Above all, traffic arbitrage is a business activity. Teams that use this model as the foundation of their activities fall out of the media field rather quickly to concentrate on profit and backend processes. The same thing occurred with the Arbo Team. Our editorial staff searched through the web and found out that the last public appearance of the team owner Oleg dates back to 04/21/2021 at ZM Conf.
It was a challenge but AdCombo’s information “special forces” managed to contact the Arbo Team to find out the secrets of a stable income in media buying and some other tips.
Hello, Oleg! Could you please tell us why you decided to abandon the media environment? Do you regret it?
No, we don’t. Flowers grow best in the shade. In my opinion, publicity is overrated in our niche. It takes up precious time, which you can re-route to more useful things. It only makes sense to go public if your goal is to become a kind of info-gypsy or some.
After we abandoned the media environment, we have more time to optimize business processes and now we spend all our spare time on this. We allocate resources for each team member, allowing them to grow and be more efficient. I’d also like to add that we know many teams who agree with us on publicity issues and do much better with affiliate marketing than those who allocate a lot of time to maintain their public image.
You were the ones to arrange the first traffic arbitrage meetups in St. Petersburg; now you are one of the largest teams in the niche. How did you manage to stay afloat for eight years?
Yes, we were the ones who made meetups trendy in St. Petersburg. These were vibey meetings with people attuned to communication without fanfare or smoke and mirrors. Our meetups started with six people but at the peak times we had 120 attendees. It’s a bit insulting that some are trying to arrogate what we did but as people say: they’re “barking at a knot”.
As for the long life of the team, it’s like suffering to renown. We follow such principles as stability and the possibility to grow and scale up without gaps and major failures. We are doing all we can to follow them.
Given the team’s experience, you probably tested many sources. Is there another stable large source of leads besides Facebook?
Yes, we are constantly on a hunt for new sources. We test different platforms like TikTok, native ads, etc. However, Facebook remains our main source. All in all, we work with the same sources as they all do.
How much traffic does Facebook provide in the percentage ratio to the overall volume you make?
It’s about 70-80%, depending on the fluctuations of the source.
Facebook fluctuates a lot. How do you manage to maintain a stable flow of leads?
In times when Facebook bans a lot of accounts, we still manage to obtain the cheapest leads. It’s because we hang loose, keep going, and do not go all out on other sources. But many do so or might as well just stop driving traffic. We, on the other hand, analyze the reasons for such “behavior” and look for solutions with no hustle. The auction is commonly “uncrowded” at such times because people need time to solve their issues. This means that the CPM indicator is lower and leads are cheaper.
We have a farmer on our team who has the experience of a tester. He clicks all the buttons on Facebook all the time. This allows us to quickly catch bugs and adjust the farming scheme to new realities.
Does he really open every page and click every button on Facebook?
Yes, he has a lot of experience in testing apps and websites. Now he has an opportunity to apply his skills in traffic arbitrage as well:)
As you mentioned, this employee is responsible for farming. Do I get it right that you only work with in-house farmed accounts or do you have some kind of diversification regarding them?
Yes, for the most part, we utilize in-house farmed accounts; we rarely opt for purchased ones.
Could you share some minor details with us regarding the farming process in your team?
Yes, I can share some of our best practices but they are very challenging to replicate (Oleg laughs). According to our stats, they have been working perfectly for years.
First of all, we hire people from across the world. To begin with, we assign them routine social account farming tasks. If an employee proves to be trustworthy, then we allocate a budget to purchase devices so that they can create new accounts. They create new accounts from their trusted IPs. They do some initial farming and hand them over for other farming activities like cookie generation, social activities, etc.
So is their goal to create real profiles via real devices without using any anti-detect browsers or other software?
Yes, it is. Besides, they perform some minimum social activities for initial farming.
Is this the main source of accounts or are there others?
There are others because rented accounts still work as well. We have landing pages offering account renting services with further communication in WhatsApp. After that, the operator joins the chat via the CRM system, and then we farm the accounts, create Business Managers, and link the autoregs. Accounts farmed this way will spend a budget of $3,000 to $15,000.
By the way, we also track all user actions in the funnel and thereby we can calculate the best approach, the most efficient operators, and other things. In fact, it works the same way as with offers in the affiliate program.
But surely it costs a pretty penny and affects the ROI to have operators and employees abroad, and to purchase devices?
Yes. We also have a referral program for rented accounts: bring a friend and get % of the friend’s income. We have customers who refer us to 20-30 friends. Of course, this is quite costly, given that we rent accounts from TIER-1 and TIER-2 countries. For example, we have spent about $160,000 on the referral program alone over the past six months. But these costs eventually pay off with large spendings. All in all, we wouldn’t spend so much money if it didn’t work 🙂
In a nutshell, we lavishly bankroll to ensure the quality of accounts and large spending amounts. We have created an e-com project to warm accounts up and spend an average of $5,000 per social account. The figure is average. This way we break even and even have a little extra but an ROI is incomparable to common traffic arbitrage indicators. So, we definitely advise those who will read this: consider the quality of accounts in the first place!
Let’s get back to the fluctuations. It’s a high-demand time now given Black Friday and Christmas. At such a time, the auction is “overheated” by major brands. How do you deal with it?
Yes, we face a seasonal auction spike every year. For a long time now, we have learned to guide the client through the sales funnel and “squeeze out” the sales event. Now we can apply these skills well, especially during the hot auction.
To “squeeze out” the client, we collect as many details as possible, including their emails, and subscribe them to push notifications. We accumulate all the details in our custom-made CRM system so that we can track a specific user at each stage of the funnel and catch its weak spots in time to improve it. This kind of additional monetization works best for us at the moment.
I’ve heard a lot about your team’s cutting-edge operational skills. In particular, you shared a lot about CRM in an interview with Point G. At this point, you probably have custom solutions for other traffic arbitrage needs, don’t you?
Considering our market expertise, we have been into technical matters a lot and managed to develop a custom cloak and anti-detect browser. To date, we gave up the majority of third-party solutions and supplies. Also, there are no specialists in our team, except the tester, who logs into the Facebook interface now.
Haven’t you developed a custom neuronet for creos yet?:)
No:) The simplest thing about traffic arbitrage right now is developing a promotion scheme. Promotion approaches in the nutra vertical are similar for the most part. I log into adheart, search a bit, select a scheme, improve it, and start promotion.
What’s the most challenging thing about traffic arbitrage today in your opinion?
The most challenging thing in my opinion is to avoid the routine. Routine makes the team “soggy” and inefficient, not to mention their ability to generate new creative approaches. Therefore, we invest in developing solutions that automate the team’s routine tasks as much as we can.
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At the beginning of this article, we mentioned that teams with a business approach to traffic arbitrage are leaving the media environment. This is our judgmental opinion about the market. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s true or not. However, Arbo Team TOPS Adcombo challenges from year o year and keeps on winning cool prizes. Let’s wish the guys good luck in The Great AdVenture as well!