I can't like answer like directly this. It's gonna be this number and the reason for it is we are running in so many verticals and so I don't, all I look at. When I, that was the time that I launched my own campaigns, but when I launched my own campaigns, I wasn't focusing so much on that. Or of course in the beginning, you look at is the revenue per click? Is it something I can work with? If I start out with like a 10 cents on the revenue side, I know it's gonna be very difficult. Of course, there are campaigns you can run there as well. If you run at some country not in the US or the developed world, you can still make money with something that pays 10 cents if you can buy the traffic for two, right? It's just, that's all that matters. So it's not the absolute number, what am I paying or getting? It's the delta that really matters. hEnce why I find just, if we just simplify it to, it's all about the ROI that you're getting, right? And that, that will of course be determined by the delta that that you're getting, and the delta will. Often be, yeah, determined, like how good of an edge have you found, if you found a market where there's not a lot of advertisers on Facebook, a less developed market in the beginning, Mo like most of internet advertising will of course take place on Google. And then later social media will come and so on and yeah. The less developed the market, I find the bigger the Delta tends to be between Google and social media, for instance,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Gotcha.
Track 1:given so,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Okay.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:What, just outta curiosity, when you say like the AFD or AFS pays better than AdSense, like just outta curiosity, are we like$10 clicks,$20 clicks, a hundred dollars
Track 1:you can have, yeah. You.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:where does that range?
Track 1:Yes. Okay. It's nice that you bring up that question because these are questions that are then also are focused on much in, in, in the beginning of the journey. Like, where are the highest paying clicks?
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Oh, And I don't necessarily care, but I'm just, I'm curious.
Track 1:But it's
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I know what I've seen Yeah, In my area, but I'm just like, what is
Track 1:yeah. So yeah, there are verticals with$10 clicks, there are, but they don't, they aren't necessarily the best verticals because the scrutiny tends to be higher on, on clicks that advertisers pay a lot of money for. So I would say your best, the best case would be something that pays okay. And there's a lot of volume there. And there won't be like crazy scrutiny. The advertiser side about every click that they receive. But yeah they were,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I.
Track 1:yeah. In the past, say rehab was, there was a time when rehab was paying crazy amount, there were$10,$20,$30 clicks there and yeah, one could make a lot of money, but what also decides what you get for click? It's not directly say what in the keyword tool or the spike tools, and then you're gonna get that You almost never get what the tools are telling you.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah. No, totally.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yep.
Track 1:A part of it, this is I don't have like scientific proof for it, but the way I explain it is that Google, of course, they're very clever about what happens on the page with the traffic that you send them, that they have an ability to determine how good are the visitors that exactly you are sending. And then if a lot of the people Convert, you are going to get a higher revenue per click. So definitely the quality of the stuff that you're sending matters. I saw it as an extreme. Like now that I talked about the rehab example, it was around
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:yeah like around 16. Then at that time, email traffic was still allowed. And email is an extreme example because imagine who's clicking on an ad in a, basically a spam email. It's not many people, but the people that do click, they're very motivated. So all that Google saw is wow, here's a source and say 80% of the people convert. This is an awesome source, so we're gonna pay more for that. And that's where you saw the highest clicks. A really crazy RPCs.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:But if I look at the whole portfolio of verticals that we have the best stuff, it's not like what individual click is super, super high. What I'm interested in is where can I run a high volume in a stable manner? anD then we don't have those mesothelioma also classic vertical where mesothelioma lawyer or donate car. Donate car is also great example. You cannot scale that. There's, there won't be 10,000 people a day that want to donate the car. So the numbers that you see in the tool, like it's gonna be very difficult if po impossible even to get those numbers.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yep, yEp. And I saw an episode you guys were talking a little bit about profit, uh, and I'm guessing, are you looking more at your RPMs, are you looking not at your cost per click, but just like your cost per action and then going off your profit margin. You said that you like to push it hard. Like what,
Track 1:I think I think
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Where's your kind,
Track 1:yeah, most people will answer that they aim for ROI between 20 and 30%. So that's also where we aim, I tend to see if you get a 50% ROI then I think you could push it harder. Like I, I'd be interested to see how much more volume can you push until you reach the'cause. Of course, your RA is gonna go down. When you push over more traffic, how much more can you send until you reach your own? Threshold. And then yeah, depending also on your cashflow situation like this assumes that cashflow is not an issue. Of course, if you have a limited cashflow, then you have to go for the stuff that gives you the highest ROI. But if cashflow is not a thing then I would say yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe 20% or so. It really depends on, on, on the finances and how you get paid and how fast and how much you have to, how much firepower you have.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Interesting.
Track 1:Yeah. And that's what I said in this example that when I manage campaign managers, like for them, I understand that it's a pleasure. It's relaxing to see oh, my campaign is like a clockwork. Every day money comes in and the ROI is good. I feel good about myself, but I find that's a bit of a trap. That's that where it pays. Like you should always try to be very hungry for even more capitalistic game, right? It's just about grabbing as much money as you can.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. So what outta curiosity'cause it seems like with the spy tools, I that everyone's copying everyone and it's a race to the bottom. Like what do you see, like what sort of, I know it clearly depends niche by niche, but just to get a general idea of a vertical or so I'll call it a campaign in AdWords or Bing, but targeting a certain certain keywords or a certain I think you guys use the word vertical. What what's like the average lifespan of once you've, you get something
Track 1:depends on the platform a lot. So TikTok will be much shorter lived. But with Facebook, uh, we've had campaigns that run for years, but it doesn't mean the campaign is, doesn't mean the campaign is like untouched. You need to refresh it. Also as a TikTok, you need to put in new ads. But yeah, there's no reason to shut it down really. So you can have that longevity.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah, I, and I heard you guys talking about user generated content ads and that you're doing quite a bit of that. Do you feel like,'cause that seems to me when you say, let's say a lot of work like that seems to me like a lot of work.
Track 1:Is
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:but yeah but it does seem like it might, eliminate some of your competition that doesn't want to go in and put in that work. Do, are you finding that, or is just everyone like, Nope, we'll make these UCG ads and we're, this is the game we're all playing it.
Track 1:So it has changed. A year ago I would've answered it differently, but it goes like with everything. I think your optimal perception of your ads is that this is not an ad. This is some form of organic content. This is a recommendation from a friend, and I think that's what UGC ads. What made them successful? I think many users, they're relatively confused what shows up in the feed and maybe they don't even know, is this someone I know or what is this? And so it's very much like some, someone, just like a normal person doesn't feel like a classic ad. And that's why I think it was successful. But I think in the meantime, more and more people have caught up to it and maybe have gotten used to it that, ah, ads can look like this too. So I think their efficiency has gone down over the last year. So I think it would always be in, in advertising that if you find something new that, that's still good, you're gonna have more success. It is a creative. Business in the end too. I sometimes I tell, when I coach campaign managers, it's like you're telling a joke. You can't tell the same joke over and over. You need to find new ways to tell the jokes or that you still have the effect there. But yeah, but UGC still works and, but yeah it's it's more of an effort. But luckily now you can there's tools where you can do really good voice overlay over whatever video very quickly. And you'll necessarily need someone that films themselves and talks into the camera. But everybody has their way of doing it. I know a guy, he records all his ads himself and talks into the camera.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Wow.
Track 1:Yeah. And that's then an example you mentioned, oh, it's a race to the bottom and everybody's doing it. Yeah, sure there is. But you find that a lot of people, they just copy some other stuff or they do it without love for the creative. If there's many ways that you can have an edge, like you gotta find some form of edge, maybe you much faster at testing things or maybe you have a better deal at the monetizer or you, your ads are just a bit better. I find the quality of the ads is relatively low and you're saying yes, it's a race to the bottom, especially UGC ads that everybody's asking, where can I get it as cheap as possible. And there's also like a race there. There's people offering to give you UGC ads for two bucks, but what kind of quality is going to be there and how credibly is it going to be delivered? So then in comparison, the dude that runs his own campaigns and records his own. Videos, which really doesn't take that much work but he's really has a vested interest that these ads would be good. So they're really different then than someone that launches ads that they've bought on Fiverr for like a hundred a hundred, 400 bucks or whatever. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I was gonna say, I saw and this kind of, uh, leans into a different area of questions I had, but I know there are platforms where you can connect with creators to get these you, these ads made. Do, have you used any of those before?
Track 1:Little bit. Yeah. But it's not so a creator on that platform will have received requests from like normal brands. They won't understand. Like an ad that is for search art will be different than an ad for a brand. aNd you'll find that they somehow, they don't deliver how you want, you need to teach them a little bit how you want them to deliver it. I find it helps to, there, you can take an ad from a Aspire tool and you can basically say, I want you to deliver this here in the same way. But yeah, make it your own. Don't do it verbatim. Also important is otherwise they would just do many people just do it verbatim and then not so great. And that's also one thing that came up and one of the uh, episodes that we have online that it's good when you order if you go through that, if you already know what are your keywords or are s's, we call'em related searches, the first thing, what are they gonna be? So of course it's, you should like, you should see it like a chain. Everything should be very tight, optimally. The creator will talk exactly about your best performing keyword and make ensure that the viewers then, ah, this is what I need to click here. So they're like, because of course it would be a turn off when you see the part page. It's not a beautiful page. They need to be interested enough to keep on clicking because it needs to be a reason why Should I keep on clicking?
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:Yeah,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah it's like, to, to me it's surprising. I get why I'm just constantly surprised on what people click on. I've been, but
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Part of me is like, how this actually works.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:remarkable. Yeah. So I'm curious this is have you guys got into selling leads?'cause a lot of this work leads right up to, like potentially, you're partnering with brands or done any, um, monetization of it.'cause basically you've got this process now.
Track 1:Yeah, of course the ideas come up, but here's something that we also try to stress in like when we give people tips. And so it's important to keep it simple not to overcomplicate things and many, yeah. I find many people that now come into this space. They're very focused on a lot of details and to measure everything. And also the optimizer, it might be a phenomenal tool, but I find when you don't run a lot of campaigns, when you're just testing the model, you don't need all the features there and worry about day partying and all of that.'cause if you find the winner, you don't need to tinker a lot of things when you find something that works. As you, you have probably experienced too. It's already after a day you can see this works. That's that's how a winner looks, that you can scale. It's rare that you start out with something and you make a 30% loss, and then you can optimize your way to a phenomenal vertical. It could be like if you have your creative totally wrong or not appealing at all. All this assumes that you have good creatives, that people are interested to click there. You can have like night and day ethics, I find, but if you know in, in your own heart that your creatives are really great and you still get a minus 20% and this year to know that your creatives are great that's why I find it so important to have a reference of someone doing ARB successfully at a high level. If you don't include an ad that's heavily inspired by it. That's your benchmark, right? If you do the same theme and then and then I try to think of when I have that, and then now I try to make it more aggressive. I need to make it better. Then the next one, how can I dial it up a little bit? And I try to dial it up in a few different directions. And then I feel for myself that I've given it a real, an honest try and make sure that the keywords are the same. If it doesn't perform, then I don't know it's not worth it to, I find often to optimize around a lot. There's so much to test,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I'm sure. So What is like a decent hit rate, like new things launched to
Track 1:That depends on your volume. That depends on your volume. If you test 200 things in a day, you're gonna have a different hit rate than if you see and you make two tests or so. But I don't know I think we're at say a third or something like that,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:A third, 30%.
Track 1:are successful, but it's so dependent on what's your intelligence of the market? That's super, super important. Yeah. If you have no clue, if you just randomly test things, then the success rate will be very different. Of course. So
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:What do you think the, what do you think the general arb. Like the people of doings search, what do you think the general average
Track 1:not no. That I don't have a real insight into, but what I have noticed. Over time is that people do arb in very different ways. I've hired people that have done arb over years, and then I find oh, okay, this, what they're doing doesn't work at all with our model
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah.
Track 1:is, just to go a little deeper on that guy, he was in an organization, their edge was that they had built tech that they could launch and test very quickly. They put very little emphasis on the creative. Their creatives are very bland, super plain vanilla, but their edge was just that they test so much that they will find those rare instances that where it still works out even though your creative is super bland. Yeah. So it's really about the edge that you can bring, where you can be better than the others. For me, I found it was, I found it easy to, okay. The edge is okay. I have good relationships with the monetization partners because simply because I've done it so long, and I find, I found it's where I like to concentrate more is them to make the creatives a bit better. I find it's for relatively little effort I get a good payout, but that's simply because I'm not a developer. If I would've been a developer, maybe I would've done used that edge instead. yOu asked me something else that I didn't really, that I missed. You. I'm sorry. Yeah. I forgot, but there wasn't unanswered
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:No it's late there for you. So I get it. So I had a, let's, we could move to oh yeah. So I was asking about, I think the, your, I mean your media buying and then just like possibly different monetization methods, I think was my question. Like whether
Track 1:Yes. You asked about the leads.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:or leads
Track 1:Yeah, if you do leads Yes.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah. Yeah
Track 1:so yeah, that, that has been on the agenda and we played with the thought, but I find search shop is so great because you don't have there's so many prob potential problems that are taken care of. Like you don't need a warehouse. And I love not to have customers, I don't want anyone to call me like, except but not that I have to serve the customer. I've done that for a long time and I enjoy it greatly that no, nobody's calling me. I don't have any customers and I don't want to change, I don't want to get into that business. Of course, I could hire people to do it, and I've seen. There's really good media buyers that have gone that route that they then upsell and have had the chance to look closer at their systems. But it's really it's like building up a different business. It takes a lot. You need to, then one thing was they had a very elaborate system to, uh, manage all the contracts that they then write. And then I find myself like, okay should we put effort on that or should we just buy more traffic and make our existing business better? I find if I would feel, oh, we've really hit the ceiling here. We can't buy anymore, then it would make sense to branch out. But I constantly feel I'm just scraping the surface. There's so much more out there to get. It's almost
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I gotta have it, I gotta get it.
Track 1:Yes. So why? And then if I'm like, if we have a skilled team that know what they're doing and there's more to grab,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:And you're optimized. Yeah. And you're optimized for this current setup. So
Track 1:Yes. Yes.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah. It makes sense
Track 1:it's almost like I sit in the golden cage, it's like too good to leave. I don't wanna leave it. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah. Yeah. And I think that was where I wasn't, I, I wasn't making nearly the money I think you're probably making or have made. But I felt that golden cage And basically the only thing that forced me out of it was AdSense is making this change, uh, to pay on impression instead of pay per click. And that's gonna potentially destroy my model.
Track 1:It's not short though. It depends how good they are. I found when I started buying on Facebook, then it was also like, oh want to pay I have to pay just per impression all the how can that work? But it's, it just depends how good the targeting is. Yeah. I
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah, but I'm not,
Track 1:not a given that It
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:but it's on the AdSense side. So the people are still gonna pay per click on the ad, on the buy side, but on the AdSense side, they're gonna pay, they're not gonna pay per click anymore.
Track 1:oh, okay. Yeah. But then yeah, but then you
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:then you have to
Track 1:an account with one of the monetizers. They pay you per click.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yes. Yeah. But you can't run, you can't run traffic straight to a parts page. You have to. They don't allow it. So you have to do an inner social
Track 1:yeah, but I understood you that you already didn't you have to do that? No,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:No, I run to a content. I run to a page on my website with
Track 1:ah-Huh? Ah, but it was like a mix, a little bit of text and then ad units. Was that it? Okay. Okay. So here I'm gonna tell you something that is now, it's relatively new and probably a next episode is gonna go into deep, a little bit more depth about that. So there's a new product, it's called SO Related Searches on content, and then it's going to be,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yep.
Track 1:Have you heard about it? Familiar?
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I know. Funny story. Yeah I know I know about it. Yeah.
Track 1:Okay but just for the listeners then it's a product where basically the first part of the park page will go onto the content page. So then it will be relatively similar to what you have. Okay. Another click will be required, but it's still, and I believe it can be very I'm relatively bullish on next year. I think it will be could be a very good addition to the search AR space. And it could be the most, it could become the most important channel. So for now, the, the rev share that is being offered to the monetizers is only good for desktop traffic, and it should be, it was talked about at the end of the year that mobile should also be added to it. so Far the tests have only. yOu could only test with desktop traffic, which of course, limits, limits you quite a bit, but soon, mobile should be competitive as well.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah, so it'll be interesting to see what happens because some people are thinking like they're not going to totally go away from pay-per-Click some people's ideas. They're gonna hide that data. They're not gonna show you the clicks. They're not. But that will be the influence behind the revenue, right? Like it's, still the same basic essentially model. They're just gonna report on it based off of ad impression instead of click is. And I think that probably makes the most sense to me, but who knows?
Track 1:We have to see. But for sure it will be, we'll have a lot of opportunities to. do search or in the new year, whatever happens, there's always
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah, there was a opportunity. I like that. I like that mindset. Yeah.
Track 1:Yeah. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:so I have a couple more questions on Facebook. As a, as if I was getting into this new version of ARB or, search ARB as you refer to it like how does the account would you advise a new person to use their own Facebook account? I know that, you can rent agency accounts. I know people like I, it seems to be, there seems to be a whole,
Track 1:yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:or like thing, there's software like Ads Power or there's another one that's more popular to manage and keep'em on different ips. And is that considered too complicated? or what's your,
Track 1:look, I, look, I think we should assume this here. Third shop is not a taboo anymore. We don't have to hide. So if you begin directly with accounts from someone else or IP rotation around, and then this, the risk is high, that then they will say, okay, here's someone that is playing some funny business like you. The, your risk might go up with that. I would come back to, let's try to keep it as simple as possible. The simplest thing you can do is that you advertise via your own account. But when I say your own account I don't mean Facebook oddly gives you the option so you can advertise with Your name behind, your private account behind it, or you can open a business manager account so that you should definitely do, it's almost say an LLC, it's if something goes down and Facebook doesn't like it, it affects the business manager primarily. Instead of when you do it under your own account, then you directly get all the crap for it. You can still get crap for it if you do bad stuff with your business manager, but you're like a bit more detached. So you should definitely go into the business manager side of things. And yeah, Facebook is it varies over time. Like right now it's it's really good. But we, we've worked for a long time with them. I don't know exactly what is it like today if you start totally from scratch. So I would assume a. Little bit careful approach. So with that, I mean open the business manager. Then you create a page, and then you run something like that cannot get banned. So you can just run a like campaign for your page, just buy likes for 10 bucks a day, for a few days, and then it's, you've come over the first hurdle.'cause I think if you're totally unknown and you start totally fresh, of course there will be more scrutiny on your account. But, so then you manage to spend money without agitating anyone. That's your first step. And and then I would I would probably, if you have content pages, then try to run it via that first a little bit.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:And then, then after a while, then you also, you can see in your business manager that you get an indication of what's your trust level by seeing how many ad accounts do you get assigned. If they think that you're a shady guy, then you will only get one ad account, or at least that was in the past. But if you're in good standing, you'll get five ad accounts straight away. So there's a little bit of a signal where you can see like how much do they like you to begin with. And then, yeah, if you have a few ad accounts, if you have your five ad accounts then, and you run the like campaign, you run an content page campaign, then you maybe try direct to parking at, with a safe vertical. So they have rules like health is often more sensitive than, yeah. What could it be? What is very. Air conditioner, AC units or whatever, something like that. And then you just fill it out. Yeah. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:So you have a calm and nice entrance to this whole thing, and then if you would still get banned and run into a lot of problems, then Okay. Then I would look into services where you buy an account or solve. I luckily, I have never had to do that. I wouldn't like to do that. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Wow. Yeah.
Track 1:You can also,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:being account shut down on me.
Track 1:Yeah. You can also,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:pretty sensitive.
Track 1:yeah, but be, you could also ask a friend if you could set up a business manager via their account, for instance. But hopefully you won't even run into that. I have the. Impression that, Facebook, they know this. They make a lot of money on it. So it's not something exotic or provocative Necessarily.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Okay. lEt's see.
Track 1:But here I also I want to add there are like, make sure that you really know Facebook's policies. Like for a while it was very sensitive to write you in the ad or to write things that give the. The target, the impression that Facebook knows a lot of things about them. So especially health, like it would be like you would be banned very quickly. It was like, oh, since you have cancer you are probably interested in this year. Like that, that you like, give it out. Oh, Facebook knows that you probably have an illness. They that, that they shut down directly. So it should be in that general terms. There's a lot of details in, in and probably good YouTube videos about how to avoid aggravating YouTube sorry Facebook that, that's worth spending time on.'cause they're not all intuitive.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:And Gotcha. anD imagine they just have a really long and boring policy page that you could go through and
Track 1:Yes.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:pick that stuff up. Yeah.
Track 1:Yes.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Okay. Okay. Do as far as I know you guys had an episode on testing.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:is the other guy in that video, is he with your company or is he another arb? He is.
Track 1:No. No. The only people from the company.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Okay, gotcha.
Track 1:Yeah. He's, he is the CEO,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:a hundred.
Track 1:actually, the guy that I talked with. Yeah. That video.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Nice.
Track 1:Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Nice. Nice. so You were talking about like testing ads and a little bit about, you mean touch base on campaign setup and stuff. But I was curious if you're familiar with the 3, 2, 2 ads, is that a part of your process, um, as well as like the variation testing that's that Facebook, the dynamic variation testing, um, do you guys utilize that technology or
Track 1:So that you put several creatives in one ad is that it? And several copy elements and, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yes we use it. I like when you don't run a lot and then you can afford to go a little bit deeper and I know they've changed the interface a bit not up to speed, but in the past when you use their way of mixing everything around, you wouldn't be able to see what's the winning combination. It might be that is the way it's done. That would be, I find it's very important. I would, I want to know what's the best one. I don't want it to be a black box. So if you don't get full information and you don't run high volume, then I would say just do them one by one. That you vary, that you absolutely know what is the best thing to push here, because the better you understand the audience, of course, the better your ads are going to be. Yeah. But I come back to, like I tell you, the technique from my approach, other people will do it differently. It comes back to really what's the edge. That's how I found the edge.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Gotcha. oKay. And then are you doing anything in Facebook automations to auto correct for your profit? So if you're not
Track 1:Way too little.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:three days, then
Track 1:Way too little. Hardly anything. yOu can make a lot of money without any automations. It's not, I wouldn't start or I didn't think about that for a long time. Found I could do a lot before thinking about it, but automations I find good when you have a team, because there's some. I found the most common thing, one of the most common things that I went and had to like remind campaign managers to keep on doing is to increase the budgets or to decrease the budgets. And there I find, okay, then that would be handy. If there's an automation that takes care of it, that's the most common error that people either let run a losing campaign run for too long, or a great campaign run without any expansion. Very common error.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. And so this is a you brought up briefly, as a complication day partying like with my model RPMs very vastly
Track 1:they do.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:time periods. Yeah. So we're, we shut off ads like four, 4:00 PM'cause by that point definitely not making money The margin's gone. And in fact there's probably like a four hour window in the morning where Most of your money. So do you see the RPMs vary like that? On the park page, um,
Track 1:absolutely. But at least like with Facebook, the more you mess around and you restrict algo, the more expensive it gets. So if you start to get fancy and work with day partying, your price is gonna go up. And then again, it comes back to it's all about the delta. And many times the delta is more positive if you just say, Facebook, here you go, do whatever you want. I keep buying the whole day. And despite that, the RPMs drop, you still make more money. But it's not oh, it's always gonna be that way. But it's it often is.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:often is. And that's a good example again, to be like to hit home again, try to keep it as simple as possible. I. Because there's so many levers you can pull and you can get lost in the details and you can become really slow and test much less. That's really tricky. That's how I would describe, that's a tricky piece with this, like this kind of spiel of business or so that there's some levers that are very important and there's so many years that are not important and you just have to have a feeling for when is it enough or what, where should I really di devote my attention?
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:What do you feel like is the hardest part to control? Is it, do you find it's the hardest to get traffic, or is it hardest to monetize, and have the RPMs be high enough? I.
Track 1:I find that varies over time, like in the beginning of the journey then it was like very difficult to get the traffic and to get the, keep the accounts going and nowadays that's not difficult. And monetizing is also not difficult. I find it's difficult to scale. It's difficult to, because you will have to get more people on deck and you will have to train them and make sure that they do well and build systems to help them to succeed. And that, I find is a big hurdle where probably many search artists they don't want to jump over that because it's very it's comfortable to run your one man shop and not worry about all the potential problems and fires that come with if you hire a team. So I would, I'd probably say that,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And how long have you been running a team? When did you cross the line
Track 1:We were a team from the beginning, but then it was like we're a group of like we, we've worked already and friends and yeah, business owners together. So that was helpful to have someone to discuss with and then to go through your highs and lows and all of that. That I would definitely I, I wouldn't have had that as much success if I didn't have that at all. I've benefited greatly from that, but that I find is different than adding employees to the. Yeah. When did we add arbitrage employees? It took us maybe what should maybe three years or something criminal like that. And then when we added way too careful and super slow and because we hadn't prepared the system nicely, then we had to get super, super intelligent, excellent people that run it because they had to do everything from start to finish. We didn't think about how you can split it up. If you split it up, then it's, your hiring pool increases a lot. So
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:I would definitely approach it from. Splitting it up and taking,'cause there's so many annoying, slow things that you have to do. I find like running it, running your shop on your own, it's like you're running in molasses because there's oh, you gotta register domain and now you gotta do it. Create your creative, and now you have to research the keyword and all these things that don't require like crazy intelligence or insight, but they just need to be done. So it's a process of let's remove everything that slows down the campaign manager and optimally the campaign manager. Everything is taken care for him or her. And all they do is to look at the numbers and make decisions. Okay, should we scale or contract or what should we do now? Should we go in a different direction that takes right. A certain mindset to do, but then it would be a shame if you have such an asset to then say, but then you also register domains and do Google image searches or whatever. Yeah. But that's what we did in the beginning with the first hires and then that, that takes a special person. I can do everything right, because you gotta be creative,
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:for sure.
Track 1:and then all
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:And you have to understand, yeah, you have to run the breadth of knowledge and skillsets for sure. Yeah.
Track 1:That's it. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. What would you say like a good solo or two man shop can do in this space?
Track 1:It, that depends on the time when there's something new, you have a honeymoon with it. There was a honeymoon with TikTok, there was a honeymoon Facebook. Then you can do during that phase you can do, yeah, maybe 10 KA day alone. If you do, if you find, if you do something really well, you can do that.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:But now, yeah, as you say, it's more, it has gotten more competitive and just the fact that they, people are talking about search ar openly and there's tracks and masterminds and people that you meet randomly at the show, they're like, yeah, no, I want to give search ar a try. That never happened before. So then of course it's a bit more competitive.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:so I don't, it, it, again it comes back to like you how big and important your edge is. It's really. Different. Everybody does it different. It's almost impossible to give. Yeah, one man will do that, but for sure, like a thousand bucks a day, you should be able to do
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah.
Track 1:Yeah. And you're doing it right, but like stable
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:yeah. in a stable way. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the problem. And I, like I said, I have this impending absence change. So we'll see, just there's a fair amount up in the air.
Track 1:But I would yeah, I would recommend to, I think I also said that in, in some episode that when you get in touch with the monetizer be very clear about who you are and what you've done. Because not everybody, if they don't know, like not everybody gets the same deal. So it helps to start a conversation and to say what you plan is what you project and what you need from them in order to deliver.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:sure.
Track 1:Right.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. And then as far as are the, um, the RO, are they providing those only to, from what I understand, they're tricky to get. Is that just a connection basis?
Track 1:You can get it through the Monetizers.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:You can,
Track 1:Yes. Not all of them, but, but that's a great question. When you talk with them, say you can inquire about that. And then also they will notice. Okay, you're not like a toggle beginner and Yeah. See what they say and I. Contact them all. I would say it's not that many Because
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:I
Track 1:matters a lot about the vibe.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:One, but
Track 1:yeah. But perfect. They have OC for instance, so I would definitely try with them then, but also with the others to see.'cause you never know There's another black box and the only way to find out is that you send the same traffic to, with the various destinations and just see where do you get, where do you get the most money? And then when you see, then you can contact the other ones and say Hey, you're under underperforming, what can you do? And then it might very well happen that the performance goes up.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. When I've done that, like back in the day when I did more affiliate stuff, Sell enough, Hey, can you increase my payout? Sure. Can you run some more traffic? Sure. Can you increase my payout? Sure. And just
Track 1:yeah. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:stair steps. Yeah.
Track 1:So yeah there's a certain hustle and negotiation element to this here as well.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. thAt's, I think that's most of my questions. Honestly. It was great to
Track 1:cool.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:gEt on a call with you and
Track 1:Yes, it's been a pleasure.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:you for putting out all this great information,
Track 1:Yeah. Much appreciated. Yeah. Let's stay in touch. Let me know how it went. Yeah.
garth_2_12-14-2023_121009:totally. Sounds good.