Luck or Skill: What Is More Important in Arbitrage?

Traffic arbitrage stopped being a “guessing game” a long time ago. Still, everyone who’s ever launched a campaign knows that feeling: “That was just pure luck!” — when a creative suddenly takes off and the leads start pouring in as if the stars aligned.

But where does luck end and skill begin? Let’s figure out why some affiliates consistently run profitable campaigns while others blame it all on “bad luck.”

When Luck Decides

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth — yes, luck exists.
Arbitrage isn’t pure math; it’s a blend of analytics, psychology, and the chaos of human behavior.

Here are a few cases where fortune really plays a role:

• Timing of the launch. You happen to go live the day a competitor pauses their campaign or when the offer suddenly increases approval rates. The algorithms favor you — and boom, you’re in profit.
• A random creative works. You whip up a banner just to test — and it becomes your golden ticket.
• You dodge a ban. Facebook could’ve nuked your entire business manager, but somehow your ads slip through moderation and start running.

These “lucky breaks” happen. But if you rely on them — that’s not arbitrage, that’s high-stakes lottery.

When Skill Decides

Now let’s talk about those who don’t believe in coincidence.
A successful affiliate sees patterns where others see magic.

What separates a pro from a “lucky beginner”?

• Systematic approach.
  They don’t just test 10 creatives at random — they follow a method:
  change one variable, record the result, analyze, optimize.
• Analytics.
  Knowing how to read tracker data, what ROI means, and how auctions work — that’s not a bonus, it’s the foundation.
• Risk management.
  A pro never bets everything on one campaign. They test hypotheses, not their faith in luck.
• Psychology.
  When a newbie quits after three losses, an experienced marketer calmly keeps testing. Not because they’re “lucky,” but because they know patterns always emerge.

The Balance Between Luck and Skill

You could say arbitrage is a game of probabilities — where skill increases your chances of luck.
You can’t control TikTok or Meta algorithms, but you can learn to understand how they behave.
You don’t know exactly how an audience will react, but you can predict trends and cut what doesn’t work.

Luck helps you catch the wave.
Skill helps you stay on it.

A Real-Life Example

Let’s look at a practical case.

Two affiliates launch the same offer.

• The first one is a beginner with a $500 budget. He accidentally finds a creative that delivers 150% ROI. He celebrates — but doesn’t know why it worked. The next week, performance crashes, the audience burns out, and he’s lost.
• The second one is experienced. He runs structured tests, segments the audience, tries different GEOs. At first he’s in the red, but after a week he reaches stable profit.

The result: the first calls himself “unlucky,” the second is a “pro.”
Yet both had the same initial chance.

Why “Luck” Is Often Hidden Skill

When you constantly test, analyze, and optimize, you start getting lucky more often.
Why? Because you create more opportunities for those lucky breaks.

System → Repetition → Predictability.

From the outside, it looks like “he just got lucky.”
From the inside, it’s hundreds of hours of stats and testing.

The Bottom Line

Luck is the trigger.
Skill is the weapon.

Luck might give you your first profitable campaign, but without a systematic approach, you’ll quickly slide back into losses.
Skill, on the other hand — even without luck — will still lead you to consistent profit, just a bit later.So in arbitrage, the winner isn’t the one who “got lucky once,”
but the one who creates their own luck.