Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

[JKMiller]

I am still pretty new to Inernet Marketing and have become a member of PPC Classroom 3 with Amit, and have done some direct linking campaigns and have started to build a website to market other peoples stuff. I was listening to a teleseminar yesterday between Amit and Perry Marshall and they pretty much told everyone on the call the Affiliate Marketing was officially dead, that if Google finds out that your are an Affiliate Marketer that your account will be terminated, and that sooner or later they will find out. This was really disheartening since it has taken me six months just to get to where I am now, which is not that far. Now I am so confused, if Affiliate Marketing is dead then I have no idea where to go next. Does anyone have any advice, or am I way off base with thinking that Affiliate Marketing is dead. I have always learned that when one door is shut many other doors open. The problem is that it was hard enough to find a system that works with all the so called Guru's out there. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

[Linda Buquet]

Hi JKMiller,

According to Perry's blog today what Amit said was that affiliate marketing with Google Adwords is dead - not that affiliate marketing as a whole is dead.

Adwords really has come down hard on affiliates recently, making it very difficult to market with Adwords, but lots of affiliates are still doing it so it isn't totally dead yet.

There are many things that Adwords has a problem with, but most of them have to do with spammy or scammy offers, ebook offers, dishonest marketing like flogs and fake reviews. Affiliates that do that type of stuff are often the most vocal on forums and such and that's where a lot of the big money is made, so those guys are the ones you hear about a lot. However there are lots of higher integrity, above board affiliates that are still doing Adwords.

There are many other avenues for PPC traffic and yet many more ways to market and get traffic aside from PPC. Many affiliates I know just do SEO, blogging, and social marketing, all free ways to generate traffic.

Here's Perry's blog about it for anyone that missed it.
The Death of Affiliate Marketing on Google

I don't know Perry at all, but know Amit and read his blogs, follow a lot of what he does and respect him for all his accomplishments. DISCLAIMER: What I am about to say is NOT a reflection on either of them, just an observation I have made about the industry in general.

While it IS true that Adwords has been banning a lot of affiliates…
often when guru types "make the death of affiliate marketing" posts, they are setting people up for the next info product or training course they are going to start selling. Again, I'm not saying that's what's going on but Perry does mention at the bottom of that post he has a new Adwords product coming out (a different spin on using Adwords I might add) and his 4,000 per person Adwords seminar is coming up in March and Amit is promoting it too. So again, not saying they are doing anything, just making sure you realize they both pretty sharp marketers.

Anyway affiliate marketing is not dying. If I had a 100 grand for every time I've heard that in the last 7 years, I'd retire wealthy. Each time, the industry survived and it will this time too, I promise!

[Slygun]

Actually if your site is not a fully loaded site with tons of articles and text you will be ranked very low if you have affiliate links on your blog or site. It has happened to me recently. There is a way to get around it though; you have to cloak your links. The way to do this is by having a page on your site that has a redirect script with your affiliate link in it. You then put “disallow” to that page in your robot.txt file so Google can’t index it. What this does is you send your links to your web page and that page jumps the person instantly to you affiliates product and Google will never know it was an affiliate link

I am new to affiliate marketing also but I have SEO down good but now have to learn how to get visitors that come to my site to buy. That is my only problem at this point. But I don’t believe for one second that affiliate marketing is dead.

[ParetoMitch]

Affiliate Marketing is not, and never will be dead. It is evolving much like any other business does, as the online thing that is constant about making money anywhere is that there will be change.

Evidence of this is that these questions are being asked, and that people are still visible in all the places that affiliates advertise. There are very few places on the internet that there is not somebody trying to make money, which in many cases will be an affiliate of some sort.

The times are changing, and the only thing that will be dead are the campaigns of those people who think that what they were doing a year ago will still work and refuse to adapt to the new game that is coming out.

There is traffic everywhere and where there is traffic there is money, so just keep reading these great forums going to seminars and working with networks and affiliate managers and your hard work will pay off in the end.

[Slygun]

As long as there are products to sell there will always be huge amounts of money to be made by affiliates marketing on the internet. Even Google is really just an affiliate in a way. They are just a middle man. Affiliate Marketers are half of Googles (and any other search engines) bread and butter. Without which they would only have butter. And who wants to eat butter without any bread!

[TeDWooD]

This has just made me remember something quite important. They are saying the internet as WE know it will end in 2012. This doens't mean the internet will end, just the structure will be dramatically changed. We all know how competitive the prices are getting now days to the point of it being ridiculous and not beneficial to any businesses.
The ISPs have already signed contracts to negotiate the internet to be a subscription based service where it will be similar to sky and BT vision. This is also due to the Newspapers and Media suffering greatly with their income and they knew they HAD to do something about it. This is because all the blogs provide all the information and no-one NEEDS to hear it on TV, on Bloomberg or Sky news they just go on a blog or other small site etc.
They will make you chose your package i.e. facebook,, wikipedia, google and hotmail for something like $40 or an extra $10 for Youtube, Miniclip, Xbox.com then all the other sites you have to pay for individually, so virtually nearly all affiliate sites will be dead. Unless they sign up under a big domain like googledotcom/5staraffiliatemarketingforums. Where will this leave all the affiliates? Well it may sound bad but who knows things change and there might be a new form of online marketing but there will always be a way to make money.
The way Google are stopping affiliates now, has just made me think that they are starting it now and will continue to implement it.
I am in the process of contacting my ISP to confirm this but there have been a number of sources that state that they have contacted them and this is confirmed.
Its possible this could be a hoax or there could be a change of plan... but the way Google are approaching things now makes it seem very possible.
YouTube - 2012 is when the Internet will end - Part 1 (Skip to 7.35 for one for the main reasons)
Now i tell you this is a possibility but if this is a hoax run by this guy... then he is a prime example of someone who is good at marketing their site.

[Slygun]

If they did that the economy would collapse and they would have no customers to charge because everybody would be worried about buying food rather than getting online. Just think of the percent of money transaction that would suddenly cease to exist if that happened. Too many companies rely on the internet for there sales (even big retail stores would drastically lose sales) and to much money is exchanged. That would be the equivalent of the government saying nobody can have a job unless you apply to a specific select few big companies. Besides, even if it were true, with the wireless technology today, people would just start linking to each other wirelessly through routers and create there own website servers and networks. It is a hoax, the ISP's companies and the governments are not that stupid. It would be like committing suicide.

[Charles]

Its not dead but google adwords is getting harder and harder. Google is slapping campaigns up and making it harder for affiliates. But we still make good money using different search engines.

[Slygun]

We can always use organic rankings though. Just make sure to cloak your ads, banners and links or you may get Google slapped.

[Linda Buquet]

I just blogged a lot more details about this issue which includes links to other related posts and a comment by an Adwords employee. Read it all here.

The Death Affiliate Marketing on Google? Not Again!

What do you think?