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Can You Still Promote Affiliate Products On Adwords?

by JoeChuck
4 replies
Is affiliate marketing dead on Google Adwords?

With Adwords highly enforced policies on bridge pages and comparison shopping - is there any way to still effectively promote affiliate products through Google Adwords?

Google does not want you to advertise sites that are made just to link to other sites. This of course is what you need to do as an affiliate. You could get the person to opt-in first and then market to them through email, but Google does not want sites that are made just to grab people's emails either. So what are we left with?

Some people may chime in here and say that everything is fine, but that is probably because you have already been running campaigns on these types of sites and they haven't found you yet.

What Google claims they want are websites that offer unique relevant services to the user. I completely disagree with them on what that means, but either way, it means they don't like typical affiliate sites.

Can anyone offer some specific suggestions or experience on what we can do to continue to promote affiliate products through adwords - or is this no longer possible?
#adwords #affiliate #products #promote
  • Profile picture of the author walkmen
    Promoting affiliate products is still possible on Adwords.

    It's just not as easy as it used to be.

    The key here is to provide value.

    There is no value in having five different ads pointing to the same page.

    There is some value in pointing your ad to a blog that has information about the product that is relatively hard to find. Information such as reviews, tutorials, opinions etc.

    That is the main way to use Adwords for affiliate products. Point to a blog that provides value. Make sure that it has at least 10 articles.

    Put in a banner or use a text affiliate link.

    Think about helping the visitor, and the affiliate commissions will gravitate towards you.
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    • Profile picture of the author JoeChuck
      Originally Posted by walkmen View Post

      Promoting affiliate products is still possible on Adwords.

      It's just not as easy as it used to be.

      The key here is to provide value.

      There is no value in having five different ads pointing to the same page.

      There is some value in pointing your ad to a blog that has information about the product that is relatively hard to find. Information such as reviews, tutorials, opinions etc.

      That is the main way to use Adwords for affiliate products. Point to a blog that provides value. Make sure that it has at least 10 articles.

      Put in a banner or use a text affiliate link.

      Think about helping the visitor, and the affiliate commissions will gravitate towards you.
      I understand this advice and I fully agree. This is exactly what I would have said before. However, I am seeing issues with even doing this right now.

      The key here is to provide value.
      I totally agree, except Google's idea of providing value is not only different from many people on the web, but it is also hidden - they will never express exactly what they want. You can try to do trial and error with them, but often your site will get permanently slapped or worse through trial and error.

      There is no value in having five different ads pointing to the same page.
      I have never done this and I know several other people that have never done this, but they are still having a hard time promoting affiliate based websites on Adwords.

      There is some value in pointing your ad to a blog that has information about the product that is relatively hard to find. Information such as reviews, tutorials, opinions etc.

      That is the main way to use Adwords for affiliate products. Point to a blog that provides value. Make sure that it has at least 10 articles.

      Put in a banner or use a text affiliate link.

      Think about helping the visitor, and the affiliate commissions will gravitate towards you.
      This is exactly what I do. I always build sites with the visitor in mind first. Right now, review sites, tutorials, opinions, etc. are getting pulled from Adwords by the dozens.

      I have sites with way more than 10 articles and they are still getting dinged because they promote affiliate products. My sites always use simple text links and banners embedded inside quality unique content - still having problems.

      There are many other affiliates experiencing the same thing. In fact, I surprised there isn't more people expressing their concern with this on here.

      If you have managed to sneak by with a review site - try creating a new one and see what happens. It doesn't look like you can effectively promote an affiliate based review site on Adwords anymore even with 10+ articles and unique helpful content. Talking with an adwords account specialist, they are telling me that they do not want any sites that have the business model of linking to other sites, regardless of the amount of pages or unique content. It doesn't even matter if the site IS helpful to the visitor - in Google's eyes, if it links to another site for commission, it's not helpful to the visitor. They said they don't want any middlemen...

      I appreciate your comments, and maybe many people here haven't yet felt the backlash of Google's new agenda to get rid of all middlemen sites, but the problem remains.

      While I would have given this same advice to someone just months ago, it does not seem that the guidelines you have presented will work in the future. While there are many other ways to get traffic than Google Adwords - the purpose of this thread is to find out what we can do as a affiliates to continue to use Adwords effectively. What do you think?
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  • Profile picture of the author SGdarling
    Thank you for the ideas and the info. There are many affiliates who got slapped by Google. Google changed its policy and now it makes life harder for many affiliates. Besides the new rules and restrictions for promoting affiliate programs, google adwords don't accept campaigns that promote affiliate programs in the certain niches.
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    • Profile picture of the author JoeChuck
      Originally Posted by SGdarling View Post

      Thank you for the ideas and the info. There are many affiliates who got slapped by Google. Google changed its policy and now it makes life harder for many affiliates. Besides the new rules and restrictions for promoting affiliate programs, google adwords don't accept campaigns that promote affiliate programs in the certain niches.
      Yep, and they don't like to give second chances too much either. However, even for niches that are acceptable, they don't want any middlemen. So what can we do to effectively promote affiliate products through Adwords - if anything?

      I wonder if any affiliate marketing strategies will work with Adwords in the future...

      It looks like based on the lack of suggestions that affiliate marketing + adwords may truly be dead (or at least dying a slow death).
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