For the first time in the past 15 months, I took some substantial time away from the affiliate marketing workspace.  Things had been changing, and I was not getting a clear picture of where I might be going moving forward.  Most of November involved me doing almost no work in regards to Affiliate Marketing.  Now it is December though and I am back at it, refreshed, renewed and full of good ideas.

I have quite a bit of new information, tools and other stuff to share, and hopefully I will have a chance to get that out there as I move forward.  All things considered, 2007 has been a monster year, and 2008 is shaping up to be in even better.

I recently came across ShoeMoney talking about BlogRush and decided to give it a shot. If you look in the right sidebar near the bottom, you can see what essentially it is. BlogRush is a traffic exchange program for bloggers. What it allows you to do is group yourself with other blogs on the same topic, and provide links that might be of interest. For doing this you get credits, which then allow you to be displayed on other sites.

My only issue so far, though, is that I can’t pick a good category. Mine is such a general purpose blog, I thought “Entertainment” then I thought “Business”. Right now it is on business but I don’t know if it will stay there. Regardless, check out BlogRush as it has just started and the response has been amazing. Check it out here.

There are some things I like about you but some I really hate. Right now I am going to discuss one of those things I hate. Your editorial policies and implementation are nothing short of a comical joke. Every time I go through disapproved ads or keywords I feel like I am taking a trip to the fun house. There is clearly no rhyme nor reason for how and why some ads and keywords are approved while others are rejected. Heck the reasons can change from one day to the next.

My favorite, though is the ad rejection that has no text at all and no explanation or reason for why it was rejected. This is a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoy wasting my time with your idiotic editorial system. I use a lot of different systems and yours is the only one I have a complete lack of respect for, it is nonsensical and just a big waste of time.

I work hard to make sure my ads are within guidelines, my sites are what is required and my keywords are relevant. Are there occasionally issues there where I might miss a keyword? Absolutely, but 99.99% of the time everything I have is clean. Yet I still have to fight through some amazingly lame reasons for rejections.

For Example:

“Contains non-standard text, or its meaning is unclear.”

What does that mean? My ad does not contain any non-standard text, and I can assure you the meaning is perfectly clear. Just because whomever is assigned to edit my ads does not have a proper understanding of English, does not mean my time should be wasted. If I get a rejection from another PPC provider, I take it seriously, and I will investigate, see where a mistake might have been made and try to fix things. With Yahoo! my first response is to just re-submit because you guys are off your rocker 99% of the time. Then I re-submit and they go through fine. Why? Because there was nothing wrong with them in the first place.

So Yahoo! Search Marketing, you have to get your editorial policy and systems under control. They are entirely ineffective, they are not making your ad presentation better to the visitor, you are losing money, and you are wasting a lot of advertisers time not to mention your own. This should be a fundamental priority for you guys as it is one of your biggest weaknesses right now.

Signed,

Concerned on the Internet

A lot of discussions have surfaced lately about Google Adwords Radio Ads. The primary impetus for this has been the fact that Google has been offering a $400.00 coupon to help with the creative effort. I have been cautioning people to tread carefully. As someone with past experience dealing with traditional media outlets for advertising, it is a very different beast from online marketing.

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This morning something unusual happened. I listen to a lot of radio during the day. When I am working the radio is on most of the time. This morning I heard what I am positive was a Google radio ad. Is it possible I heard others before? Sure. However, I suspect a lot of Google radio ads are more traditional advertisers, so they would not be so easily identified. This was someone who clearly was an internet marketer moving their craft to the radio with the help of Google radio ads. The advertisement was an offer for one of those XBox 360 deals where you can get a “Free” XBox 360. The catch is you have to complete a bunch of other offers and jump through some hoops to get this “Free” XBox 360. These kinds of offers are common place on the internet, although slowly and surely people have taken more issue with them and their claims. The search engines are more skeptical of running ads for them because they do not actually offer anything for for free.

Here is where reality and the protective cacoon of the internet collide. The established media outlets like television and radio are monitored much more carefully by the Federal Trade Commission. On top of that you have people listening who are much more likely to report people and not just accept a misleading ad. On the internet there is still a high level of tolerance of acceptance that other forms of media do not enjoy. I forsee if these ads become more prevelent that the FTC will take action and that the impact will eventually filter back to internet advertising. I think if these entities never advertised on traditional media, it may have taken much longer for all of this to happen. This will essentially expedite a crackdown on misleading or misguided internet advertising. How long will it take? It is anybody’s guess. It partly depends on how prevalent the traditional internet advertisers are in taking part in Google radio ads.

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I suspect the particular radito station I heard the ad on would not have even run the ad if someone went to them directly and asked to buy the time. I am sure this was filled at a corporate level, where the oversight on actual content in ads does not seem to be very stringent. I suspect they are thinking Google is doing some kind of checking/verification of these ads before they deliver them. This particular radio station is part of one of the largest radio groups in the United States.

One final note, and one other thing that I warned people about, that targeting is very important in all advertising but especially important in radio advertising and television advertising. This particular ad was completely misplaced in the time slot and station it was on. It was not a market full of people who would run to their computer to get a free X Box 360. So beyond hastening in more regulation on internet related advertising, it is likely they will not even cover their costs to have run the ad.

The New York Times has written a very interesting piece about the behind-the-scenes working of Google and their search algorithm. This kind of information is of primary importance to people who are trying to increase their Search Engine (SERPS) Rankings, especially in Google. It is clear the factors taken into consideration are much more complex then anyone could have imagined.

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For me personally, the most interesting part is that they are already
using personal search data to alter and define searches for you. So for example, it uses the example of Dolphins for the Miami Dolphins or aquatic dolphins, I just checked with my logged in Google account, to see about Cowboys. My logged in account and a non-logged in account returned the same results. Now I am a big Dallas Cowboys fan. I will have to see if I can train my search to get the results to be altered.

One other interesting note I found in the article is that Page Rank is only one of a hundred factors or “signals” as they refer to them, that they use to determine what people want. I also find it interesting they attempt to anticipate whether a query wants fresh or established results.

You can read the New York Times article Here