Lately I’ve been really interested in the psychology behind peoples searches and how they interact online. i.e. people that search for “buy blue widgets” are more likely to buy that people searching for “blue widget styles”. This area has a huge influence on what and how you should structure your content and manage your email marketing.

One of the best guys to listen to in this area is Frank Kern. Frank is a surfer dude but also a people person and you can tell he just “gets it” when it comes to influencing peoples emotions online. Hell, if you search for him online, you’ll get nothing but references about how people feel he’s their friend and what an all around nice guy he is.

If you do a little more digging you’ll find that Frank was once busted by the FTC for running an alleged pyramid scheme. Now in saying that, it doesnt make him a bad guy, think Frank Abagnale from Catch Me If You Can or any good grifter. They all have talents for reading or convincing people, they just mightnt have always used them for ethical purposes. He openly admits this and actually when you think about it he must have been succesful at marketing it as at the time he was making half a million a year.

The video above is what Frank released as a promo for his Mass Control program. The information he gives away is amazing. He discusses modalities, the persona we need to portray when selling online, developing story lines to interact and engage with potential customers. Now I’m not telling you to buy Franks products, just watch the video and if you think the info is good enough, make up your own mind.

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Its the statement we all want to be able to say! Whether your pushing affiliate programs, selling your own products or subscription services, everybody is trying to monetize twitter. Finally there is a service which will pay you to tweet. It’s called SponsoredTweets.com and its authorised by Twitter and brought to you by the IZEA network.

Basically SponsoredTweets pays you per Tweet that is authorised by their advertiser. They calculate how much your tweet is worth based on your influence/follower count. So the lower your twitter following, the lower you get paid.

It has a real simple interface and is very easy to get setup on:

Check it out and start getting paid to tweet!

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This is just a rumour and hasn’t been confirmed yet. But according to Doug Scott’s Affiliate Marketing blog Affiliate Window has been loosing money paying out to Affiliates but not getting paid themselves. This has led to as it would, cashflow problems and the rumour mill is that Zanox is going to bail them out.

Like I said this is just a rumuor and there have been buy out rumours about Affiliate Window for years. If anybody can confirm let me know.

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Just a list of the latest campaigns on Max Bounty:

• Car Devotion – ZIP Submit (#2395) – $1.50/lead
  Need insurance? Surfers who participate in this offer can receive auto quotes from local insurance brokers.
  INCENTIVE: NO   SEARCH: YES   SOLO EMAILS: YES   COUNTRIES: US
• Identity Guard – Free Credit Report (#2185) – $28.00/lead
  Find out your credit score and protect your identity! Surfers who participate in this campaign can receive a free 30-day trial of Identity Guard. Credit card is required but there is no initial charge.
  INCENTIVE: NO   SEARCH: YES   SOLO EMAILS: NO   COUNTRIES: US
• Goji Berry Pure (CA/USA/UK/AUS) (#2343) – $32.00/sale
  Goji Berry is more than just a weight loss supplement. The anti-aging herb known as Goji Berry helps build a strong immune system, improves energy levels, helps your eye sight and even enhances your mood. Goji Berry can help you live a healthier life! Initial cost to the consumer is $5.95 for S&H.
  INCENTIVE: NO   SEARCH: YES   SOLO EMAILS: YES   COUNTRIES: AU, CA, UK, US
• Goji Berry Pure (International) (#2359) – $28.00/sale
  Goji Berry is more than just a weight loss supplement. The anti-aging herb known as Goji Berry helps build a strong immune system, improves energy levels, helps your eye sight and even enhances your mood. Goji Berry can help you live a healthier life! Initial cost to the consumer is $5.95 for S&H.
  INCENTIVE: NO   SEARCH: YES   SOLO EMAILS: YES   COUNTRIES: AE, AR, BE, CH, CO, CY, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GR, HK, HU, IE, IL, IT, JO, JP, MX, PA, PL, PR, PT, SE, SG, TR
• Free Subscription to Sports Illustrated (One Field) (#1792) – $1.10/lead
  Keep up to date on sports and swimsuits. Surfers who participate in this offer can receive 12 free issues to Sports Illustrated. Email address is required.
  INCENTIVE: NO   SEARCH: YES   SOLO EMAILS: YES   COUNTRIES: US
  

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So the big buzz for the past week is the anouncement on Perry Marshalls blog of a Google Slap to Affiliate review sites. So how did all this come about? Well Perry had received an email from Glenn Livingston which led to Perry publishing the following on his blog:

“I got word from several affiliate marketers that Google dropped the hammer today on affiliate review pages.   Many pages went from quality scores of 10 —> 1 overnight.

And these were NOT skinny sites, rather well build out, consistently updated blogs with good navigation above the fold, xml site maps, high click through, hyper-relevant keyword mapping, low bounce rates, long average time on page  … everything else Google loves.

When we analyzed which pages survived, and we take it in combination with other information, it seems pretty clear they’ve added code which screens for affiliate links on the landing pages.

At the moment it seems cloaking and PHP redirects are untouched, … but I can’t imagine these are far behind.  (I’m guessing they’re just avoiding this in order to decrease their server burden … takes some CPU cycles to visit every link on the page and evaluate for affiliate code)

I’d say it’s safe to conclude Google’s on the war path against affiliate review sites, and we should be advising clients towards a different business model… at minimum it seems necessary to avoid placing affiliate links on landing pages, but ideally, I think people need to move towards a deeper list building/relationship building strategy and/or a strong e-commerce model.Time to stop “building on sand”.”

So what does all this mean?

Well first off this only effects your google ads account, it hasn’t become part of googles search algorithum yet and it doesnt mean it will in the future. Low Quality scores in adwords, increases the price you pay for your ads so it does have a major effect on your income. I’ve checked my campaigns and I haven’t been hit yet but I do cloak my affiliate links, this doesnt mean I wont be hit in the future. I would definitely recommend cloaking your affiliate links in the mean time.

There are others who suggest  that it has nothing to do with naked affiliate links in your landing pages. Mark Ling from Affilorama suggests the slap is is more based on onpage optimisation:

The common theme that I’ve noticed has tended to be more to do with the on page optimization of the landing page. I’ve found that when I use Traffic Travis and run a page analysis on any keyword phrase that got slapped, I find that the page that it was directing traffic to received a B- or lower as the rating.

Below I’ve included an interview between Alex Goad and the man who brought this slap to everyones attention Dr. Glenn Livingston.

Audio Version of Post  

Have you been affected by the slap? Let me know in the comments.

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