Google Affiliate Network

I think Google will dominate the affiliate market really soon when they take the same approach as Clickbank.

Could you be please more specific on the part where you say: ‘Google dislikes Affiliate Sites because they suck up the commission that they feel should go to them.’ I never read that. In my opinion, with good SEO and linkbuilding, everything is possible.

I like your blog by the way. Helpful content! I would like to see a case-studie on how you set up a profitable campaign, is that possible?

True, but you should consider quality score from Google’s perspective.

Let’s take a simple example: For an average merchant you are making an average ePC of 70 cents per click. When you’re only paying an average of 45 cents per click on Adwords that puts 25 cents per click right in your pocket. If this advertiser would advertise directly they would be able to pay much much more per click, because there is no traffic leakage etc.

Now take into consideration that Google is a publicly traded company, and their investors and shareholders want to see a constant increase in quarterly profits. Google (or it’s shareholders) wants it’s advertisers to pay the highest click price possible for their click.

If you take a look at how the average industry click costs have been increasing over the past 24 months, that’s incredible.

About 9 months ago, while I was at their European headquarters in Dublin, Nikesh Arora who’s basically responsible for all their european operations told me that about 3 years from now the avg. click price would have tripped. This was across all the search engines, and considered worldwide. There’s going to be more and more competition for online advertisers and Google just like any other search engine wants the most bucks per impression (CPM)

I might do a post in the upcoming weeks to clarify some other stuff as well.

Thanks for the compliments Joost, and there will be a complete guide on how to properly set up a campaign soon

Thank you for the explanation, now I get it.
It’s interesting to read what mr. Nikesh Arora predicts for the near future. When he says the CPC will tripple, I think we’ll see an increase of quality and targetted ads. More competition like you say. It will probably be harder to test and maintain successful campaigns, don’t you think?

Well truth been told; There’s a lot of crap out there. This goes for both e-commerce sites and affiliate websites. It never hurts to raise the bar. After all, Google provides more than enough tools to accurately (split)test everything. However it wouldn’t hurt for them to be a little more careful to check on who and what sites they place their “Low Quality” stamp, and I honestly feel that they can be a bit sloppy when it comes down to that. But I have high hopes for their affiliate network, and hope this will help them reconsider some of the earlier affiliate rules.