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The more I run on Google Adwords, the more I realize how much they have changed in just the few years time.
In 2004, I was able to run the keyword games and others to my arcade site that was PLASTERED with ads for just $0.04 cents per click. I was making some nice bank for my age. Then Quality score was introduced and I saw $10 minimum bids show up in my account over night. (Poor user experience)
In 2007, I was able to throw up bridge pages (also known as landing pages) that were essentially just a huge image that was clickable (linking to the aff offer) and throw a bit of content under it. (Poor user experience)
In 2008, I was able to run wordpress blogs as the backend and have a nicly designed landing page as the front. (OK user experience)
In 2009, I have had to change my strategies significantly and they continue to change.
It just seems harder and harder to run a good affiliate marketing campaign in Google these days. And many guys are running away from it for that very reason.
So what CAN you run these days?
The truth is, you need to actually provide some sort of value now a days.
You can't just throw up a page plastered with advertisements and expect Google's ad team to give you any sort of advertising impressions.
Surprisingly, review sites are still the main thing I see in Google Adwords these days. They still have their place and can actually provide a good user experience. (Hence the reason why they are still allowed to some extent)
Although there was a big stink about people having their review sites slapped with poor quality score, I think it's because the user experience of that site generally was poor - because everything on the page was fake... And Google knew it. Again, Poor user experience.
So running your campaign on Google should provide users with value. Even if that means users will actually be able to comment on your reviews, give more reviews themselves, etc. Whatever it takes to provide more than a fake testimonial and fake reviews.
You can still sell like normal but offer some value in the form of real life user interactivity.
Also remember review sites are not the only way to sell. There are tons of ways to sell a product, but the ideas are endless. In this business, the creative people are the ones who win.
It seems that the more google evolves, the more they care about the user experience and that, my friends, is how you can run a campaign in Google.
So how will you provide a good user experience?
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To be honest, I’m more curious as to what other traffic sources there are that don’t fret over that user experience bullshit, so I can run on their networks. Google is dying in my eyes, and until they lighten up, they’re going to continue to lose revenue.
I seriously wish I could drive down to the Google offices and get in the faces of the douchebags that are disapproving my stuff. Google just doesn’t understand how to run a business. What about the user experience of their fcking advertisers? We’re putting food on the table for our family, as well as theirs. The gap keeps getting bigger and bigger for the n00bies to get in, and harder and harder for the veterans to stick around. Google should be putting their terms and conditions in OUR faces and specifically telling us what they allow and don’t allow. It’s bullshit that one site gets through, but the next site doesn’t.
Look at the threads of Wickedfire too. The one guy outed his OWN landing site, and it was a legitimately created site that he said kept getting slapped for no reason. Some of the members said it was because of one thing attached to his account that made him permafcked, and he would no longer be able to advertise on Google no matter how legit his site is. What a joke.
I can understand them disapproving some stuff, but I mean come on, REVIEW sites? REVIEW sites for God sakes. It’s ridiculous. Farticles and flogs keep getting slapped too.
I think affiliates should give Google the finger and start running stuff elsewhere…until it hurts Google’s pockets so bad that they start allowing more stuff into their ad network.
Recommend future post: Other traffic sources BESIDES Google. A lot of people I know are done with them.
Many valid points. Thanks for the input.
I think it’s great that the future of the industry as a whole is moving towards quality instead of quantity. While that makes it harder to turn short-term profit, it sets up affiliates and other online marketers for better long-term conversions.
Lately all I see is bitching, everywhere, on blogs, wickedfire. Instead of bitching about how google or facebook fucks you up, why don’t you try something new. All I see everywhere are flogs and farticles, nothing new. This leads to only one conclusion, that 90% of the so called affiliates are just good copycats.
Put yourself in Google’s of FB’s shoes. Would you put your business at risk just because some greedy advertisers or affiliates want to get rich quick. I don’t think so. I’m telling you they don’t need the money.
So it’s time to get serious and put your mind at work. There is a lot of money in this game, but not for everybody.
PS: Take Jonathan’s example, become an advertiser and you will have no more problems with QS and other shit, leave this problems to your affiliates.
Vlad, I hate to be the one to say it, but you’re way off course here.
The problem isn’t the offer, or the user experience, or what we should be doing or what we shouldn’t be doing.
The problem is that Google/Facebook/Myspace/whoever isn’t consistent and utterly unfair with their policies. They tell us not to do ‘bridge’ pages when there’s TONS of them everywhere, so why should other advertisers get away with it, and then keep slapping us? Oh, and we also shouldn’t be doing ‘flogs or farticles’ yet thousands of people get away with it, and that’s why we complain. There’s no policy that is right in our faces telling us specifically what we can and can’t do. There’s a thread in WF right now where a guy is working and emailing with a human being over at Google…and the response was dismal. He edited all of his pages and his site….and what do they tell him? They tell him that he’ll have to wait a few weeks when it updates or some shit. You really think he’s going to get his campaign back? Hell no, in fact, his account is probably now permafcked by the big G. So what the hell are we supposed to do if Google/Facebook themselves won’t tell us what we’re supposed to do. That’s why we’re angry.
Read my response above where I talk about the one guy who has a completely legitimate phone site that gets slapped every 3 weeks because Google frickin feels like it, and chalks it up to ‘user experience’ bullshit.
I tried to create a new campaign on Myspace the other day. It was denied. You know why? Because they felt like it. Said that they’re not accepting that type of ad at the moment (meaning there’s too many of them). Are you fckin kidding me? Just wasted a few hours of my time creating the perfect campaign and they deny me because they’re not accepting that type of ad AT THE MOMENT. Do you think they’re going to tell me when they are? Hell no they’re not.
So the problem isn’t with us, it’s them, and people will continue to bitch until something gets done.
This whole “user experience” thing is utter bullshit, and is the ad companies ways of hiding behind it. When someone says they were scammed by Acai, they don’t say it was Google or Facebook that scammed them, do they? It’s not a scam, so fuck the people that don’ t read fine print anyways, it’s their problem, not mine. What about the affiliate’s user experience?
Do you know what your problem is? You complain too much. Why do you think there are so many flogs/bridge pages ….. out there? Because Google/FB/MS gives some of it’s advertisers a preferential treatment? I’m telling you NO. It’s just because people now this kind of shit is profitable and all they do is submit as many ads as possible and try to find any flaw in the system that permits them to do this. So, if you think the time you lost building the “perfect campaign” was for nothing maybe this business is not for you. If you want to promote shady stuff you must think shady, don’t promote it as legit. Do you think the reps. at G, FB, MS are retarded?
Give them some credit, they passed an interview to get there. Show them what they like and be prepared to be rejected.
It would take people half a second to switch over to another search engine. In the end a great “user experience” is all Google has. Lose that and they lose their business.
Long term success on adwords is going to come down to offering high quality & unique products, services, or information. Think: what would I recommend to my grandmother. Also, users must be able to get what was promised in the ad from your website(domain). No linking to an order form on another domain.
Sadly, very few affiliate offers fit this profile.
I’m sticking with google because they have the most traffic by far and things will only get easier and cheaper as people drop out. Time to get creative!
If it takes you ‘half a second’ to switch over to another search engine, congrats, but to the rest of the world this can take hours, or sometimes days to just ’switch over’ a campaign. There’s a lot of testing that is involved and built upon within ONE search engine, they’re not all the same. Ask anyone if their Adcenter campaign looks exactly the same as their Adwords campaign, and looks exactly like their MIVA campaign….probably not.
You also say this: “”"users must be able to get what was promised in the ad from your website(domain). NO LINKING TO AN ORDER FORM ON ANOTHER DOMAIN.”"”
^ Are you retarded or something? That is EXACTLY what affiliate marketing is. If it wasn’t, then we’d all be the merchant/advertisers. Are you kidding me? It’s never been a secret that the big G doesn’t like affiliates, but come on man, this is common sense. I’ve just never understood WHY they don’t like us, especially the sites that actually DO provide value. In terms of user experience, I’d much rather send my grandma to a well-built affiliate site and have the site link to the merchant rather than go directly to a crappy merchant page.
In my opinion, Google doesn’t care about user experience, not at all. They want to keep the merchants happy because affiliates can do it better than them.
Just face it: most of the review-sites and flogs are total crap and full of lies. Also they promote offers that have their billing options “hidden”.
Google is on the bright side my friends. The affiliate marketing industry is the problem. Google and Facebook are forcing it to evolve and that is a good thing.
The problem with all the copycats of nonsense in this industry is that they lost perspective. They are in the me-only perspective having lost their values. Google helps them to find them again, hopefully.
That’s where you’re wrong. There’s PLENTY of sites out there that ARE review sites and provide a ton of value to it’s visitors. Why should they be slapped? Especially if they’re ‘legitimate’? (we can get into that later)
Why should certain accounts be targeted while others (especially scammers/shady ppl) be left alone?
Google isn’t forcing anyone to “evolve”, they’re simply turning away thousands and thousands (maybe millions) of potential dollars for us AND THEM to be made.
This is where the problem comes in. What if I bought a product, did extensive testing with the product, wrote a review on the product, created a review site, and then created an Adwords campaign for it? They would slap it.
Google’s methodologies are outrageous, and like I said, take your traffic elsewhere – they don’t want our money. When they lose the market share (hell they’re already losing a lot of it to BING), we’ll be the ones laughing all the way to the bank.
To add to this idea of local “me” vs. global perspective: Somewhere I read as a Google-Test for Affiliate Marketer:
Would you send your grandma to your site?
Make that check and if you answer no, you definitely don’t provide value.
Yeah, Google is really a great site, I’d like to use Google services. But there is one problem, that would be security problem. I think that Google accounr should be more safer.
I don’t what some of you are complaining about? I saw my part-time affiliate revenue go from 15k a month to 0 on Google. I understand why they don’t want my bridge pages. We affiliates aren’t Google’s customers/client. Its the users. If Google has no users, no advertiser would want to advertiser on their properties. The fact of the matter is, so long as Google has a strong user base, they will get business from all kinds of advertisers. If it is not you then someone will take your place.
Speaking of Google user experience, I have 19k subscribers on my list. But no one trusts me because I never cared to provide useful information to them. If I had a good relation with my subscribers, with such a huge list, I would be laughing right now.
So, I’m going to take Google’s advice and create sites who care about the user. Because a “happy” user base is the key to long time revenues and profits.
-G
Well the big problem is that Google is selling advertising, but they expect advertisers to provide user experience, whilst paying them at the same time.
Advertisers shouldn’t be responsible for providing a user experience. This should be left to bloggers/hobbyists/industry experts etc. Marketing a product/service and trying to provide user experience with reviews, added content etc kind of oppose each other. The ads should be for advertising and the search results for user experience.
I have no problem with Google having tight policies on advertising and affiliate policy, but surely this would be easily enforced with approval/disapproval upfront when the landing page is submitted. Why let all the junk through and then punish everyone for it later?
All that we have now is a ‘user experience’ that consists of longer fake reviews, more useless content and all kinds of other ‘creative’ ways to make a landing page seem like it has a great user experience.
The truth is, you need to actually provide some sort of value nowadays.
Question: what sort of values then?
I’m so over with these google’s tight policies.
Chester,
thanks the whole problem. Google is deciding the value subjectively with their bots and their policy team.
So now no one knows what the hell to do. This doesnt just apply to affiliates either. All kinds of advertisers are getting nailed.
I think that is a good Experience About the User in Google Cares……..It is really a nice post with this nice info…..
Sup John
I just finished a post on my blog on this issue
Yeah…google is just going to keep getting stricter and stricter with their quality score policies.
With that said, many people will find themselves spending all of their time trying to make google happy only to be slapped in the future when policies change again lol
And I say, what’s the point in that? Why spend all of your time trying to make some company happy when you can be spending your time making money another way?
It’s incredible how anyone can defend google and the way they do business. I call it with one word – monopoly
I totally agree. People are far too quick to defend Google. Just because it is their search engine of choice, they are somehow brainwashed into thinking that Google runs their company like saints. They do have a monopoly and they have abused this over the years.
If you offer value, you’re building a real business for long term. not something that will be here, and gone tommoorrow.
They way I try to add value to my articles and blogs is that I always try to give the viewer what they’re looking for, even if I can’t give the best information possible.
When I had a blog, I could write huge and extensive articles that I’m sure could have benefited someone if it ever got off of the ground.
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The only reason Google cares about the user experience is because it drastically affects their bottom line. If you’ve ever tried to contact Google support, you would know that Google doesn’t really care about helping people.
Thanks for the heads up on this