I have learned a lot about marketing over the last few years with running various web sites. For a couple years I was an Arbitrageur (even though I did not know there was a name for what I was doing). An internet marketing arbitrageur is a person or business that pays for traffic to come to their site, and then runs affiliate ads on their web site to re-direct the ads to a merchant site.
At least for pay-for-click internet marketing like Google’s AdWords and AdSense, I have not felt comfortable being an arbitrageur even though it is legal. On the other hand, I feel like I am providing a valuable service with pay-for-lead and especially pay-for-action internet marketing. I guess my issue with being a pay-for-click arbitrageur is that I am just motivated to re-direct my paid traffic as quick as possible from my web site to the merchant site. With other types of affiliate marketing, I am motivated for visitors, paid traffic or not, to remain on my site and make repeat visits. In this case my web site is doing a valuable service by either pre-selling the merchant’s product or providing valuable content for my visitors.
Digg.com posts,”Arbitrage and AdSense has been an issue basically since the day Google launched AdSense. Arbitrageurs would use Google AdWords and other means to send traffic to their site, and monetize that traffic with Google AdSense. Well, it seems that those made for Adsense sites and AdSense arbitrageurs are being shut down.”