There’s a lot of different people and styles of marketing in the affiliate marketing industry. Some people like to keep it completely clean and safe. Some people are shady. Some people are in between. I feel like more and more people will be pushed into some shadier styles of marketing/tactics this year.
Why do I think this?
Every time you turn around one of our traffic sources is cracking down on something. Facebook hates mobile, they hate weight loss, they hate profit. Google pulls the same stunts. Google hates ringtones, they hate landing pages that collect info, they hate berries, they hate landing pages with no content, they hate blog style landing pages. So what’s a pimp to do?
All of these crackdowns and policing just force people to get more and more shady. On Facebook, advertisers cloak their ads or they change the landing page after an ad gets approved. People are now teaming up to cloak Google. Who would have ever thought that publishers would get together to beat big brother?
The bottom line is that all of these crackdowns and shake ups will result in one thing. The people getting cracked down on will get smarter, take more risks and turn up the shady factor a notch. My suggestion to traffic sources is to let the market rule. If enough people are scammed with blog style landing pages, people will stop believing them. If every sponsored search result on Google is NamesWeightLoss.com people will become suspicious. You don’t need to be big brother and protect everyone from us evil affiliates. We will wear out our own welcome and only the strong would survive.
Keep Hustlin’
Don’t you think eventually enough pressure will come from investors/shareholders in these companies that they will be forced into taking the advertisers money?
After all if someone is prepared to drop $5-10k a day on ringtone ads there is zero guarantee that anyone is going to buy from them. Killing their account is going to drive them underground as you say.
Investors will win the day. Here in the UK we’ve seen a backdown on brand bidding and casinos from Google, and I am sure Facebook will feel the same pressure.
@Jim – Honestly, I don’t think investors understand how much money companies like Google turn away. Most investors have never run a PPC campaign or know much about the industry. I almost feel like there should be a group of affiliates/advertisers that team up to bring the issues to Google’s investors attention. It would make great news I would think.
Well here in the UK we used to have a trade organisation called SMA-UK (Search Marketing Association – UK) and I was the supplier liaision. That fancy title basically meant I got to talk to people working in the industry and then go pitch up at Google, Yahoo, MSN, Miva etc. and tell them how everyone felt.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but there was definately a Chinese Wall between the money people and the ones that thought up and implemented things like Quality Scoring etc.
Whenever there is editorial reviews taking place it’s imperative you know what is acceptable editorially and what isn’t.
I think the bottom line is Google et al have basically said they don’t like thin affiliate sites, thrown together blogs so if you don’t want to fall foul then do something different.
2008 was a train wreck for investors in virtually all companies, Google had their wings clipped from a shareholder value perspective and Yahoo have been very sick in that respect.
I’d love to see what you suggest happen……… but then I’m pragmatic about it and trying to push water up a hill isn’t easy.
Love the blog btw!
If everything gets out of hand, and buyers keep getting conned the law will create stiff regulations.
Good Stuff man
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