There’s been a lot of kerfuffle (great word) in the affiliate blogosphere (annoying word) over the past couple of days following David Hawk’s posting How The Affiliate Marketing Industry Killed Itself. Now I’m not one to let a bandwagon pass me by without jumping on board so here’s my take it all.
My contribution to this debate is in relation to David’s first point : “merchants wised up to affiliate tricks”. I’m in the interesting position at the moment that I’m trying to develop a business as an affiliate in my spare time whilst working fulltime for a merchant which is just starting an affiliate scheme.
I’ve had my eyes opened quite a bit by the experience of being on the merchant side. Specifically we’ve had problems with coupon sites using IFRAMEs to drop cookies, affiliates using 302 redirects to effectively wrap our entire site content with their affiliate cookie in Google listings and PPC affiliates blatantly breaching our policies and bidding on our trademarks.
All of these techniques are nice little earners for the affiliates. They’re nice little earners for the networks too as they pick up their cut of all these transactions too. But they’re no use to the merchant. In fact, they are worse than useless, they are costing us money to get sales which we would already have received. As David’s article points out, coupon sites frequently do nothing to generate the sale but take a cut out of profits by getting to drop their cookie just before the customer buys.
So, is David right to say affiliate marketing is killing itself? I say no but it could start to feel pretty poorly pretty soon.
Certain affiliates and their sharp practices are dragging it down and it is down to the networks to get their act together and start policing their affiliates more efficiently. All the above breaches of terms and conditions were caught by us, the merchant. I appreciate that the networks can’t watch every merchant all the time but they are the ones who have access to the aggregate data. They are the ones who can datamine for unusual referral acctivity. They are the ones who can see referring urls that come from PPC campaigns when the merchant says no PPC.
At the moment the networks have little incentive to police their networks because their share of the pie is largely dependent on their affiliate share - it serves the network to have more revenue showing as affiliate generated even if it isn’t. But if this sort of cream skimming carries on both the merchants and the legitimate affiliates will lose faith in the system. I don’t think affiliate marketing is dying but it certainly needs to change because it’s in no-one’s long term interests for it to carry on like this.
Just got the following email from Microsoft AdCenter:
” We’re excited to announce the release of the Microsoft Content Ads Beta to all U.S. adCenter advertisers on August 29! With this release, you can extend your advertising reach beyond search, and choose how your accounts are upgraded. If you’re not ready for Content Ads at this time, fill out this web form by August 26 to upgrade in search-only mode. “
Two points. One I’m not in the US. Two, what the jiggery is the Content Ads Beta and if it’s a beta why do I have to opt out of it? Surely a beta is a test. You don’t just force everyone onto the beta programme. Or obviously, if you’re Microsoft, you do.
Quick update on my last post. As predicted by Yuri in the comments the site disappeared out of Google’s index within 24 hours. Much sullen grumpiness ensued at Chez Monty. Then over the weekend it’s back and better than ever. Not only is my site back at number one for the target key phrase but also for a second phrase I was targeting.
I suspect that what’s going on is somehow related to Google’s many data centres. Perhaps index updates are rolled out gradually across different data centres and you’ll get different results depending on which one you query. A similar effect, the so-called Google Dance, used to happen a year or two back when index updates were far less frequent than they are now.
I still don’t want to give the game away too much. The site is a bit time sensitive but hopefully this next week will give some idea as to whether my chosen niche and key phrases will actually bring in the traffic. Stay tuned for more from me and also keep an eye on Empress over at Building My Empire who’s going through a similar experience with her new site.
OK! I did it! Number one result on Google for my target key phrase in four days. Cool.
Here’s how it happened:
First up, register a new domain name containing the keyphrase, no punctuation, just the phrase all stuck together in one word. Total cost £6.09
Second, create the landing page. I used a CC licensed image from Flickr as a header but everything else on the page is pure text. The HTML is as simple as it could possibly be with a bit of CSS to make it look nice.
Make sure the page validates according to whatever Doctype you’ve specified. Valid pages are a whole lot easier for the search engines to parse.
Use Title and H1 tags. Put your key phrase in as the first words in both.
Write several paragraphs. Work your keyphrase in but make sure the text still reads sensibly to a human being. Don’t bother measuring keyword density just make it read like a halfway sensible short article and you should be fine.
When you’re happy with your landing page submit it through BlueHat SEO’s Quick Submit Tool. I have no idea how this works but I do know that Google indexed my site within a couple of hours of me using it.
Next, wait. It takes a while between being indexed and appearing in the rankings. Four days to a week seems about usual in my experience so far.
As they say on Slashdot, …. profit!
Now I appreciate that some people will read all this and say “well of course you can get the number one spot if your keyphrase is unusual enough” and that’s probably true but my point is that I did it quickly (thanks in no small part to BlueHat) and with a crappy single page website. If you’ve picked your keyphrase properly and are targetting a nichey enough market this should save you ever spending money on PPC ads.
It’s well known that Google Adwords has recently barred all ads for anything that might realistically be related to gambling - this includes tips, “play for free” games, newsletters etc.
I’ve discovered today that they also ban ads for platinum credit cards because “platinum” is apparently a registered trademark of American Express. No, I didn’t believe that either but I’ve checked and it is.
Now, there’s two things that piss me off here.
1) Platinum is used by pretty much every bank in the UK to refer to their premium credit card. It is a well known term in everyday use. I would say that this has diluted the term to the point at which it is no longer trademarkable. Obviously I don’t have the money to take Amex on in the courts but why should Google be Amex’s policeman? If they want to cease and desist me for using their trademark let that be Amex’s decision not Google’s
2) If you’re going to have a policy at least enforce it consistently. Search on Google any time you like for “platinum card” or “free bets” or “poker online” and you can be pretty much certain that infringing ads will be shown and more often than not it’s a large company that’s doing the advertising.
I know it’s Google’s system and I know they can accept or refuse whichever adverts they like but I’m getting pretty fed up of them imposing their own morality on me.
It looks like last week’s SEO has reaped its rewards! One of my sites is now showing at number five on Google UK for the three word phrase I’ve been targetting. I’m hoping that this will substantially increase the number of pageviews I’m getting without having to deepen my Adwords budget. The site in question is generating enough revenue at the moment to cover the advertising costs but it’s not exactly setting the world on fire so getting more free traffic will definitely do me good.
On a related note I’m experimenting with using SEO only to promote a very niche offshoot of one of my affiliate enterprises. I’m not going into details for obvious reasons but I’m trying a single landing page targetted at a specific three word phrase. The inspiration behind this is Stu Foster’s Niche Marketing Blog where he advocates “build[ing] websites that serve small segments of larger markets” - what is popularly known as “the long tail”.
Everything is set up and the site has been submitted to the search engines. Let’s see if my recent luck with Google continues and whether I end up owing Stu a pint for pointing me in this direction!