Forum Moderators: skibum
The vast majority of affiliate sites that are making money are not someone's hobby site. They aren't sites that the webmasters are passionate about. They are sites that are made for the sole purpose of making money. The moneymakers are then duplicated tenfold with just enough variation so as not to be seen as duplicates.
Some will add some personal commentary or maybe they think their page layout, navigation or font is better. They may find comfort knowing their site isn't as trashy as the competition's. They may think their site is more worthwhile because they don't have popups/unders. They may spew out some travel logs to make their site more legitimate.
So, when there is yet another thread on how much money can be made, let's remember there is much more to life than making a bunch of money.
So, then you're peeved that you're being outranked by these affiliates - not that their "polluting" the Internet. How about - instead of asking an affiliate to *stop* his efforts, you and your competitors take it upon yourselves to learn enough to beat them or hire someone who can. Believe it or not, not all affiliates are the scum you seem to think they are.
We [affiliates] compete against each other all day long, and those of us who are "professionals" don't complain about it. In fact, when we're beat, it makes us want to work harder. Maybe you should take a lesson from these types of affiliates, instead of wishing they would simply disappear so you could obtain the desired ranking without having to compete with them.
Bottomline - SPAM = Sites Positioned Above Mine
the vendors could all show up within the first two pages of results.
As a merchant, I have to counter this one, at least in my retail neck of the woods. Many, if not all, of my counterparts have sites that suck from the perspective of search engine friendliness. Dynamic URLs that are a mile long, enough js garbage between the top of the source and the bottom to block a frieght train, some don't even have unique titles for each product page, so even if a spider can get in, you won't know what the heck they were advertising. And trust me, it wouldn't matter if they were competing against each other, they wouldn't come up in the first 3 pages of the SERPs. It all stems from a lack of knowledge when they built the site, except now they spent half a million on the site and you can bet they aren't going to redo it now.
Enter an affiliate, who can build a site using the merchants products and make it effective, get them into the first page, maybe even #1.
Are there bad affiliates, yes. Are they all bad, no. Saying they are all bad would be equivialant to saying all Arabics are bad b/c 11 of them flew some planes into some buildings. Simply not true.
Back in 1999-2001 I made a few sites that had information about cars. If people did a search for a car they were thinking of buying, hopefully they would find a page on my site. On this page I have links to merchants who pay me if someone buys a car from them or whatever. The sites are now outdated. Very few people are looking to buy a 2000 Audi A4. So I've taken all reference to the year of the car off the page. Somebody may be thinking of buying a 2005 Audi A4 and they're searching the internet for some info. They happen to find my page (not likely) with the outdated and wrong info. They read about the engines available, the standards and options, and about how smooth it drives. This page does more than waste his time. It will make his internet and car buying experience unpleasant and possibly lead him to buy a car he doesn't really want.
If I really didn't care about other people or the quality of the internet, or if I thought it was just a game, I would just search/replace [year of the car] with [present year of the car]. This would make me more $$. If I really cared, I would purge those pages from the web.
This is a trashy site and worse than spam no matter where on the SERPs it is found. I have a few more examples.
On your site about cars, it is a risk that searchers take. You took the year off but you aren't deliberately saying a car is one thing when it's something else. If the searcher can't figure out that they are looking at a page that could be for ANY year car, that's their fault. And on the other side, what if they were looking for that information, then you did them a service.
I can point you to a site about Martin Luther King, Jr. that is entirly a lie. Is it spam? No. Unique content, the person who built it is passionate about his subject (in a bad way, but still passionate), and he comes up in the top 10 for "Martin Luther King" and Martin Luther King Jr". It's inaccurate, wastes time and is built to mislead the searcher, but it's not spam.
I consider those knife comercials a complete waste of my time when I am switching channels on Saturday afternoon. I don't like junk mail or cold calls or email SPAM or SE SPAM. They all exist and are not going away. I like making lots of money and so do all these other people. The only way to get rid of it is to make it so you can't make money from it. That is never going to happen. All anybody can do is make it harder. I like it when they make it harder because that is just less people I have to compete with.
I just don't have the time to waste updating it.
... but you're comfortable with wasting the time of users who come across the out-of-date information that you can't be bothered to take down?
Hmmm ...
but you're comfortable with wasting the time of users who come across the out-of-date information that you can't be bothered to take down
No, I expect SEs to figure out that it's outdated. Libraries do it. (And in this case, it can't be that hard to figure out since 90% of the links on the page don't work.) And you certainly wouldn't expect a writer of a manual that's outdated to go out and track down all the people who have bought it to update the info for them or take the books away. Heck, I can go on Amazon right now and buy a few books on SEO/web design/web marketing/etc. that are outdated and people still buy, but I don't see anyone running to them to complain.
Again, this comes down to the notion that somehow the internet is more noble than other mediums. *News flash* It's not.
BTW, it is possible to rank top 10, but jeez! it's hard work. I'd really rather compete on product benefits with real competitors than random screen scraped result pages. Even doing a view source of surrounding pages to see what is working is kinda painful.
The problem is not that the other pages don't lead to a legitimate product, but that the other pages are, at best, marginally on topic. The contents are there just as an excuse to place the keywords on the page.
You can't even do PPC because a generic ad will kill you because it is not really what most searchers are looking for, and a specific ad can't maintain the CTR.
Bottom line, my problem is with the proposition of value add. Do affiliates really add value? Or have they become necessary just because they have created so much noise that only the best practicioners can get noticed?
SPAM=sites positioned above me
can also be
SPAM=sites positioned *around* me
The vast majority of affiliate sites that are making money are not someone's hobby site. They aren't sites that the webmasters are passionate about. They are sites that are made for the sole purpose of making money.
But sometimes they *are* passionate. There's a huge mix of sites out there from the massive datafeed sites that sometime clog up the SERPs to sites that are far more in depth and detailed than their merchants.
I'd actually disagree about the "vast" word. I think perhaps it might be fairer to say that the vast number of affiliate sites featuring in the SERPs are industrial-scale datafeed generated sites. For a lot of other affiliates it's about content and brand-building.
Don't forget that some merchants are almost entirely dependent on affiliates - and in some fields the superaffiliates are amongst the most powerful movers in the business.
Now from my point of view I'm hoping that refers to the vast army of Amazon affiliates diluting the figures, or perhaps reporting errors on the basis that some affiliates will obviously be working with more than one merchant - the article did not make it clear if it covered that kind of thing.
If that's the total, combined income for the average affiliate I may as well go shoot myself now but I'm hoping to be above average :o)
Have to say though, for a mag' aimed at the AM market, it was a pretty depressing article.
Pibs
So, when there is yet another thread on how much money can be made, let's remember there is much more to life than making a bunch of money.
Sure there is. But some people find making money a lot of fun. Besides, the only thing I've found so far to pay for things like food, gas, and clothing is money.
I ask *every* prospect about their search for the product. Many admit to having searched for the product for over a year.
This just means that you aren't paying your affiliates enough to promote you. If you give your affiliates enough of a financial incentive, your customers will find you...quickly.
AM affords me the time and resources to do things I am more passionate about (such as nice, long vacations) and in turn I am just finishing up a site that I am more wothwhile. IMO they go hand in hand, but you gotta have $$ first! So, I can honestly say I am not passionate about most of the pages I put up, but they afford me the time and money to do those things.
wellzy
I believe that - easy. Ask affiliate managers what % of their affiliates actually produce sales of more than 100 dollars a month. I think you'd be surprised.
Lots of people see affiliate marketing as the "get rich quick" of the Internet (with thanks to many ebooks from people trying to get rich on selling that idea) but its work. Once most people find that out, they start mailing out their six dollars in their next "business" endevour.
This just means that you aren't paying your affiliates enough to promote you. If you give your affiliates enough of a financial incentive, your customers will find you...quickly.
perhaps ...
but the point that i am trying to make is that without the "indirect references", everyone in the industry would show up within the first two pages. certainly a good chunk of them would show up. the problem with the "indirect references" is that they aren't even promoting a related product/service. it is so bad that even the anchors are masked as pointing to a real source, but if clicked will actually take you into a bunch of their popup rings. in some segments, it is called appropriately, a circle jerk.
so, this elbowing is a disservice to both the searcher and the industry. affiliates in some segments are creating their own demand by crowding everyone else out.
btw, this crowding is not a problem on yahoo, just google. so enjoy the ride until either google fixes the problem or they tank. either result is fine by me.
btw, this crowding is not a problem on yahoo, just google. so enjoy the ride until either google fixes the problem or they tank. either result is fine by me.
Maybe not in your market sector, but in the ones I compete in Yahoo returns mostly near duplicate affiliate sites.
