You are going to hear many different opinions on the state of affiliate marketing.  The question is this…is affiliate marketing dead?  My answer is no. Affiliate marketing is not dead.  But I do believe that affiliate marketing is dead the way we know it.

3 major things happened this year that affect how affiliate marketing is done on the Internet.

1. Amazon stopped affiliates from direct linking to their site.  Bye Bye the old days of linking directly to Amazon affiliate products.
2. Google had a major slap against affiliate marketers.  Thousands of Google Adwords accounts where shut down overnight without a clear explanation why.  Most of them were affiliate marketers.
3. The FTC passed some new rules.  You have to now disclose that you are getting paid to promote a product as an affiliate.

Why now?  Why all the new rules.  Reality is there were always rules.  But there was never a real need to enforce the rules.  The spammers and blackhatters have made it bad for the good marketers.  These guys came out with fake blogs, spamming Google, and everything they could to scam a customer out of a buck.  Hence the need to enforce the rules.

What is a marketer supposed to do?  The answer is simple.  Be careful what you choose to promote.  If you are thinking about affiliate marketing then do your homework.  Make sure the product or site you chose to promote meets all of Google’s rules and the FTC rules.  It’s not worth losing your business over someone else’s mistake.

Next, start thinking about creating your own product.  When you have your own products you control the whole sales process.  There’s less chance of making a major violation when you are in full control of the content.

So yes the affiliate marketing is not the same as it was yesteryear, but you can still do affiliate marketing with Google Adwords…as long as you follow the rules.

Hope this helps.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Main Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.