While discussing some money-making arbitrage opportunities with my brother Mike, he suggested creating an arbitrage blog. About an hour and a half later, The Arbitrage Blog was online. It didn’t have anything set up or customized yet, but it was online.

The idea behind The Arbitrage Blog is simple but likely to produce good results with regards to earnings. People like to find good deals. Some people like to find good sales for the sake of reselling at the current market price for a profit, as is the basis of arbitrage. By providing links to sales via an affiliate link (whenever possible), my brother and I will earn commission from the sale. Additionally, we will likely not have too difficult a time finding direct advertisers for the blog (at least once it has more content and, in turn, more visitors) since its target audience is anyone who appreciates a deal.

Now that I have had some experience with blogging, I feel that this would be a good time to perform a case study by which my readers can learn how some of these blogging practices are put into effect and in turn observe the results. On each Friday over the course of the next several weeks, I will provide updates regarding the status of the blog. Included in these updates will be details surrounding changes to the blog, visitor and pageview statistics, earnings reports, and more.

Getting Started with The Arbitrage Blog

In setting up The Arbitrage Blog, we started by selecting a domain name with the word “arbitrage” included. This lead us to decide upon TheArbitrageBlog.com. Because I already have a Web hosting package at HostGator that allows for unlimited domains, it was not necessary to purchase anything other than the domain name. However, I had to perform the additional task of forwarding the $9.15 domain name from GoDaddy (since that’s where I have most of my domain name purchases) to the HostGator Domain Name Servers (DNS’s).

The most recent version of WordPress (2.2) was installed, and I uploaded the SEO-friendly Cutline theme. The theme might change because my brother thinks it has too much white for his liking, but it gets the job done for the time being.

I also installed many plug-ins that I feel are necessary to the success of the blog. The specific plug-ins I installed and activated include the following:

• Akismet
• All in One SEO Pack
• FeedBurner Feed Replacement
• Genki FeedBurner SiteStats
• Google Analytics
• Google Sitemaps
• Landing Sites
• No WWW
• Popularity Contest
• Share This
• Subscribe to Comments
• What Would Seth Godin Do
• WordPress Database Backup
• WP-Amazon (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to work in WP2.2)
• WP-Cache
• WP-ContactForm with Spam Protection
• WP-Lightbox 2

For many of these plug-ins, additional steps were required. I set up the RSS feed with FeedBurner (subscribe to The Arbitrage Blog!), created a new Google Analytics account, and created a new Google AdSense channel to track clicks to the blog. I also claimed the blog on Technorati (fave The Arbitrage Blog!).

To get things rolling, we created About Us, Archives, Contact, and Sitemap pages, and my brother created an initial post that explains the concept of the site and arbitrage in general.

Upcoming Plans for The Arbitrage Blog

The obvious next step for The Arbitrage Blog is to list arbitrage opportunities that readers will be able to take advantage of for personal income. Each opportunity post will be set up in a format that makes it easy to determine its quality, expectations, and urgency. Specifically, we will follow a consistent format for these posts similar to what is listed below:

1. Provide information about the product, including name, description, and any relevant links (affiliate links if possible),
2. Provide pertinent data on purchase price, sale end date, estimated resale value, percent return, and time sensitivity for reselling, and
3. Include an image of the product to simplify navigation of listed opportunities.

In addition to providing quality arbitrage opportunities, Mike and I have several key plans anticipated for the blog. For one, we are planning to a “Getting Started” page in the near future that will organize links to important articles and strategy posts that will set people — new and familiar to arbitrage — off on the right foot.

Additionally, we will search for direct advertisers who may be interested in advertising on The Arbitrage Blog. In the meantime, we will be optimizing AdSense ad placement as necessary until any interested parties are found.

Follow Case Studies Every Friday

For the foreseeable future, I will be providing case study articles on The Arbitrage Blog on Fridays. I will be providing updates on various blog statistics, such as visitor tracking and earnings reports. If you don’t want to miss out on any of these case study posts, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed!