Still much money to be made from the affiliate game?

[sim007_]

Hi Guys,

This is my first post. Snooped around here on and off for 3 or 4 years. Anyway I havent done any affiliate or google adsense sites for a few years now but I'm due to go traveling in december and I think affilate income could be a great way to help fund my trip.

A few years ago there was lots of money to be made as an affilate or with an Overture/Google partnership. Is this still the case?

Also I have never had any experience with blogs but I have just created one to document my travel experiences across europe with a campervan. So family/friends can keep track of me and hopefully make some money through advertising. Can blogs make decent cash and do they do well in Google nowerdays or have i missed the boat?

Thanks

[stu foster]

The money is still out there mate without doubt. The market is evolving too. Exciting times lay ahead in my opinion.

Stu

[Alfie]

Yep, the industry has evolved and matured, but the rewards to be made are as significant as ever before. There's a lot of talk about the death of affiliate marketing, but in my opinion the opportunity is greater now - the way to being successful is changing and arguably isn't as clear cut as " the good old days ", but if youD move with the times, you're onto a good'un!

Damn that coffee did the trick!

[Iskander]

I'm never clear on what people mean by "the good old days." I didn't get involved in AM until the end of 2003 - was that after the "good old days" had already finished? What made the old days "good" ?

[tomj]

What made the old days "good" ?

Erm being able to upload a site with 350k pages with nothing but ppc links on and rank 1st page google for every term under the sun and make a 6 figure sum every month from it

Many people on here banked stacks doing that....however markets changed and many people still banking 6 figure sums every month just involves bit more work and knowledge .......sigh

[sageretainer]

Yeah, Ive been in to AM is various forms since 2001, big changes, but move with the times and you should have a cheeky smirk on your face.

---------------------------
Earn.co.uk - The Local Jobs and Business Directory For London - promote your business for free!

[sim007_]

Yep I was there. Had about 10 directories online all 60% overture sponsored adds and then backfill listings scraped from other search engines. In fact if I remember rightly my directories got a mention on here when all that 301 redirect hijacking kicked off.

[befuddle]

but I'm due to go traveling in december and I think affilate income could be a great way to help fund my trip.

Best get a move on with whatever option you go with if you want to get paid before December

[Barry]

Yep IMO the good old days were when you could just install a search feed on your site - supply it with a few magic keywords and it would get indexed and generate money.

Of course I would be knocking 5 of these little sites out a day when content didn't used to be king. - but content is now king so from 100's of sites I now only run three.

[sim007_]

Right so there is still money to be made but the game has changed somewhat.

So what about blogs? is there any point, can they potentialy contribute towards your affiliate income? do they get listed on google?

[Stellar]

So what about blogs? is there any point, can they potentialy contribute towards your affiliate income? do they get listed on google?

Yes. Google loves blogs like Policemen (and women) loves donuts. Its is all about adding new, fresh and relevant content, which you do automatically with a blog.

[Alfie]

Remember, a blog is just a name given to a certain type of website - in effect its a website thats updated often. These days, the line between a blog and a website is often thin, blurred and smudged - we now use wordpress ( traditionally a blogging tool ) to create websites in full - it works well because the blogging function is already there and useable, and ( and in answer to your question! ) Google seems to like them.

I think that relevant, quality content produced regularly and presented in an SE friendly format will always get you traffic.

[gadget]

I think that relevant, quality content produced regularly and presented in an SE friendly format will always get you traffic.

I agree with Alfie. Whatever you call your site, the important fact remains - it has to have a purpose, both for the human reader and the robots.

With regard to the good old days .. like most markets, there will continue to be consolidation with some 'not so good' sites/people dropping out and the better ones becoming bigger. Yes, it's harder than it used to be to get started but thankfully the 'let's get rich in a day' days are behind us. Why is that good? Because it means that to be succesful, the quality of the sites has had to improve, and that has got to be good in the long run.

[chrisuk]

If you are a overture affiliate or similar you have missed the days where Google would just eat up your feed.

Its deffo getting harder and on three fronts, you can't as easily advertise your feed pages in adwords, if you manage it the cpcs are rising and thirdly quality based pricing is coming soon.

This means you have also got to pay attention to the quality of traffic that you push to feeds and certainly restricts your sources as from now on if you buy crap you will start to get paid crap.

There is still money to be made of course, lots of it and it will involve building content and worthiness into sites as click sites, white label directories etc are gonna find it gets harder esp if you read this bit of good news!
Google AdWords Help Center: Are there any business models that merit low landing page quality scores?

[gadget]

I found this site when looking into Arbitrage definitions (after having read the link in the previous post) - Arbitrage Defined

Does this mean that sites, however well contructed and useful, fall into the Arbitrage definition and as such will start to be penalised by Google?

The following site is one of our friends from this community - Bingo - Bingo Reviews
I think this is a very good page and would, IMO, be a good user experience for anyone interested in learning more about Bingo. However, is this classed as Arbitrage by Google.

Note - Kieron, pls let me know if you'd prefer your site not to be listed in this post.