Click arbitrage on Facebook

I have to say Doc that I'd never noticed that the Snap preview tool contained yet more sponsored links. I guess it goes to prove the point that irrelevant advertising can seriously damaged the user experience!

Sadly none of the money earned from the Snap links goes to me (I guess Wordpress.com have to make a few quid somewhere). Given that the Snap tool annoyed you so much, I've switched it off.

Good luck if you decide to give click arbitrage a go; I think there's a window of opportunity on Facebook to do this.

Please pardon me if this ends up being a (automated) duplicate post of a comment, but having left this page "open" overnight to return to this morning, when I did press the "submit comment" button, my first attempt at a comment just seemed to disappear.
So, plowing ahead in any case:

I just discovered "click arbitrage", and in researching it (and opinions about it) I came across your note at searchbeest.wordpress.com (here).

I found it highly ironic the link you included to go to the example page of [nothing but] the more expensive sponsored links was, here in searchbeest.wordpress.com flagged with a popup sponsored by Wordpress.com and SNAP search tool. Oddly, although it offered 4 choices of phrases which all appeared to be related to ticket brokering, all of them resulted in the same 3 entry SNAP page regardless of which phrase you chose to click.

Worse than that, two of the three entries on the SNAP page were actually of very little use in terms of finding tickets to Stevie Wonder or even ticket brokers in general. As compared to a "whole page" of links, which, not entirely coincidentally, appears to be the same page you pointed to is also the one result from SNAP that was a relatively good search result, the "whole page" sounds like it was a better step in the right direction than the popup link provided by wordpress.com.

Adding an extra level of click between the user and the result that they are seeking does seem, on the surface, to be less efficient and potentially a cause for concern that it could, overall, affect the price scale for advertisers to purchase sponsored links (and thereby clicks) to acquire customers online. However, if you compare it to the feeble results from this particular "example" (two irrelevant links and one that was the same place as originally intended) that in this world of information overload, winnowing down the choices to a page worth of links can be a value-add service that makes all the links more valuable.

It also stimulates a whole secondary low cost tier of click advertising market that might not otherwise exist, and serves to feed the higher priced clicks, therefore becoming a valued service itself as adjunct marketing which the "retailer" (who purchased the higher priced click link) did not have to pay for, it was a cost to the arbitrageur.

My investigations into this whole field, plus the opportunity to work out my thoughts "on paper" (so to speak) here in this comment makes me think that I will be looking more seriously into getting my toes wet, if not jumping in with both feet to the whole "click arbitrage" market myself.

That's an interesting comment. Having only just "discovered" click arbitrage myself I was investigating it when I came across you note.

It was also interesting that your link to the page you found from one sponsored link, was itself now a "sponsored link" here in Wordpress.com in your bloggish entry. A little popup comes up (noting that it is offered to the visitor under the auspices or Wordpress.com and SNAP [the search tool]) It offers several "related" links, though all of them simply lead to the SAME page of SNAP listings (only 3, not a "whole" page) two of which are a poor match, and the third of which is the actual page of sponsored links that your link pointed to in the first place.

I guess I just wanted to say that it was/is kind of IRONIC that you are concerned about Facebook filling up with such indirect links as are created by "click arbitrage" opportunities. Frankly the "whole page" of sponsored links was far more useful than the SNAP results from Wordpress' popup.

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

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