Forum Moderators: open
I for one in no way or form will get into the OV thing.. I sell inexpensive widgets and refust to pay 50 cents a click when you make 8 bucks to 20 bucks profit a widget. To many competitors click the heck out of ya and drain your money and I just cant get into that whole scene.. not for me.. I would rather advertise on a specialized directory or site and will do better their.
Ok.. with some of this said.. You all mention Googles affiliate marketing for commercial sites.. what holds in store for this do you feel? Google can easily make or break the small commercial guy by doing something like this.. their getting to big IMO that they neeed to be tamed. So what do you see in googles future for the commercial guy? Will they do a LookSmart deal? Will they find a way for the commercial guy to have to pay to be in their? Whats your ideas? Will it then degrade the reputation google has if they start making people pay? Afterall thats what we all like about Google right? You dont have to be the big huncho fortune 500 to be in their.. the give quality results for the small guy and the big guy and we know that so use them, right?
I believe that Google is too smart to shoot themselves in the foot by creating any drastic change to their business model. The sheer nature of their customer oriented business model has led to their success and can help us to predict that Google's future goal is to continue to provide their customers with the most relevant results. This rationale limits what kind of direction Google can take in the future. So future shifts in the algo should only be defined by changing customer taste and preferences.
And as a future Google shareholder I will sell my stocks if they "go supid" and shift away from a business model that has clearly worked.
Free yourself with knowledge...
Ahmen
PS Grumpus, Thank you.. bookmarked that page, I never knew of it
[edited by: Helpmebe1 at 5:03 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2002]
However the little guys who are in highly competitive commercial areas with less focus, originality and unqiueness and targeting will find it difficult. Though many disagree, my feeling had always been that G! increasingly just CAN'T reliably rank these types of sites. Page Rank and citation frequency algos which are a major part of their system just cant keep up. If you are in these areas, you just have to PAY for reliable online exposure - Adwords, OV, Looksmart. - little guy or big guy..
I feel what you put into it is what you get out of it.. and that is why I like google, because they basically reward you on how well put together your site is and all the many other factors... the point is.. if you put in the time, you will be found on google. Others, such as Ink even though I earned my way in at no charge, will often charge $20, $30, whatever per page.. when someone has a couple thousand pages, that is an unreal expense one can afford.. 2500x20=$50,000 a year to be in their search engine with no guaranteed results? PALEASEEE! So you just have to work harder and make yourself known, which is why I like google. The results are based on how much work you put into it.. like everything in life.. what you put in is what you get out...
If I am searching for a book title, I don't want to land on a cheesy site with no real content that happens to have a link to Amazon. I want to land on the Amazon page where I can click and buy the book.
No you don't, you want to land on my review of the book :-).
Yes.. putting work into a site, commercial or non-commercial is the key very much agreed. My personal feeling is that that effort should be best put into content, focus, and originality, rather than marketing. To some extent in Google, content IS marketing. I have a feeling that most that felt aggreived at the last G update had put a lot of time into tweaking things like incoming links, headings, titles, word density etc. And maybe not enough in making a site so different from competing sites that G noticed it. Maybe there was too much "copying" of SEO factors going on? Find a niche, and do it well. Competing with others with the same thing is a bad strategy. So i agree with you, what you put in is what you get out! And what you put in should be with attendance to what you know about Google's aims with their index.
Do your thing, know what to do, and of course their is always going to be similiarities with your site and competitors, you are selling the same thing, right? But I see it as do things your own way but to googles, as well as inks and the others likings and you will be found.. I myself work 7 days a week and on average 15 hours a day.. Man.. your talking about a guy who was in the medical field who worked 40 hours if lucky.. this has been a real, umm well its been work.. lets leave it at that.. but what you put in is what you get out.. 4 months ago I was doing 2 orders a day.. now around 20 or more a day, not only do to google but others such as ink as well.. my goal is 60-70 a day by years end.. what you put in is what you get out.. and that is why i like google as of today...
Like they say in church: "Bingo!"
I'm in a business where the "big guys" have deep pockets and often are scruple-challenged, but still I hold my own on Google because I work hard at it and Google values information and content and not fake crapola. Not coincidentally, the public likes good information and not fake junk that is only listed because somebody threw money at it. I could never compete on Overture or any other place that sells ranking.
Amazon gets the #1 ranking for books because it deserves it. It didn't buy it. No "little guy" can or should get that ranking until they provide the public with a better product than Amazon. Little guys can do fantastic on the Internet, but they have to be sane about it.
Each month (with the exception of my very first month) my Google rankings have slowly improved. As I say, on some good and reliable terms, I'm ranking above the big guys (Amazon included). On other terms where I'm in the top cluster, my blurbs (mostly through luck) are better than the big guys' blurbs so I'm seeing really good traffic from them. Then, of course, there are terms where I can't find my listing at all, though I'm sure it's in there somewhere.
Sure, I'm not doing near the volume of sales of my competition, but my overhead is $40 a month. My name isn't known. And, as a programmer more than a designer, I've got a lot of work to do on the general appearance of my site (I've tended to clutter up my pages so that you can get to the 'next' thing you're looking for in very few clicks - there are just so many potential 'next' things that it's become almost harder to find what you're looking for - but that's another story...)
Suffice it to say, a little guy with no money but with some time to spend on it can, and I suspect always will be able to compete (rather, co-exist profitably) with the big boys.
G.
So how does affiliate marketing fit into that? It doesn't. If I am searching for a book title, I don't want to land on a cheesy site with no real content that happens to have a link to Amazon. I want to land on the Amazon page where I can click and buy the book.
I'd rather have the Google SERP point me to:
- The publisher's page about the book.
- Reviews of the book (which can include Amazon links).
I never noticed this before now - did my prediction come true?
Since this thread is about Google and affiliate marketing (and marketers) is it safe to say that not all affiliate marketers and sites fall into the same category and aren't all created equal?
First, you have high dollar, highly competitive areas that bring sizeable financial rewards. It would be safe to assume that these are the areas that highly skilled marketers {and spammers - who are highly skilled) would be likely to target, with the most money put into sites because of the return. If any small guy doesn't have the skill level to compete he/she might as well try for a lucky break without expecting much or put their efforts into something a little more feasible.
Then there are some excellent sites, information or similar, that have a wealth of desirable content and put up some relevant affiliate links to derive revenue. They'll get legitimate, voluntary links, rankings and traffic because of their excellence; they can't really be called affiliate sites in the same sense of the word that others can.
Then, there are affiliate sites that are done up as part of an overall strategy, not necessarily to get rankings or churn revenue, but to set up intricate networks of highly targeted pages as linking schemes (which can sometimes get click traffic) to inflate link popularity and elevate Page Rank. Doing up affiliate links is an easy way for them to crank out dozens or hundreds or thousands of pages. These are often done by "professionals" as a link pop and PR network to provide the boost needed by actual client product sites, or their own, which are actually the ones they're trying to get the top rankings for. It takes a lot of ability to be able to do these up skillfully and avoid penalties. These act like legitimate front or shill sites, and they must work to some appreciable degree, or we wouldn't be able to find them at the search engines. Sometimes they remain out of view, but they can be found often enough by checking back-links.
There are some sites that are slapped together in a hurry without substance, to make a little $ or give it a try to test the waters before they jump in.
Small guy sites are the ones we can expect to fall into another category, with people trying to do a revenue producing site as a business venture based on income from affiliate programs, putting a lot of time and effort into the design and content, doing the best job of it they can with whatever skills they have. The success of these can depend partially on the skill of the webmaster/seo, and also on the nature of the competition. Well done with the proper targeting, they can most likely have a chance of success in varying levels, except against the first group, which are more than likely apt to be around for a long time to come. Trying to compete againt those is a crap shoot at best, so there's no sense in anyone blaming the search engines, loathing spammers, whining, flaming, having pity parties, hating capitalism and going on protest marches up at Mountain View, buying whammy dolls for ODP editors, etc., etc. Time is, imho, better spent targeting more realistic markets.
Webmastering and SEO skills are very individual and on a curve, can be progressive over time. My personal opinion is that the safest thing is for someone to honestly assess the skill level they're really at at the time, learn to recognize what they're up against with a particular market - who they're up against and how stiff the competition is - and stay within what can have some reasonable chance of success in, for whatever level they're at.
For example, if you sell toy cars, and that's all you sell, how many pages of content can you write about toy cars. I know I know, there's a lot you can say, history of toy cars, stories, etc etc, but do buyers really want this? All these pages may prove a hindrance to the successful fulfillment of their goal - to buy.
So chiyo's saying, for these sites, the best solution will be to pay and buy ads. Yes, this is a solution. But then we won't be SEO's anymore, we'll be Account Managers, as SEGuru kept saying in London. I, for one, see the truth in this.
I see a way to create pages while keeping them out of view of the users, and I will do it. How long this will last, I'm not sure. I'm getting more and more concerned though, I have to admit.
