Hi Everybody!
I've decided to start producing my newsletter as a blog, so that you can make comments on it and participate in active discussion of up to date topics. I'm sure you'll find this to be a great place to find out all the latest tips and tricks on affiliate marketing... minus the BS!
I will write most of the posts myself, Mark Ling, and from time to time other members of my team (and other marketers from around the world who have great tips to add), will make posts also.
So lets begin with a topic that has been wrecking havoc with thousands of mom-and-pop affiliate marketers around the world recently ... Google Adwords' new algorithm!
What's happened??
Well, if you have been marketing on google adwords recently, you may have noticed that all of a sudden, google doesn't want to display many of your ads. At least not for a reasonable price.
They are saying that you need to up your clickthru rate, or increase your click thru rate. At first I believed them, but after conversing with a google adwords representative, I've since discovered that's not the main point.
UPDATE: From my discussion above, in my opinion this what is happening:
What google has done is remove websites with low pagerank from their adwords listings. You see, they not only want to have the world's best free search engine in the world. They also want the world's best paid search results too.
You see, they realise that in the long run, if they deliver high quality targeted advertisements, then people are more likely to click on them in future.
BTW If you are wondering what page rank is, as defined by Google "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more havily and help to make other pages "important.". You can find a more full explanation at Google http://www.google.com/technology/
So where does this leave you??
Well, you've got a few options. First of all, if you have some sites that you want to continue to advertise as is, then you'll have to advertise them via google content match, overture usa, overture uk, overture aus, and miva.
There are other paid inclusion places, like kanoodle, but those are the ones I recommend you use first because they work well for me.
If you want to appear in google adwords again (without paying an arm and a leg!), you'll have to increase the pagerank.
How do you do that??
In short, you'll have to start thinking about producing high quality websites. The kind that other people will actually want to visit and benefit from. You'll have to trade links with other websites. You'll have to keep content fresh, probably via a blog.
Your site will need to come to life. Sounds difficult? Well those are your options. Either produce quality and get your page rank up, or ship out of adwords because google has laid down the gauntlet and only wants high quality sites in there.
They don't human review a site to see if it is high quality, they see based on its' pagerank score algorithm, so you'll have to work hard to beat that.
Just a quick plug for my affilorama course:) => I teach you all about that, including a 90 day roadmap for what to do, and a LOT of other affiliate marketing methods. Remember Adwords is not the only way, it's just a tool as part of your armory!
This new development will help you in the long run, it ensures that you have to start building quality and this is a much better long term business strategy (rather than throwing up a pile of crap and seeing what sticks).
That's my 2 cents, now it's your turn, I await your comments!
Mark Ling