Conversation with 2 CJ Top Performers, Part III
October 3rd, 2007 by 
Amit
In part III of this thread I’m going to blog about my conversation with uber affiliate Jeremy Palmer in a interview I did with him for PPC Classroom. As I did with Felix I want talk about how to be prepared for Affiliate Marketing 3.0, the future of affiliate marketing, next year, and beyond!
Here’s basically what Jeremy and I concluded…
DIVERSIFY YOUR AFFILIATE OFFERS
I’m sure you’ve all read about Google’s new quality score hit list: data collection sites, comparison shopping sites, travels, sites, ‘get rich quick’ sites, etc, etc.
I can tell you this is just the beginning, your niche might be next on their hit list, and honestly there’s no telling who they’ll go after next.
The best way to protect yourself is by making a solid income stream for 4-5 DIFFERENT niches.
Think about it, let’s say you’re making money in the follow 5 niches : ringtones, dog training, diet pills, education leads, & spyware removers.
Now let say next year Google decided to put diet pills, and ringtones on their hit list.
You’re okay-you still have 3 strong affiliate offers going. 
DIVERSIFY PPC SEARCH ENGINES
Jeremy told me that he actually spent more on Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter last year, than he did on Adwords!
If you ask me this is a REALLY smart move, especially considering Google is really putting the squeeze on affiliates, with increasingly stringent Quality Score requirements, and as mentioned above, a growing hit list of business models they plan to slap out of existence.
Going back to the above example with the 5 different niches, if your diet pill and ringtone offers are wiped out by Google next year, you still have campaigns for those offers running on MSN and Yahoo.
If you take time to properly setup your campaigns on Yahoo+MSN, you can expect up to half your sales (or more!) to come from there!
And if you didn’t know yet, conversions on Yahoo and MSN ROCK!?!
THINK ONE STEP AHEAD OF GOOGLE
Let face it Google always has new trick up its bag, ready to pull the rug from under your business when you least suspect it.
However, if you try to see things from Google perspective you can get an idea of what you might be in store for for in future Quality Score updates.
Okay we know that Google wants the following from your site to get a good quality score (and therefor low min bids on your keywords):
- Landing pages and adcopy that are tightly targeted to the keyword
- Substantial unique content on your site, including outbound links to relevant high trust sites
- Privacy policy, terms of service (trust factor)
- Compelling content that keeps visitors on your site (Google looks at the bounce rates)
So Google wants you to have a real legitimate trustworthy (in their eyes) website which leads visitors to a landing page that highly relevant to what they’re searching and has compelling content that keeps them on the site.
But wait, isn’t that the goal of Google’s natural search algorithm?!?
So it doesn’t take a PhD in Physics 
to figure out that Google quality score algo is moving more and more towards their natural search algorithm.
This is BIG: We’re seeing the convergence of paid search and natural search.
So what’s up next? Here’s a good guess at what Google’s QS (Quality Score) will factor in next:
- Freshness of your content, and how often it’s updated
- Your PageRank!
It’s not enough to just do PPC, you must optimize your site for natural search if you want to dominate paid search in the future. Not only will you get a good QS this way, but you’ll also get free traffic!
google adwords jeremy palmer msn adcenter ppc affiliate marketing quality score yahoo search marketing
Posted in Google™ AdWords, PPC Marketing, SEO Tactics, Super Affiliate Mindset, affiliate marketing | 
I don’t think pagerank will ever matter for paid search, but all other factors as you mentioned (freshness of content, etc) will. Thanks for this.
Yeah, I don’t know if they’d go as far to go with pagerank. (I hope, at least) The kind of content that gets great link love doesn’t always convert well. Just ask Aaron Wall about that. He talks about how poorly his site converts all the time.
We could use your voice of reason over at the PPC Classroom “Forums of Fury” where there seems to be a lot of “show me the millions and right now, Jeremy, or else I want a refund!” and “how do I get a tool where all I have to do is push a button and steal someone else’s hard work to make a fast buck before Google kicks me off and I have to open a new account under a different name and IP address.”
Maybe it does take a PhD in Physics!
–> I can tell you this is just the beginning, your niche might be next on their hit list, and honestly there’s no telling who they’ll go after next.
Amit, I don’t think G is targeting niches in particular. It appears to me more the quality of the site…For example, I know of a lot of “get rich quick” sites that are still faring quite well in terms of their avg CPC, position, etc.. But these are not thin sites with 5 pages of content…they are in fact useful sites with a lot of good content. But they do host landing pages promoting “get rich quick” type products, and are still doing just fine…
Regards,
- Dave
Hi Dave,
I sure hope you’re right
Sincerely,
Amit
I can’t agree more with you Amit!! That’s what I have been thinking too; that Google Adwords does feel more and more like natural search it’s getting really scary!!
I understand Google’s reasoning for being so “hard” on affiliates, and that’s because they really want to provide quality to searchers. However at the same time, somehow it feels like it defeats the whole purpose of PPC? Most people who use PPC do it because they want the quick and instant traffic, and they pay for it!!! If Google gets so strict and tough on everyone, then more and people people will get Google slapped, and the more expensive the CPC they’ve got to pay, and I think people may get really angry in the end.
What’s also daunting is the fact that getting great Quality Score isn’t something that the average people can do, at least not immediately. We affiliate marketers may understand the concept better because we breathe Adwords days and nights. But for example for the average person who just wants to market his/her own product, I think the sheer effort that’s required to survive Adwords is kind of overwhelming. I mean, there are so many things to consider, such as properly writing the ad copy to ensure that people will be enticed to click. Then we have to do the keyword research properly and group them tightly (I have some friends who have no idea about this. They actually dump thousands of keywords into ONE ad group!!!) Then we have to make sure that the keywords in the landing page mimic the ones in the campaign and the ads, and many more…..somehow I don’t think that the average people, especially those who use Adwords for the very first time, will appreciate all these hassles??!!
I wonder what’s Google’s next move will be….may be Adwords sandbox?? May be factoring the amount of backlinks (of the landing page) into Quality Score? Or even keywords ranking? May be making us pay for organic listing?
Hopefully MSN and Yahoo won’t end up being so tough too ;).
Amit,
I think pagerank is already factored into the Quality Score. I am seeing 2 cent minimum bids for two sites — one pagerank 4 and the other a pagerank 8 site that I have done PPC campaigns for — these are in pricey categories
Whereas another site that I am promoting with no page rank but it has several original articles and was created with the quality score in mind is getting 5 cent minimum bids
Anyways Im convinced that google give lower minimum bids to established and popular sites.
I am seeing the same thing as you fields. I have PR 4 sites that I can get 2 cent clicks all day long, and pause and restart the campaigns at will, while maintaining the same minimum bids. Of course pagerank itself doesn’t matter, but pagerank is a sign of trust, and the trust is what matters.
So does this mean direct linking and affiliate marketing as we know it is OVER? Sure sounds like it.
The idea of having to build dozens of websites with dozens of article/content pages seems to costly.
Especially considering you may have to build many of these sites till you get a profitable one.
And even still you might only be making $50 a day!
The cost to build these sites, then test what content pulls, what doesn’t and where to put affiliate links and where not to, and then of course the testing of the keywords seems to make affiliate marketing on Google cost-prohibitive.
Your thoughts?