Is Affiliate Marketing Dead? Or Just Sleeping?

It’s all about the user experience as far as the Big G is concerned, which is why no-one should’ve been surprised when they came down hard recently on thin affiliate sites. That is, sites where no additional information was provided to the site user to enable them to make an informed decision about whether to purchase the item(s) being sold.

Essentially, this just highlights the laziness of the marketer. A bit more effort to provide useful additional informative comment to the user and many sites would probably have avoided being ‘slapped’ - having high minimum bid amounts being placed on all keyword bids in a PPC campaign for a particular domain.

Just as fake blogs or ‘flogs’ have been rightly hit, so the dodgy review sites. Sites where reviews are deliberately falsified in favour of a higher commission product, are by definition deceitful. The user trusts the information being presented to them, even though it’s false. Why should such sites prosper? Do no evil and the great Google Sun will shine upon thee.

It’s a function of the sad fact that much of the Internet marketing industry has an underlying ‘get rich quick’ ethos, with most sales pitches being geared up to making things easier and faster for the unskilled, such that no effort should be required to make money online. Because that’s what sells. The lure of easy money.

And this is perhaps the biggest myth of all. Sure, there will aways be some who make money in a relatively short space of time, but only after putting in the effort. The rest are doomed to inaction or failure before they’ve started.

So the point to take on board is that there are no quick fixes, no easy shortcuts and there’s certainly no long term benefit to deceiving your site visitors. The silver lining however, is that the pickings will be easier for those affiliates willing to up their game and provide something better than their competition.