More on the Adwords Update… Don’t Believe Everything You Read
Aargh… I can barely contain the urge to spew big chunks (I’m sorry, that’s not very lady-like, is it? Oh well, just ignore the visual) in response to some of the stuff I’m reading about Google Affiliate #2, or whatever you want to call Google’s latest algo ‘adjustment’.
On one blog that bills itself as the ‘essential guide’ to becoming a super affiliate (with a small ’s’), the webmaster (I will not refer to this person as a Super Affiliate and you’ll know why in a second) talks about how Google has been ‘wrecking havoc’ (he can’t spell either) with his Adwords campaign.
He contacts Google to find out why, posts Google’s response to his query, and then proceeds to discount everything they told him.
Here’s an example:
Google reply: On a case-by-case basis, we’ll evaluate the content, structure, and navigation of a website.
small ’s’ affiliate surmises: Does this mean that they are human reviewing the landing page’s relevancy to the ads written? Surely not, that doesn’t sound very google to me.
Has this guy never heard of Google’s “Spam Recognition Guide for Raters“? Or maybe he thinks they write plain language English instructions for their robots, spideys and other techno-wizardry? 
He then writes about his ‘hunch’ that Google determines Adwords quality according to PageRank, or what my friend, Colin McDougall, refers to as ‘green fairy dust’.
Sheesh! Have you ever heard such rubbish?
As always - it’s all about relevance and content. Create ads that are relevant to landing page content… and make sure your site has plenty of great content.
Anyway, as usual, don’t believe everything you read… especially from small ’s’ affiliates who are ‘wreaking havoc’ (correct spelling) with newbie affiliate marketers’ understanding of what should be a very simple concept - RELEVANT CONTENT.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 2% [?]
Slammed by Google?
Gee! I take a little vacation to do some hiking and visit the bears in the western Washington woods only to discover that all heck broke loose last week for affiliates who use Google Adwords to advertise their sites.
According to the blogs, forums and other affiliate news sources I’ve checked, affiliate advertisers are getting booted and slammed left, right and center.
Google Adwords costs are skyrocketing, sponsored listing placements are bottoming out or disappearing altogether.
Has your site been affected? Want to know why? Want to stop this from happening to your affiliate site, or regain your Adwords placement?
Read “Slammed by Google?” for more information on the latest Google update.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 3% [?]
Aaaah… Shucks!
A little shameless self-promotion here, folks… based on a post I just read over at Revenews entitled, “Affiliate Summit Buzz on Best Presentation“.
While comments like that are always nice to hear, one of my favorites came from Pedro Sostre of Sostre & Associates via Lisa Picarille (Senior Editor at Revenue magazine), and later confirmed by Pedro himself.
About my presentation, Pedro, a seasoned Internet and affiliate marketer said “Although I didn’t learn anything new, I was reminded of many things I’d forgotten.”
I consider that a huge compliment coming from a professional like Pedro.
Getting back to basics, DOING the basics, is always more effective than constantly chasing the latest and greatest technologies.
You’ll notice that in Pedro’s work as site makeover artist for Revenue magazine.
He takes mish-mash sites and turns them into works of art using basic tried-and-true design techniques.
Want your own site made over by Pedro? Apply through Revenue.
Want your site to convert better?
Get back to basics- build customer relationships through list building - just like Colin said.
Cheers,
Ros
Learn more of ‘the basics’ in the Super Affiliate Handbook.
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Straight from an Affiliate Manager’s Mouth, uh, Fingertips…
Frederic Thom, the affiliate program manager for Employment911, not only “provides excellent insight into the world of affiliate marketing and how best to make money in this very competitive marketplace” according to his blog description, but he also spills the beans on results he sees from his own affiliates at Employment911.
In his latest post, “Sites earning affiliate commissions - Winners and Losers“, Frederic shares exactly which types of affiliate sites earn 70% of all commissions paid.
If you’ve read the Super Affiliate Handbook you already KNOW this, but reminders are always a good thing.
He also spouts on which sites earn only 0.5% of all commissions paid.
Any guesses before you peek?
Cheers,
Ros
P.S. Frederic, if you are reading this… a good designer at Elance could whip you up some better-looking banner graphics quickly and inexpensively.
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Affiliate Classroom Magazine - July 2006
The July edition of Affiliate Classroom Magazine is now available online - free, as always.
I was delighted to see that this issue focuses on article marketing, with a number of expert writers and working marketers offering helpful tips on:
- Article marketing best practices: what works and what doesn’t.
- How to develop hot article titles and content, even if you think you’re a “non-writer.”
- How to make PLR articles unique, with before and after examples.
- PLUS white hat “tag and ping” social bookmarking tactics.
Here is an excerpt:
“Fresh, original content is one of the most efficient and long-lasting methods for generating
traffic. Search engines in essence provide free advertising in organic results. Spiders seek out and rank URLs not only by the number of links referencing a page, but according to many factors appearing on the page itself.
Good content helps generate those results in two reinforcing ways. Good content gets linked to more often, helping to raise page rank. Original content also helps avoid being penalized — since engines check to ensure that a site is not merely duplicating content seen a thousand times over elsewhere. “
Amen!
Here is another…
“One mistake newbies getting into article marketing sometimes make is to acquire all the latest auto-generation software. Admittedly, some have and do make money by pumping out thousands of pages on thousands of sites using tools of that kind. They figure, reasonably enough, that if you only make a few cents per site per day, that’s okay because multiplying that by thousands of sites adds up to big bucks.
But that’s a losing proposition for most, and more so every day. Search engine technology has a long way to go yet, but it’s getting more savvy all the time. The risk of getting de-listed — if you get ranked on the first few pages at all — is very high and getting higher.”
Exactly! Thank you so much for making that point!!!
Download or read the July edition of Affiliate Classroom Magazine online now.
Cheers,
Ros
P.S. Affiliate Classroom is the same great company that recently released “The Affiliate Manager - 1st Edition“. Have you got yours?
Popularity: 3% [?]
Skype Landline Calls to Mexico FREE this Weekend
Are you using Skype yet?
If you don’t know what Skype is, Skype is a program that you can use to make high-quality calls using your computer and an Internet connection.
Calling any other Skype user, anywhere in the world, is free.
This weekend, you can also call any landline or mobile phone in Mexico, for as long as you like, free.
Next weekend, July 29th and 30th, landline and mobile calls to Japan will be free.
If you’re not Skype’ing yet, be sure to check it out!
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 2% [?]
Are You Using Joomla CMS?
I received an email from Steve Hetrick at DataWebPro that will be of interest to anyone running the JOOMLA content management system on their servers.
Both Joomla and Mambo have come under attack in the past few weeks - a serious issue that can result in site
defacements to more serious account and server security breaches.
Steve recommends that you upgrade to the latest version of Joomla, 1.0.10, which involves only a few mouse clicks when you use Cpanel’s Fantastico.
Apparently most of the hacks are coming through outdated or compromised plugins.
For a list of the plugins and more information about the problem, visit http://www.datawebpro.net/alert.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
Three Ways to Catch Affiliate Site Rip-Off Artists
If you are an affiliate with a popular site, chances are good that some lazy jerk will try to rip you off for your site content or design.
In some cases, they’ll just copy your whole site.
Catching these thieves is essential if you want to avoid having your site rankings slip due to duplicate content penalties.
I am forever on the lookout for these thieves, and today while I was in the Commission Junction interface, I discovered another way to find them.
The thief at meet-date-love.com forgot to swap out my affiliate links from 101Date.com for his own. So, when the Gay.com banner expired, it showed up in the invalid links report at CJ, as shown in the graphic below.
Duh.
Here are two more thieves that I found when I ran a search for the secret phrase that I build into all my pages:
- deai-renai.com
- datingfox.com
Another way to find those plagiarizing jerks is to use Copycape.com.
They offer free and paid versions of their service. Just type in your URL at Copycape.com to check out the free version.
Do you know of more ways to catch an affiliate thief?
Let us know - leave a comment!
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 3% [?]
PowerPoints from Affiliate Summit are Online
Hi all,
Just noticed that Shawn has posted the Power Point presentations from Affiliate Summit East to his AffiliateTip.com newsletter site.
Included are:
- Affiliate Marketing Legal Issues (Panel)
- Benchmarking (Chris Henger)
- Building a Multi-Brand Niche Affiliate Program (Stephanie Schwab)
- Co-Opetition, Comparison Sites and Conversion: Lessons Learned From The Adult Online Playbook (Jim Lillig)
- eBay Web Services for Affiliates (Alan Lewis)
- How to Minimize Leakage/Maximize Commissions (Paul Wallerich)
- Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Affiliates (Panel)
- Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Merchants (Panel)
- Loyalty Affiliates: Loyal Allies or Evildoers? (Kimathi Marangu)
- Straight Talk on Search Engine Optimization (Wil Reynolds)
- SUPER Affiliate Strategies for Sustainable Businesses (Ros Gardner)
- The Value of Pay Per Click Affiliates (Panel)
- Top 10 Things That One Side Doesn’t Know About the Other (Brian Littleton)
Although PPT presentations lose a lot when the speaker is absent, you should still be able to pick up a few good points from each of the presentations.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
He Cleaned Marlon Sander’s Garage
Renowned internet marketer, Marlon Sanders, took a 19-year-old kid and trained him for 90 straight days in all the facets of internet marketing.
Boy, what I wouldn’t have given back to be that ‘kid’ back in 1998 and be given the chance to study under one of the true Internet Marketing Masters. Now that I count Marlon as a friend - yes, I’m privileged enough to be on his speed-dialer and he on mine - I’m even more jealous of the ‘kid’!
Marlon and Matt the ‘kid’ talked about EVERYTHING related to marketing a business on the internet, including; audio, PPC, B.E.R.C. (I’d never even heard of B.E.R.C. before), conference calls, sales pyschology, Adsense, down-sell, up-sell, Adwords, headlines, hiring people, sales letters, multiple streams of income, guarantees, learning on a gradient, lead generation and much more. Phew!
Moreover, Marlon required that Matt keep a daily diary of everything he learned during the first 90 days.
(Keeping a business diary is a brilliant idea, BTW. I still have my diaries from 1998 when I started my own affiliate marketing business. Notes like “Traffic - 300, Sales - $32.00″ are such sweet reminders of where you’ve been and how far you’ve come! )
Matt went the extra mile with his diary. Not only did he write daily, but he also took pictures of what he was doing (including organizing Marlon’s garage).
Now here’s where things get interesting.
Matt applied everything he learned… by publishing his Internet Marketing apprenticeship diary - along with the pictures - and it proves to be very good step-by-step-by-step IM tutorial.
To find out exactly what Matt learned from Marlon, and to see more pictures of Marlon’s garage, check out “The Marketing Diary“!
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 3% [?]
