Let’s face it, bidding on trademark terms-especially on major brand trademarks is BIG money for PPC affiliates. This includes trademarks for the offer you’re promoting and competitor trademark terms as well.
Trademark bidding may be highly profitable but it’s also equivalent to playing Russian roulette with your affiliate income, especially if a large majority of your sales are coming from trademarks!
Why?
Let me illustrate with 2 stories…
At Affiliate Summit Boston, I had dinner with Jeremy Palmer, John Hasson, and Ajay (all PPC super affiliates).
Anyway, Jeremy was telling me about an affiliate who made $2 million last year (no joke) all from bidding on ONE trademark term (plus misspelling and variations of course).
Well, the merchant suddenly decided to no longer allow trademark bidding for affiliates!
Now the guy who make $2 million last year is now LOOKING FOR A JOB!?! Apparently all of his income was coming from that one trademark term.
Scary, isn’t it?
There’s always competitor trademarks, right?
Wrong!
A friend of mine who was running a very profitable offer ($1k/day net profit) was forced to pause his campaign after the merchant threatened to freeze his account if he didn’t stop bidding on COMPETITOR trademarks.
Now, I’m not saying don’t bid on trademarks, I bid on trademarks all the time.
What I’m saying is don’t DEPEND on trademark bidding as your sole source, or majority of, your affiliate income.
Ask yourself : “How stable are my affiliate campaigns? Can they be wiped out by one policy change from the merchant?”
If the answer is YES, you’d better get busy!
trademark bidding
I think its only a fabricated story,nothing less than that!
Hey All,
Every one is unique & there are endless opportunities in every area.Every one has some definite goal in life and we shouldn’t realize that only money making is the goal of every person.If someone quits job,joins affiliate marketing and feels better,the converse is also better for some people.
The guy who made $2million in one year must be much more than average & we should not comment negatively on him.
Not true, I found a trademark term that if I had bid on it, I would have made at least 250K this year. This would have been illegal though, so I didn’t do it. I probably won’t make 50K this year from affiliate marketing. It’s too bad we can’t bid on trademarked terms.