The almighty “G” has released the Penguin and the effect on blogs especially affiliate review blogs are huge.

It’s like affiliate marketers are confused. They’ve a lot of questions traveling through their clouded minds – what’s Google really up to. How do I position my affiliate niche sites to rank better, generate income and make me happy? I need to pay some bills and Google just wouldn’t understand.

They don’t care about me, despite all my efforts to please them. I wish Google would fall in love with my niche blog – all these plights will be gone in a hurry – Oh God, help me!

I’m I speaking to you – sure, I know someone out there is lamenting over the drop in his blog. Google Penguin updates really smashed a lot of blogs and the money they were earning virtually dropped by several multiples. Are you on of such persons?

You’re not alone. I’m an affiliate marketer too. I own 2 affiliate review blogs. I visualized what Google is up to about 5 months ago, and I began to take the right steps. Fortunately, my affiliate blogs are still hot, generating gasping commissions and taking me to the bank monthly. I want to show you how to position your blog to rank higher in search engines – it doesn’t matter whether the Panda is at the gate or the Penguin in the room (I wonder why Google chooses to use weird animal names for updates).

There are 2 steps to take your affiliate money making blog to the top. It’s not going to be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But I’m confident that when you give it a shot, you’ll bounce back fast. Let’s dive in:

1. Start Acting Like a Middleman

Every affiliate marketer is a middle man. Do you agree with me?

Unfortunately, a lot of affiliate marketers acts like the manufacturer. I mean, they literally review affiliate offers as if they own it. Their affiliate blog doesn’t sound like a resourceful site. An affiliate is expected to behave, review, and answer questions with a backup. Middlemen don’t pride themselves as the product owner; they simply lead target audience through the buying phases without sounding like the CEO.

And guess what? If you consistently review affiliate offers as if you own it, you’ll start operating with a different mindset. This mindset will be controlled by what it sees. Making money by all means becomes the meat and blood of your business – how pathetic.

The first stage of affiliate success is to recognize you’re in the ‘middle.’ Giving instructions and directing interested prospects to take action. No, you’re not pushing or pulling them to buy; you’re only doing the work you were called to do – sharing information. The sales page or store should do the selling, you’re to presell.

Several sites were penalized for over-optimizing. And the #1 reason is obvious, money-conscious thinking caused the webmaster to stuff keywords, emphasize every keyword and acquire links unnecessarily.

What You Should Be Doing Instead

Position your blog with in-depth and well-researched contents. Making money is good, we all want to but you don’t have to be controlled by it. Focus on what retailers and consumers want (helpful information) and the money will trail you like an angry shadow.

To rank highly on Google first page, you’ve to put the end-user (buyers, prospects, consumers, shoppers) in front – Once you can engage readers on your blog, Google will ‘assume’ that your blog is great and reward you with RICH, TARGETED AND READY-TO-BUY ORGANIC TRAFFIC.

2. Build Contextual Links Naturally

“Links are the currency of the web” – Brain Clark

We can’t deny the fact that outbound links are one of the factors Google looks for. But all links are not created equal. Recently, I discovered that when I link from authority and active blogs, my review pages starts ranking highly. It’s no longer the amount of links you build, but how relevant, how specific and where you’re linking to.

You see a lot of people build good links to a wrong page. Some folks employ search engine optimization tricks to deceive Google spider, and one of such is linking to a regurgitated page or a page that has no rich contents. Have you been doing this, stop today?

If you want to rank and enjoy organic traffic and targeted buyers, then, prepare your articles. The pages you’re linking to are important, not just the authority blog that allows you to place two links. Getting external links to your blog pages is easy – guest posting is the best way. But the problem is – how juicy is the page you’re linking to. Is it exceptional, engaging and helpful to the reader?

And secondly, contextual linking is the key to strengthening your blog pages. When you link to a certain page in the article body, you’ve done a mighty work and Google will definitely reward it. Make it flow. Don’t try to squeeze in keywords because you want a contextual link. Write naturally and from your heart. A contextual link speaks volumes to search engines. It tells them that you’re citing to a more relevant page.

If your posts are inspiring, people would share it, link and recommend it. And these activities are bringing rich links and targeted traffic from organic sources.

Take This Home

“Your blog is by you, not for you” – Michael Chibuzor

Anyone can make money promoting affiliate offers; it doesn’t matter if you’re a School Dropout or holds MBA from Cambridge. What matters is the zeal to see other people fulfill their business goals. Channel your entire energy in helping someone, a group of persons come closer to meeting their needs in life and there will be so much money coming your way.

There you’ve it, the only 2 steps needed to boost your affiliate earnings by positioning your blog to rank on Google’s first page. The tips are not tedious, I’m so confident you can do it.

Leave a comment below and meet me at the top!

This guest post was written by Michael Chibuzor, who is a Freelance Writer and founded Passive income ideas blog to help you achieve your affiliate marketing goals. Hire Michael to write guest posts, blog posts and copy to boost your sales, leads and web presence.

It’s always great to hear about how others are making big money online. Not only does it inspire us to do better, but it also expands the opportunities and reach for many marketers who aren’t thinking outside of the box. In a recent interview on oDigger, LeadsMarket‘s co-founder discusses how their top affiliates are generating over $200,000 a month in commissions through the promotion of pay day loans!

You can read the full interview at the interview link above, or review two of the most important questions covered in the interview below.

Why should affiliates consider promoting payday and cash advance offers?
There are 7 reasons why affiliates should promote payday offers:

1. Potential payouts from promoting cash advance offers is huge. Top publishers earn millions of dollars a year.

2. Unlike some saturated industries there is not that much competition to promote payday loan offers.

3. Popularity of payday loans have increased tremendously in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom mainly because of the economic recession and now depression.

4. People in need of a payday loans tend to fill out the application at an extremely high rate. Typical conversion rate from search traffic is about 70%.

5. Publishers can start promoting payday loan offers without having a large advertising budget. Email works very good for generating payday loan leads.

6. There are lots of low competition keywords in the cash advance space that can generate huge ROI for search marketers.

7. It is a great time to get started in the payday loan industry. Number of people that need a payday loan keeps increasing every day.

How much do your highest earning affiliates make in a month?
One of our publishers makes about $200,000 a month.

As you can see, the pay day loans business is doing quite well and it’s quite motivating to see affiliates generating over six figures a month from their efforts. This also shows that LeadsMarket knows what they are doing and how to turn their affiliates into true money machines! The way LeadsMarket treated their affiliates is referred to as the “Royal Treatment”.

Tell us about LeadsMarket’s Royal Treatment Program for affiliates.
We pay affiliates weekly. We have a full time in house IT stuff that can accommodate affiliate’s custom requests within very short period of time. We give affiliates lion’s share of the revenue. Each affiliate gets a dedicated account manager and technical support manager to help them with their account. We always give our top affiliates bonuses, gifts, and take them out to have fun during conventions.

So big deal… there are big players and six figure money makers with every ad network. The big question and interest is for all of the smaller players out there, and if they can really make money in the pay day loans market. This is another topic that was briefly covered in the interview.

Tell us a story about an affiliate who found success with LeadsMarket.
We signed up one affiliate from overseas few months ago. He is from a small country. We showed this affiliate the ins and outs of making money generating payday loan leads. We helped this affiliate with his website, hosting, helped set up his paid search campaign, supplied him with keywords, gave him FORMA widget. First month this affiliate made about $4,000 in commissions. Second month he made close to $36,000. He was so happy with results, he referred us 11 more affiliates from his country, some of which are his cousins whom he taught how to advertise online himself. All of these 11 affiliates are now making high commissions with LeadsMarket.com.

As you can see, there is plenty of success and great training behind all of the affiliates and affiliate managers at LeadsMarket. I highly recommend you take a look at the full interview and also sign up for LeadsMarket and talk with their affiliate team to see how you can be one of their next big success stories!

It’s been a few weeks since I first wrote about Google Adsense banning my account and graciously taking the money that I was earning in my account. It wasn’t much, but money is money and it’s always nice to have…. however that isn’t the topic for this post. Instead we will discuss how getting banned from Google Adsense can be a good thing.

It’s important to note that I really hadn’t been using Google Adsense for the past several years to generate any significant income. The sad part is that my account was super aged and had more personal meaning than anything else. It was one of my first big money accounts, with over six figures in earnings over the past decade and was loaded with tons of great stats and memories… nonetheless… we move on. Instead of sulking and being sad, as internet marketers, web site owners and people in general… there is a gold lining it nearly everything, which is the end focus of this post.

How Getting Banned from Google Adsense Can Be a GOOD Thing!

Granted… there is nothing good about getting banned from anything, especially if you had owed money in your account and that also gets taken away. However, with more and more internet marketers and site owners coming out with their own stories every day about how they are getting banned from Google Adsense, it an lead to some improvements in your every day business life. Instead of looking at the negatives of getting banned from Google Adsense and potentially looking at just giving up, here’s a complete spin on the concept…

Share Your Stories and Become a Voice

Since going live with my first post a few weeks back, I’ve had a lot of people email me and even link back to the site from several articles across the web. Heck, I was even listed on Problogger today as a result of the story. I’ll gladly take that type of exposure any day. Back to what I was getting at… the accounts getting banned from Google Adsense is nothing new, and many people wouldn’t know this unless people were making this public and sharing their stories. Spencer Haws was another well known name who was doing a nice amount of volume with Google Adsense, then had his account banned as well. Behind just the few of us, there is a long tail of names going through the same experience with Google.

Remove the Clutter, Increase the Gain

I must admit… For years I’ve had a massive amount of domain names and niche web sites floating around the internet. This would result in most of the Google Adsense revenue that would trickle in, but it would also result in hundreds to thousands of dollars every month to renew all of the domain names. Once my Google Adsense account was banned, I simply said “Screw it!”… I no longer wanted to waste time with all the little sites and ideas I had over the years, and if there wasn’t any PageRank associated with the domain names, I simply let them expire. The result? A lot less headaches and annoyance, while also allowing me to focus on the projects that matter.

Better Monetization and New Partnership

This one goes out to the many other people who were running Google Adsense, or still are. There are plenty of ways to monetize Google Adsense, and if you are willing to lose your traffic for just a few pennies, you really need to learn about better ways to monetize your traffic and site content. As mentioned, since I was banned from Google Adsense I also removed a ton of the clutter and smaller sites I had laying around. This allows me to focus on bigger long term monetization, such as product build and working with direct advertising and branding.

Life After Google Adsense…

As the terms and conditions say, once you are banned from Google Adsense you are pretty much banned for life. IF you have a serious business and were chugging out mega money with their platform, you have two different options. The first is to create a new company name and business, then sign up for a new account… but don’t associate it with your sites in your banned account. The other option is to move on (like I did), and just forget about Google Adsense and find better options that allow for better profits and growth for your sites.

The bottom line is, Google Adsense is going to make millions of dollars every day for millions of people around the world… and their business is legitimate and makes it EXTREMELY easy for any web site to start making money without any marketing knowledge. With that said, there is a reason why Google Adsense is so stupidly easy to use, and that is because they are taking a huge chunk of the profits. It’s up to you to decide how you will monetize your sites and if you would rather be lazy and make a few dollars with your current ad system in place, or put in the time and work to make more money and grow your web sites and business to new levels.

First off, I’d like to wish everyone an excellent and Happy Easter! I thought today would be a fun and creative way to just stress the reminder and importance of not keeping all of your business focused on one traffic or revenue source.

As we all know, my Google Adsense account was banned last month and while it’s not a big deal for me, it could have wiped out anyone’s business over night if they were simply relying on Google Adsense as their only income month after month. While Google Adsense probably isn’t used for many successful marketers, there are thousands of web sites that generate four or five figures a month off their advertising system. Instead of just relying on Google Adsense, web site owners could also be selling their own ad space, using affiliate programs, text links and contextual advertising… this is the concept behind “not putting your all of eggs in one basket”… as something could easily knock the basket out of your hands and break all of your eggs (revenue/business model).

With all of that said, the same can be said for spreading yourself too thin… just like you can find multiple sources of revenue for a web site, there are also plenty of ways to run online ad campaigns. From pay per click marketing to CPV and media buying, you could easily setup too many ad campaigns and find you are not spending enough time in each market or method to truly understand and master the traffic source. The goal is to master one or two traffic sources and make the most out of what you have, while also finding the perfect room for growth and success.

Just a few inspirational words and concepts to think about when moving into new areas for your business. Have a happy Easter!

With all of the affiliate networks out there, it’s always a game in itself to find out which are bests. Ads Direct is a network that has been doing extremely well with running all of their own internal offers and are looking to expand their network of affiliates to drive leads for their network.

Unlike other networks out there that share all of the same offers, Ads Direct has a great reputation for pushing some amazing volume and high quality leads in the health and beauty niche. Ads Direct was recently named the #1 Performance Marketing Company. This is mainly due not only for the quality and volume that Ads Direct can provide, but also that the company has expanded their reach to more than thirty countries across the world and have established themselves as a top international performance based marketing firm.

Publishers and Advertisers Find Success with Ads Direct

As mentioned, Ads Direct is mainly focused on the health and beauty niche, but they are always looking to expand their business opportunities with new publishers and advertisers across the world.

Ads Direct is known not only for its “possibilities,” but also for its execution. The company focuses on generating the best-qualified traffic, and ultimately delivers its clients an average of 27% increase in customer retention. Ads Direct offers an insightful approach when managing media buys.

If you are looking for amazing new offers to promote and generate revenue with, or looking to expand the volume and reach of your health and beauty relates business, either as a publisher or an advertiser, you need to look into joining the Ads Direct network.

Ads Direct Blog & Resources

In addition to running a successful ad network, Ads Direct also has an excellent blog with quality content. Though there isn’t a ton of blog posts on the site so far, the ones that are available are quite informative and interesting to read. I’ve listed a few of them below.

• 3 Best Direct Response Color Combinations
• Secrets to Turning Media Buys into Millions of Dollars
• What’s Your Customer Worth?

Be sure to visit Ads Direct and see how you can start making money with their top rated ad network.

Weight loss is a niche that’s profitable, diversified and competitive. If I were to start off with my niche blog, I would still consider the weight loss market. Even if I don’t target the ‘generic’ keywords, I could go for micro niches like burn the fat, shed extra fats, burn extra fats etc. Only few people who started off promoting weight loss programs truly understand its secrets.

In every niche marketing activity, the steps to succeed lies with the product you select and the caliber of people who read your content. Fortunately, losing weight has become extremely popular in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. In Africa, for instance, nobody cares about losing 20 pounds in 30 days; it’s a natural thing, a kind of gift from God. Sounds funny, huh?

Maybe you’re struggling to drive targeted traffic to your niche blog, whatever your niche, we shall be looking at proven SEO strategy. There are 4 simple strategies to begin. Here:

• Understand Your Niche
• Study The Traffic Source (Google)
• Write Strong Traffic-Sucking Content
• Build the Best Link for High Ranking Results.

1. Understand Your Niche

For a niche blog to attract traffic, the first assignment is to understand the niche. What kind of people are you building the blog for? You’ve to truly understand what competitions lie ahead and there is no shortcut on it.

Let’s consider my weight loss niche and learn from it: There was a time when my web pages weren’t ranking on Google homepage. I thought I was doing the right thing, but didn’t realize I was messing it up.

It’s not enough to know the problem this people face; you’ve to understand what got them into this problem in the first place. Prospects do not want to know the pain they’re going through; instead, what they’re after is to get rid of the symptoms. Does it make sense?

Truth is: they can leave with the pain for as long as they want, but bearing the symptoms is the most dangerous & frightful situation in their mind. In my niche, I would point out the symptoms of overweight – excessive sleeping, embarrassment from friends, obesity, gluttony, vision impediments and other diseases which can emanate as a result of being overweight.

If you can understand your niche, attracting targeted traffic won’t be difficult. Think about it?

2. Study The Traffic Source (Google)

The best organic traffic comes from Google. To be honest with you, I spent 4 months optimizing my contents, web pages and links and it wasn’t easy. But the efforts you put into search engine optimization pays consistently. Since 23^rd of August, 2011, my weight loss niche blog have been driving at least 425 daily targeted traffic on autopilot.

It didn’t happen overnight – I invested a lot of time in studying Google and how it works. Now that Google is periodically sending out updates, getting the right gist of what Google is up to would guide your efforts and bring results.

Google is aiming for engagement. Don’t just build a blog that solves problem in your niche, make sure you can engage readers. They should be persuaded to comment, share and bookmark the posts. If you’re reviewing a particular product, be practical and interactive. The time when Google blatantly send free organic traffic to blogs with quality content is gradually demeaning. You need more than targeted traffic these days – ‘engagement’ is the key!

Few years ago, thousands of backlinks was the determining factor for top 10 ranking. Although, links are still important, but the concept is changed – Aim for quality external links, not quantity.

3. Write Strong Traffic-Sucking Content

I got a lot of organic traffic because my content was well-planned. I don’t just write anything I felt is good, I usually study my readers to know what problems they’re seeking solutions for, and how desperate they are. You would be able to gather helpful data to help when creating contents. The traditional keyword research doesn’t work efficiently in weight loss niche, and several other markets that are highly competitive.

Most of the viable keywords are already optimized for by savvy and prompt niche marketers, who got into niche marketing early – there is no chance of you winning even if you’re an SEO expert.

Interestingly, the best keyword research strategy can be discovered when you take time to know your readers. Are you a blogger or social media examiner? Listening is the ultimate thing to do in your business. When you listen, you feel the pain, the enthusiasm, the desperation and the warmth in your prospect’s mind. If you’re reviewing weight watchers free registration and Bistro md coupon codes, make sure you’ve well researched content. Whatever they say when making comments and participating in forum discussion is usually true. No one is farther from his words.

Once you feel the pain of readers, go ahead and weave it into your content. Use the questions they ask as your headline and start the introduction with it. Use the same question within your content and in your third paragraph, solve the problem creatively and command action. Never allow your visitors to leave without taking action – it’s a waste of time and resources.

4. Build the Best Links For High Ranking Results
   

Most of my external links are from weight loss and health-related blogs. It doesn’t matter the pagerank of these blogs, being relevant and focused is Google’s #2 ranking factor. If your blog is new, you don’t have to struggle to build backlinks from CNN, problogger and other top blogs. If you’ve the opportunity, then go for it. But if you’re new to writing, you need some time to sharpen your writing skills.

Begin with niche blogs. For instance, search Google for your primary keyword and research the ‘top 10’ results. Contact the blog owners and propose to write for them. You’ll definitely be turned down by most bloggers, but don’t give up. Gear up your steps and move to the next blog.

If you publish 10 guest posts in weight loss related blogs in 7 days, it can result in high ranking for your product pages within 90 days. When linking from a niche blog, use a different keyword variation, not the primary key phrase you’re targeting.

Here is what I mean: my primary keyword is “weight loss program for men.” Now, if I’m linking from ediets.com which is a weight loss program network, I would use “weight loss programs” as my anchor text and link back to the same page on my blog. That’s how it works and you won’t appear spammy.

Web Traffic Takeaway

I’m sure you’ve enjoyed my weight loss organic traffic case study. Before my blog started generating significant income, I invested a lot of time, in writing quality, relevant and valuable content that engages my audience. Over time, Google noticed my hard work and started sending more traffic than I can handle. Don’t give up, learn from my weight loss niche blog, apply the tips to yours and cash in. See you at the top!

This guest post was written by Michael Chibuzor, a creative Freelance writer and the editor of weight watchers free registration and Bistro md coupon codes. If you’re looking to lose weight and become a productive blogger, these hot discount deals will help you save.

With all the attention on Pinterest as of lately, there’s two ways to look at the site. The average person thinks… “cool, a new way to find fun stuff to look at online”, while the rest of us are thinking, “sweet! a new traffic source! how can I make money from it?”. You know you are always thinking the same thing whenever something new and huge comes out.

Well, that is the discussion this week as a spammer/affiliate/internet marketing is taking the fame game for a bit while he cashes in on the un-monetized success that is Pinterest. Already getting big media coverage from sites like Mashable, MSNBC, Daily Dot and many more… “Steve” is cashing in on the Pinterest craze and making more than $1,000 a day spamming their networks.

While $1,000 a day might not seem like a ton of money, it seems to be enough to get all of the media coverage you need, which is priceless. When someone is making a ton of money online and not doing it in the most ethical and acceptable ways, most people would keep quite and keep milking the cow for all they can get. “Steve” is very upfront about what he does and how he makes his money spamming Pinterest and simply says he will just keep doing it until they find a way to make it so he can’t.

UPDATE: It turns out that the Pinterest spammer has come out and retracted his comments, saying the whole thing was a hoax. Or was the all media attention simply too much???

Here are some of the highlights from various interviews with “Steve” across the internet.

How do you describe what it is you do? We’ll refer to it as spamming for now. Have you spammed other social networks before?

It’s spam; no other way of putting it. I’ve been through Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure if you ever heard of one of those spammy looking Facebook apps, I was one of the ones doing that.

What do you do when your bots get shut down? What would you do if they all got shut down, and could that ever happen?

Back when I started on Feb. 20, you could pin as many pictures as you wanted to with the same account and all the pins would show up on the boards. Well they changed that around the 23rd I think, and they banned one account. That was my first and only ban so far, maybe more when this interview is publicly posted. Oh how sad I would be. But like I said before, I do have a stockpile of accounts and I can easily create more if needed.  

Do you feel any guilt about what you’re doing? What would you like to say to Pinterest users who like, friend, and click on your bots — if anything?

Nope, I have no guilt. I’m not trying to scam anyone, or upload viruses to their computer or anything like that. I simply show products to the Pinterest community. I realize that I’m spamming the crap out of the site, but it’s nothing personal, just business.

While there is nothing surprising about finding a way to monetize and make money off Pinterest, it is interesting to see how Pinterest will act and change around their network. This is nothing new, as MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and a ton of other social networks and content generated sites have gone through the same exact thing.

When it comes to making a name for yourself and building the necessary contacts to increase your exposure and business online, you need to be networking at the top internet and affiliate conferences across the country. Many years ago if you weren’t located in New York or California, you were pretty much screwed if you didn’t want to travel long distances to get to the biggest networks and conferences around. With the massive growth of internet marketing it seems like there is a killer conference every month and they are now spread all across the county.

California and New York will always be the hot spots for the best events, and this year’s Ad:Tech in San Francisco, CA is no exception. Always one of the biggest events of the year, attending Ad:Tech and walking the exhibit hall alone will give you enough new contacts and business or the remainder of the year.

In addition to walking the exhibit all, the parties that come along with internet conferences are always a must to attend. Companies like ClickBooth are always throwing together some of the largest parties and pulling in well known celebrities and music artists to make their events stand out from the crowd.

This year is no exception, as ClickBooth introduces their “Grill$ N Bill$” Network Like a Rockstar Party featuring the Ying Yang Twins and the infamous Sisqo. If you are going to be in the San Francisco area, this is a party and networking opportunity you simply can’t afford to miss!

Location: Mighty

Details: Live Performances, DJ, Dancers, Open Bar

Ever since social and ad networks have started to open up their advertising models to self serve platforms, the growth and ability to create amazing ad campaigns has just been phenomenal. With the ability to create your own ad campaigns and manage all of the ad copy, traffic sources and targeting, you are in control of the success of your ad campaigns and you won’t have to wait on a slow support team to get your campaigns live. This is the exact business model behind the new Engage:BDR RTB Self Serve Platform.

While many other self serve advertising platforms like MySpace, Facebook and Plenty of Fish allow you to target ads within their network, you are still limited on your reach and each network has their own limitations on banner sizes and ad copy. The goal behind Engage: BDR RTB was to create a platform that allows marketers to get massive promotion across online, mobile and video display advertising, all within one platform.

“It was my goal to build a platform that direct response advertisers could use for both their online media buys as well as their mobile media buys,” commented Nick Lynch, engage:BDR’s Vice President of Platforms and Manager of First Impression.

Once setup with your account, you will have instant access to placements throughout the Engage: BDR channel. Advertising methods focus on choosing your preferred advertising methods and allows you to sort on premium placements, Above the Fold, 1st Impression and Publisher Direct traffic sources. As as advertiser you will also have access to world wide traffic sources, both focused on the US markets and International. In addition to everything else the system has to offer, you will also be working with a team of experienced and season DR representatives to provide campaign consultation

Let’s quickly recap what Engage:BDR RTB Self Serve Platform has to offer.

Inventory Types:

• Online Display
• Mobile Display
• Video (Launching Mid Q2)

Inventory Quality:

• Tier 1: engage:BDR channel – Premium, Above the Fold, 1st Impression, Publisher Direct
• Tier 2: Mid-Level 3-5th Impression, Above the Fold
• Tier 3: Exchange/Remnant Traffic

Inventory Reach:

• US
• International

Tools:

• Granular campaign control down to the creative
• Audience Targeting: age, gender, race, income, etc.
• Mobile Targeting: publisher, platform, make, model, device, carrier, etc.
• Mobile Ad Builder and Landing Page Builder
• iPhone App to manage campaigns on the go
• API access to build your own tools and UI

As you can see, there is a ton of information and features here… which is exactly what you need when it comes to creating your own ad campaign across multiple platforms and traffic sources. Visit Engage: BDR First Impression to setup your account and start managing your own ad campaigns on one of the best self serve advertising platforms around.

It’s always nice to get a gift for your birthday, so Google was nice enough to send me one at 2AM the morning of ZacJohnson.com’s 5 Year Anniversary. Unfortunately it wasn’t a nice gift like the old Google Refrigerator and Certificate they sent me so many years ago… this time it was an unfriendly and automated email saying they will no longer be accepting traffic through my valued web sites and Google Adsense account, which I might add is around 10 years old and has had six figures in earnings over the past decade.

You can read the full email from them below…

Google Adsense’s Friendly Account Disabled Email

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not
accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
——————————

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we’ve determined that your AdSense account
poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a
responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due
to invalid activity, we’ve found it necessary to disable your AdSense
account. Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will
both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the
effectiveness of Google’s advertising system, particularly the
advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that
this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and
cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we’ve taken, how
you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find
more information by visiting
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

I was quite surprised when I received the email, not only that they terminated the account, but also that they were nice enough to immediately take all earnings out of the account and give them back to the advertisers and company. Fortunately I haven’t been using Google Adsense as a main source of income, but the thousand dollars in the account still would have been nice to have. I had used Google Adsense a decent amount in the passed, but with it just sitting on various sites and generating revenue for years without a problem then getting terminated, it’s just quite odd.

The next great thing about Google is that they are so personable and love providing you with quality customer support… yea right, trying to contact Google is definitely one of the areas they aren’t too interesting in improving. Instead of providing support, they will send you in an endless loop of forum posts which pretty much end up no where. If you are lucky enough to finally come across their Invalid Activity Appeal form, you can try your luck again, but they basically sent me the same denial email again. But then again, it’s all from “The Google Adsense Team” and just tells you to get lost in the forums again so I expected nothing less.

Life After Google Adsense

As mentioned earlier, it’s a good thing I don’t use Google Adsense as a driving source of revenue for any of my sites. Imaging making five figures a month with their network, then all of a sudden they send you an email telling you they are just taking all of your earnings from last and this month?! That could be quite a hit for anyone pushing some heavy volume.

What is sad is that I had my account for roughly 15 years and a lot of great data and stats were in there. I’ve also learned that I’m not the only one on the chopping block from Google lately. I’ve come across other posts and forums from other marketers who have had the same experience with Adsense. This is a good lesson for anyone out there to make sure you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. Just like Amazon wipes out their affiliate program state by state as new laws come into play, Google Adsense can simply give and take away whatever they want without any reason or say.

Life after Google Adsense will be the exact same way it was before my account got terminated… though this is a reminder to also keep screenshots and records of all your affiliate accounts that have lots of old data you might like to have. Fortunately I did save a decent amount from prior years. From an earnings and business model standpoint, the loss of Google Adsense doesn’t change anything.

Google Adsense Alternatives

Speaking of not keeping your eggs in all baskets, if you are currently running Google Adsense and looking for alternatives, there are plenty of them out there! I will be updating my list of Google Adsense alternatives and will post a full mega guide on the blog later in the week. In the meantime, here are some of the top blog posts I’ve written so far about monetization outside of Google Adsense.

• Knowing How to Best Monetize Your Site Traffic
• Monetization Beyond Banner Ads
• 10 Tips for Better Blog Monetization & Profit – Part 2
• Make Money with In Text Advertising / Contextual Ads