Ok, I’m a lurker here but I have been doing affiliate marketing (PPC) for just over a year now and I’m right on the edge of quitting… I have made about $50k in profit, but the last three months I have had to scale way back and lost about $500 because nothing is working for me right now.
So I thought this would be a good place to vent, list my gripes, and get some feedback. My main problem is that I can’t keep a campaign consistently profitable for more than 4-6 months. Either the advertiser decides to change their rules, decrease payout way too much, or the search engine removes ads/keywords. It happens with EVERY campaign/niche, and I’m tired of this game so I’m about to move on if I can’t get back in the game and soon.
Here are my rants:
PPC/Search engine Rants:
Google – Needs to lay off the ban hammer. Needs to stop acting like a robot. Needs to stop hating affiliates.
Here is how I got banned: I made a campaign that linked to a Clickbank peer-to-peer program and Google didn’t like it so I got a strict warning and threat that they would terminate my account if I continue to submit illegal ads. Ok, whatever, I won’t do that anymore. A few months later I decide to promote ringtones with the same keywords I used to promote the Clickbank P2P program. Google thinks I’m still trying to promote a P2P program (since I am using the same keywords) and bans me!!!!!! Of course, once their system bans you it’s almost impossible to get back in and all you get from support is robot answers. I eventually got them to reapprove the SAME EXACT ad that I was banned for, but they didn’t revoke my ban. Ok, whatever, makes me extremely mad, but I can live with just Yahoo and MSN.
Yahoo – Needs to stop removing keywords/ads for no reason. Needs to remove crappy arbitrage sites from their “search network”.
The thing that pisses me off the most about Yahoo is that they will pretty much RANDOMLY remove keywords or ads and leave ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR DOING SO. Then when I email support, they are as clueless as you are about it. So then what I do is basically brute force to get my keywords/ads back up. I delete campaigns/adgroups/keywords and then just reupload them and they are good, until some other douche at Yahoo comes along and randomly removes some more crap for no reason at all and the cycle starts over again.
Secondly, their traffic is starting to suck because they are allowing these arbitrage sites to be in their “SEARCH NETWORK”. And now I get 1 click from yahoo.com and 800 clicks from some other random and crappy spot on the Internet………………………………………………………..On top of that there is NO WAY, ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to completely block all of these sites. All they allow you to do is block about 150 URLs, which is USELES!!!!!!!! USLESS YAHOO, THAT’S USELESS AND YOUR “SEARCH NETWORK ABRITRAGE CRAP SITES” SUCK!!!!!!!!! You know the guys will just change their domain names and get back in if too many advertisers block them. I feel like Yahoo is just outright stealing my money here. I don’t won’t to advertise on these sites at all, DON’T MAKE ME.
Also, this Google/Yahoo deal that is going on/about to be implemented is kinda scary. Am I going to be competing with advertisers from Adwords now? The main reason why I liked Yahoo was because there was less competition…now what? They probably should have taken Microsoft’s offer… I mean seriously what is Yang smoking? Is he serious? I think he has lost it….and the rest of the company seems as clueless….
MSN – Get some more traffic please.
Advertiser Rants: My main problems with advertisers are the ones that aren’t consistent. How am I supposed to make a living doing this if advertisers are constantly changing their offers/payouts/rules???????? If they change their search policies or decrease payouts, it often kills my entire campaign. Twice now (and many other times that wasn’t that big of a deal) I was banking $100+ every day for 3-5 months and then all of the sudden the advertiser changes their rules for search and there goes my entire campaign. TIME TO START ALL OVER, WHAT FUN!
Another thing that I HATE is when an advertiser wants to terminate me because my traffic isn’t converting for them………………..I think this is ridiculous. They made the offer convert at a specific point, and my traffic is converting at the point. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? Sounds like this is the advertisers fault, not mine….but w/e.
Affiliate Networks – I haven’t had any real problems with affiliate networks. The major ones seem to do things in your best interest and don’t really get in the way. I think it’s weird that some run their own internal campaigns, but w/e I guess. The only annoyance with affiliate networks are the AMs sometimes. They bug you a lot when your revenue drops and they want you to try 5 different campaigns right now…
Ok, that is about it. Those are all my rants that I can think of.
It seems to me like there are only a handful of people that are making good money, enough to live off of, with PPC/Affiliate Marketing. So I’m thinking I would be better off in a different industry/business model where a lot more people are making a lot more money. So I’m going to take my earnings and invest it into a different business model and probably only dabble in PPC and less costly forms of affiliate marketing from now on.
Anyone have any feedback, suggestions, or think I’m just crazy?
So I thought this would be a good place to vent, list my gripes, and get some feedback. My main problem is that I can’t keep a campaign consistently profitable for more than 4-6 months. Either the advertiser decides to change their rules, decrease payout way too much, or the search engine removes ads/keywords. It happens with EVERY campaign/niche, and I’m tired of this game so I’m about to move on if I can’t get back in the game and soon.
Here are my rants:
PPC/Search engine Rants:
Google – Needs to lay off the ban hammer. Needs to stop acting like a robot. Needs to stop hating affiliates.
Here is how I got banned: I made a campaign that linked to a Clickbank peer-to-peer program and Google didn’t like it so I got a strict warning and threat that they would terminate my account if I continue to submit illegal ads. Ok, whatever, I won’t do that anymore. A few months later I decide to promote ringtones with the same keywords I used to promote the Clickbank P2P program. Google thinks I’m still trying to promote a P2P program (since I am using the same keywords) and bans me!!!!!! Of course, once their system bans you it’s almost impossible to get back in and all you get from support is robot answers. I eventually got them to reapprove the SAME EXACT ad that I was banned for, but they didn’t revoke my ban. Ok, whatever, makes me extremely mad, but I can live with just Yahoo and MSN.
Yahoo – Needs to stop removing keywords/ads for no reason. Needs to remove crappy arbitrage sites from their “search network”.
The thing that pisses me off the most about Yahoo is that they will pretty much RANDOMLY remove keywords or ads and leave ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR DOING SO. Then when I email support, they are as clueless as you are about it. So then what I do is basically brute force to get my keywords/ads back up. I delete campaigns/adgroups/keywords and then just reupload them and they are good, until some other douche at Yahoo comes along and randomly removes some more crap for no reason at all and the cycle starts over again.
Secondly, their traffic is starting to suck because they are allowing these arbitrage sites to be in their “SEARCH NETWORK”. And now I get 1 click from yahoo.com and 800 clicks from some other random and crappy spot on the Internet………………………………………………………..On top of that there is NO WAY, ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to completely block all of these sites. All they allow you to do is block about 150 URLs, which is USELES!!!!!!!! USLESS YAHOO, THAT’S USELESS AND YOUR “SEARCH NETWORK ABRITRAGE CRAP SITES” SUCK!!!!!!!!! You know the guys will just change their domain names and get back in if too many advertisers block them. I feel like Yahoo is just outright stealing my money here. I don’t won’t to advertise on these sites at all, DON’T MAKE ME.
Also, this Google/Yahoo deal that is going on/about to be implemented is kinda scary. Am I going to be competing with advertisers from Adwords now? The main reason why I liked Yahoo was because there was less competition…now what? They probably should have taken Microsoft’s offer… I mean seriously what is Yang smoking? Is he serious? I think he has lost it….and the rest of the company seems as clueless….
MSN – Get some more traffic please.
Advertiser Rants: My main problems with advertisers are the ones that aren’t consistent. How am I supposed to make a living doing this if advertisers are constantly changing their offers/payouts/rules???????? If they change their search policies or decrease payouts, it often kills my entire campaign. Twice now (and many other times that wasn’t that big of a deal) I was banking $100+ every day for 3-5 months and then all of the sudden the advertiser changes their rules for search and there goes my entire campaign. TIME TO START ALL OVER, WHAT FUN!
Another thing that I HATE is when an advertiser wants to terminate me because my traffic isn’t converting for them………………..I think this is ridiculous. They made the offer convert at a specific point, and my traffic is converting at the point. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? Sounds like this is the advertisers fault, not mine….but w/e.
Affiliate Networks – I haven’t had any real problems with affiliate networks. The major ones seem to do things in your best interest and don’t really get in the way. I think it’s weird that some run their own internal campaigns, but w/e I guess. The only annoyance with affiliate networks are the AMs sometimes. They bug you a lot when your revenue drops and they want you to try 5 different campaigns right now…
Ok, that is about it. Those are all my rants that I can think of.
It seems to me like there are only a handful of people that are making good money, enough to live off of, with PPC/Affiliate Marketing. So I’m thinking I would be better off in a different industry/business model where a lot more people are making a lot more money. So I’m going to take my earnings and invest it into a different business model and probably only dabble in PPC and less costly forms of affiliate marketing from now on.
Anyone have any feedback, suggestions, or think I’m just crazy?
