Affiliate Marketing Blog

Website promotion has had a trailblazing evolution jumping from one phase to the next and leaving behind those who just caught up with the previous schemes.

When marketing folks first took over from html techies the net was thought of as just another mass media like radio and television. This was the rule of banner ads - in-you-face advertising messages with animated gif bitmaps or flash content.

Over time people developed a blindness to those ads and they became less and less effective.

Later we saw the advent of reciprocal links and the proliferation of "link farms" whose only reason in life was to show Google as many links as possible in order to build up the exposure of their clients.

Reciprocal links are the cyberspace reincarnation of the old "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine". Google caught up with that too and unsavoury operators used to cheat you by removing your link soon after or making it invisible to the search engines.

Then came the advent of the blog. As many people discovered the appeal of this cyberspace soapbox each article was open to comments as people discovered the interaction of social media. That was the perfect opportunity for planting links all over the place. Not just a kind and relevant contribution but a blatant attempt at corrupting the original message with free-for-all adverts promoting gambling, pornography and whatever else.

The clampdown was swift with the advent of no-follow links which allowed people still to include links in comments but these were deemed invisible to Google who no longer tallied these for your overall ranking.

At the same time the AdSense ads alongside organic searches on Google were taking over. People were told to monetize their website by adding a copious amount of those. To help things along it was very tempting to ask friends and relatives to click on the ads featured on your site assuming they were doing it from a different IP connection to cover your tracks.

Genuine advertisers were incensed at the poor results having to pay for each click whether it generated sales or not. It was hard to explain why people would click on the ad but barely stayed a second or two on the advertised site. Click fraud is a big issue and is threatening Google's business model.

Finally the era of affiliate programs emerged. Big names like Amazon and eBay are in it so it must be good... for them that is. Just like Google there is no need to make them any more wealthy than they already are. On the other hand you can participate in an emerging enterprise by driving traffic to it. This is what affiliators.biz is all about.