If you’ve been in the affiliate space for awhile you know that these ads have been all over the place, I’ve seen them mostly connected with Acai & resveratrol type offers.

From the articles … “The products at the center of the lawsuit are said to include cosmetics, such as anti-wrinkle creams, diet supplements, and tooth-whitening kits.” Colon cleansing also seems to be targeted.

I’m curious if they are going after just the companies that make these products or the affiliates as well?? Either way, with Google cracking down on people selling google kits, and now this, as an affiliate you should stay away from beefing up your landing page with questionable endorsements & false claims.

So, what do you guys think about this, as an affiliate you are definitely not out of reach of being sued, if not directly, then the company itself being sued may turn on its affiliates for false advertisement.

Lots of sources, here are 3:
Wall Street Journal Article
Yahoo News
TMZ

How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

Kudos to them for being swift to address this and hopefully get it resolved. If they wouldn’t have sent an email, I probably would have been scratching my head come next month when the bill was due wondering why I spent so much. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up for those that still use Google (there seems to be a lot of banning going on lately). You might want to check your CC.

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

Well, I woke up this morning to find out I was over $700 in the hole! In my rush to finish I forgot to disable the search network as this was suppose to be a content only campaign. That little check box cost me a pretty penny. I hate to lose money, so any amount is not fun.

Yeah I could have had a lower budget, but content is usually slower to be approved so I figured by the time I wake up it would have just got going. Unlike search where it is usually pretty fast for me.

Moral of the story is don’t get sloppy when launching campaigns. I think I’m going to write up a pre-launch checklist just because of this as there are a handful of things that should be checked.

• Quality Score will now be calculated at the time of each search query
• ‘Inactive for Search’ will no longer be used for keywords
• ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’

It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality score particularly the real-time calculation. It now seems Google will determine the right at the time of search if your ad is worthy enough to be displayed. Hmmmm …

Inactive for search disappearing is just another way of saying be prepared to pay a pretty penny if your want your ad to show. Doing away with the minimum bids is a smart thing. I never found that particularly useful. Moving to a first page bid can give you a better idea of what kind of competition you’re dealing with.

What does this mean?

All in all, if you have a solid site & landing page with relevant keywords and ads, business show continue as normal. Clicks may get even cheaper as some of your competitors drop off. Just hope that it’s not you Love to hear your thoughts on this, just thought I’d post this as the news came in …

Never click on these links in the message or sign in to your account through an email. I’ve heard of some stories where people’s accounts got taken over and all their campaigns stolen and traffic redirected. Trust me, you do not want that to happen. Take a look at the email below:

Notice how they politely state “Please remember to input your Adwords username and password correctly NOT your email and password.” How kind of them. Take a look at the URL that you would be directed to:

Here is Google’s response to these attempts. They also have a Phishing Form you can fill out. Bottom line they state

Please remember that Google’s AdWords team will never send an unsolicited message asking for your password or other sensitive information by email or through a link.

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up…

You can read the full story here over at information week.

He claims that he lost money due to Google showing his ads on parked domains and error pages which resulted in 0 conversions or leads for his firm. What did his losses amount to? A grand total of $136.11 …

Granted its not the amount and I understand where he’s coming from, but really. I give him less than a 1% chance of winning this lawsuit. It is kind of silly to blame Google for the type of advertisement it serves, the fault here lies with the advertiser more than anything. If you want to play the game, now the risks involved. Also, with the option now of placement targeting, you really can’t blame Google anymore. (Another reason to fire up the content network)

Did he not see the Adsense for domains page or read the adwords help center before turning his campaign on?

Yes, Google can improve the content network and we all know click fraud is alive and well, but if it was as easy as saying, “hey I got all these clicks and no conversions, give me my money back,” every advertiser would want a piece of that class action suit. I guess one solution would have two more check boxes to opt out of parked domains and error pages. Who knows?

I know I’ve been silent for awhile but I’m still in Korea and come back next week. So hope to post more regularly once Im back! It’s been a great trip and I’m recharged ready to pump out some more campagins!

In other words, if there is a product with domain cheapwidgets.com and you search for cheap widgets you may see ads with the following URL’s

• cheapwidgets.com
• cheapwidgets.net
• cheap-widgets.com
• widgetscheap.com
• etc…

all pointing to the affiliate site cheapwidgets.com. This can be done no longer.
In Google’s words NO EXCEPTIONS. While it won’t affect every affiliate marketer, just trying to skirt by without owning a website will be more and more difficult.

For those of you who use tracking software, the following is acceptable as long as the final destination matches the parent domain in the display URL.

For example, the following would be acceptable:

* Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
* Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
* Landing page URL: www.google.com

Learning how to build a basic site and craft a landing page are all too important in the affiliate world of pay per click.