Pixelrage.net

Like it or not, affiliate storefronts have their foot in the grave. It’s downright ignorant to think that the days of “building a niche store” is the answer to working from home…here are the reasons why:

1) Google is against you.

Take the direct quote of Google’s Frederick Vallaeys in response to the work of affiliate marketers: it is “…just an unnecessary step in the sales funnel.” Google has taken numerous steps to show their extreme favoritism to brands, and their very apparent efforts to bury affiliate marketing efforts in search results.

Starting in 2010, the search engine launched “extended brand results” listing actual brand names as links at the top of SERPs. The “Vince” update of 2009 tied two search queries (i.e., a user searching for “hdtv” and then searching for “sony” meant that Sony would receive a “vote” for the term “hdtv”), giving household-name brands — already established and known for a certain product category — another feather in their cap. Later that year, brands received an additional bonus in AdWords, where “sitelinks” would appear under an ad, pushing down the remainder of the page further.

Summer of 2011 showed the most definitive all-out attack against affiliate marketing, with the “Google Panda” update — a change that subsequently ended numerous small business owners’ careers overnight by removing their websites for certain keyword results from Google’s index entirely, and replacing those positions with big brands.

Later in 2011 was the inception of Google+ and “+1,” a social sharing tool that gives heavy bonuses and favoritism to big brands, who already have thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of followers who are able to +1 a new blog post by the droves within immediate time periods. Most recently, January 2012 saw an algorithm update to combat “excessive ads above the fold” on a website. Guess who runs ads above a fold? Hint: not brands.

If you thought you could simply go by the old adage “if you can’t beat em, join em,” think again — your affiliate storefront will NEVER achieve “brand” status. The brand signals that exist within Google’s algorithm know of the links pointing outward toward online storefronts that package and ship the products you’re promoting, identifying you as a “middleman” and therefore an “…unnecessary step in the sales funnel,” as Mr. Vallaeys puts it.

Although you probably don’t need more convincing about Google’s extreme bias against affiliate marketers and toward big brand name corporations, a simple glance at your flat-lined Google Analytics charts have probably clued you in at some point that your reliance on eBay Partner Network and Amazon Associate-driven websites are about as effective as attempting to make a new resurrection of the Million Dollar Homepage.

One more thing: when you lose a major keyword ranking, get dropped backward by several pages on Google and see that you’ve been replaced by big brands — don’t hold a shred of hope about re-gaining that page 1, position 1-3 position ever again. Sophisticated algorithmic signals have already given your ‘affiliate’ labeled site a brand new pair of cement shoes.

If you don’t want to believe me, check out this example of how Google torches affiliates.

2. Google is AdWords.

You might remember Google, it was a search engine that displayed organic results under a couple paid ads. Before it became completely filled with AdWords ads within the fold, it was possible to compete in search rankings for long-tail terms to get your affiliate sites some search attention.

However, a full computer screen’s worth of most Google page 1 SERPs is now entirely infested with AdWords, complete with a yellow box featured ad, subsequent ads and sidebar ads.

These days, the cost of appearing anywhere within an eyeball’s view for even a long term AdWords keyword is entirely unaffordable to the at-home internet marketer – give or take a few clicks per day. Google is now a place for the 1% to throw around their $2,000+/day budget to fight each other in an unreasonably expensive environment for the fight to remain on top. Perhaps you’ve taken your measly budget and used it for things more important, like lunch.

Besides…who on Earth would even spend a dollar on AdWords for an affiliate storefront? As anyone knows, it is *impossible* to track true conversions for an affiliate storefront, since you’ll never know how a thing about which clicks to your site led to sales on eBay or Amazon’s end. Spending money on AdWords for an affiliate storefront is like buying Pick 6 Lotto tickets every week and hoping for something to happen. It’s just AdWords 101.

3) Google’s “shopping results” in SERPs have ended your business.

If you’ve searched for a product and saw a SERP featuring a horizontal thumbnail image bar of products from different retailers with prices, you’ve probably noticed your imminent doom. Another nail in the coffin of any affiliate storefront: shopping results exhibit extreme favoritism to online retailers lucky enough to have muscled their way into Google Shopping, in a price comparison war against each other that takes place far above your current ranking.

The fact about these shopping price comparisons in SERPs is that they are nearly eliminating your chances of ever appearing for the keywords that trigger them. Due to the fact that the first 1/4 to 1/3 of a SERP is mostly AdWords, followed by one of these shopping results snippets that contain eye-enticing thumbnail images that break up an otherwise texty SERP, there’s barely any reason for the user to scroll down to get into organic results at all.

Since you’re nothing more than a middleman posting links to an actual supplier, you’ll never be able to appear on shopping results. Worse yet, the clutter of AdWords and product comparisons is enough to push organic results on to page 2 of results. This, above all else, is contributing to the extinction of the affiliate storefront.

So, What Now?

The changes I’ve seen, especially on Google, have really put an extreme perspective on my own personal business plans. It’s no longer worth investing time, money or energy in an affiliate storefront because they’re becoming extinct. In fact, affiliate marketing in general should be regarded as a past-time rather than a full-time job.

We’re embarking on a Google search engine experience that is entirely suited toward Big Business, where big AdWords spenders rule. If you won’t [cant] compete due to the extreme budget needed to join the existing fray, you’re left behind to hope for the best in organic, which is no longer a valid strategy in 2012.

As for Yahoo and Bing, the potential selling of Yahoo as rumored last year should be enough to make you realize that your measly Yahoo rankings are also not to be counted on — their days are numbered if anything should ever happen to the search engine.

Become A Brand

This truly is the only way to stay alive these days: brands, as defined by search engines, are most likely websites that have real shopping carts and checkout systems. They supply products themselves, instead of shilling affiliate links to real storefronts. They have real company names, not “exact keyword domains.” They have Facebook and Twitter accounts with real followers who actually interact with and care about the products being sold. They get real backlinks — not garbage links that their own webmaster scrounges for, since no affiliate storefront will ever have a successful, ongoing natural link portfolio.

Think about something you can sell or provide, and think fast. These days, you never know when the next iteration of Google Panda will re-appear and torch your remaining search rankings. Use your existing affiliate sites as 301-redirect fodder to give your new sites a boost in rankings, and start branding away!