Funny, I just got an email today from someone totally disgusted with the affiliate marketing game -- I guess Google just erased his entire business with one change.
Welcome to 2009. In 2008 I spent a little bit north of $250,000 on Adwords. In 2009 Google banned me because I was sending the traffic to high quality websites full of original content, but largely built around affiliate links. (Shoes were my niche. I was one of Zappos biggest affiliates for a few years there.)
I wasn't the only one this happened to. Google brought the ban hammer down on tons of affiliate marketers at the same time, some much bigger than me. (Imagine being able to tell dozens of $250,000 a year customers to go pound sand.)
The punchline, of course, was that Google was banning affiliate marketers because a) they were themselves affiliates of Zappos and other companies, and were showing their affiliate links in the google search results, above the adwords and b) were in the process of building their own affiliate marketing network, buying up some of the smaller players and roping in some decent brands.
Fast forward four years, and now this month Google is shutting down their Google Affiliate Network, once again screwing affiliate marketers big time.
I'm glad to say that I am not among their number.
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