There has been much ado about the new FTC Rules/Guidelines for online marketing this week. And I’m very suprised that few (if any) have been putting this together with the AdSense moves by the Google Affiliate Network, Quality Scores on the Ebay Partner Network, and the “buzz” around the industry about overall “Quality”.
But it does all make sense. And it does all fit together. And it’s not a “War on Affiliate Marketing”, nor is it “The End of Affiliate Marketing“. It just isn’t. It’s a maturing of an industry. There is this thing called “The Business Cycle” for any industry and we are simply seeing it manifest itself. That’s it. That’s all.
No, I’m not ignoring it either. And neither should you. But this is predictable and you can use this to your advantage. No matter what your niche, no matter what you sell, no matter how few or many sites you have. This is opportunity and there is still time to prepare, plan, and execute in ways that will put you ahead of your competition.
How many times have you done a Google search and all you got back were “squeeze” pages touting some secret, hidden, amazing, astounding, killer way to make a bazillion dollars in the next week? Or lose 100 pounds a day, or whatever? Right, way too many. Just bogus scams to pry money from your wallet for little or nothing in return. Those are the targets of the current move to “Quality” and the reason the FTC is tightening their rules. Those arn’t affiliate marketers. They are the people that ruin good affiliate programs, destroy confidence in consumers, and siphon money out of the marketplace for real products, from real companies, who provide real value.
The days of simply throwing out a squeeze page, dumping a few thousand Craigslist ads per day, having software create a few million backlinks, and hard pitching for money are ending. Well, in affiliate marketing it’s ending. And that’s good. It’s very good. You all know just how hard and how much work it takes to build out a quality site, build real value, give your customers a reason to buy and visit often. I’m just so tempted to remove “Quality” from my vocabulary and replace it with “Value”.. But that’s not descriptive enough. I think it’s “Quality Value” that describes it best.
Remember the “Building an Affiliate Marketing Powerhouse” from a couple weeks ago? That was about “Methods and Mechanics”. An overview of building a quantity of local focused niche affiliate websites where you could provide Quality Value for specific local niches in a profitable way. And you do need to know how it’s done. How the methods and mechanics work. But that’s not all. You have to learn how to build in “Quality Value” for your site visitors/customers.
People want what they want and when they want it. Your job is to help your site visitors and customers along this path. To help them discover what they want and to help them get what they want when they want it… FROM YOU!
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