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Google has sent Internet marketers - especially affiliates - into a uproar with their latest AdWords “summer cleaning.”

Over the past week, advertisers have literally been getting booted out of Google Adwords. That includes advertisers who spend more than 5 figures a month on AdWords. I’ve spoken with multiple super affiliates, and they are all in an uproar over what appears to be yet another “affiliate -unfriendly” move by Google.

I can’t say Google never warned us. They announced new algorithm changes in December of last year. But when advertisers started getting kicked out starting a week or so ago, it hit hard - like it came out of nowhere

An anonymous Affiliate Classroom contributor and PPC affiliates complains…

“I had an ad doing 6.7% CTR and have spent well over $150,000 on Google Adwords in the last 2 years – now they’re telling me that I need to increase my minimum bid for 300%! No way!”

So what is Google really up to? Have they gone the way of pure evil? Or is is this part of a larger and more complex agenda? Read the rest of this entry »

In college I had a friend who, as a high school teen, attended rock concerts. He didn’t go for the music. He sold T-shirts, though ’sold’ is something of a misnomer. All he had to do was show up and they were practically ripped out of his hands. (Come to think of it that happened literally, sometimes.) He made a serious chunk of change, ten bucks at a pop.

He understood social network marketing.

He didn’t have to do a lot of advertising. He didn’t spend a lot of money on marketing. But he knew where to find customers… where they congregate.

That’s the not-so-secret lesson of social network marketing. Many sites try to get customers to come where they live. Not a bad thing, as it works pretty well much of the time

But social network marketing is going where the customers already are. While there you hope to sell them something you have good reason to believe they already want. Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s results for the second quarter of 2006 certainly make interesting reading. Not only is advertising the major source (one could say the only significant source) of revenue for Google (99% of its revenue), but the AdSense programs generated 41% of that revenue. AdSense revenue was $997 million dollars — just shy of a billion dollars!

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t break down the numbers any further, so we don’t know which AdSense programs are generating the most money for Google: AdSense for content, or AdSense for domains, AdSense for search (it’s probably not big), or the custom/premium AdSense programs for large publishers.

Just as interesting is the “traffic acquisition costs” number, which is the money shared with Google’s partners. At $723 million, this is almost 3/4 of AdSense revenues. I bet some of the larger partners get hefty percentages — 80% or 90% — of the AdSense revenue their sites generate. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m constantly intrigued by the clever ideas I see and hear about that people are using for viral marketing and linkbait. While it’s only loosely related to affiliate marketing, the concept of linkbait and starting an “Idea Virus” is definitely one that can be used to generate affiliate and/or advertising income on the Internet. I’m posting a list of example linkbait and viral marketing successes here to help people get their own ideas flowing.

1. All My Life For Sale - This was originally just a guy named John Freyer who decided to sell literally everything he owned on eBay. Now it’s a website, a hardcover book, and a piece of performance art that’s on display at multiple museums.

2. One Red Paperclip - Kyle MacDonald posted an offer on CraigsList to trade a red paperclip for something “bigger and better”. Since then he has traded up 14 times, and just finished a trade to get a house. According to the Sitemeter on his website, he’s receiving close to 200,000 visits to his website daily. If you assume that he’s earning an average of $1 CPM for those Google Adsense ads he’s got running on the site, then he’s earning $6k per month just from that advertising. (And that $1 figure is a total wild guess on my part - it would be much more or much less than that.) Read the rest of this entry »