Martin Lee Affiliate Marketing

Many affiliate marketers rely on google adwords as a source of traffic generation. They will either send the traffic directly to the merchant’s site or send the traffic to their own website. In the latter case, their own website does a job of preselling the traffic, which helps to increase the conversion.

Such sites that are created tend to fall into three categories:

• One page website that consists only of a landing page.
• A simple website with a few pages.
• A decent website with content.

All these kinds of sites used to work well, until Google started changing the rules.

First up was “Google Slap”. Low quality sites - AdSense arbitragers, squeeze pages, and one page websites all got penalised. A quality score index was introduced, and sites with a low quality score had to bid high amounts to get their advertisements placed.

Next up was the “Google Jab”. The rules were made stricter, and affiliates who did not follow the rules had their business model taken down overnight. Smart affiliates made adjustments to their sites to ensure they continue to stay in business.

In the latest “Google Knockout”, Google decided to specify clearly what types of sites they’re knocking out:

• Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information
• Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads
• Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

At the end of the day, to build a sustainable affiliate marketing business, a lot still boils down to having websites with real content.

What value do you bring to the marketplace if your website does nothing but show (disguised) affiliate advertisements?

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