Blame It On the Affiliate Marketers

1. 61

   Pandoras Boxposted 14 years ago

   This is what I have heard on facebook. That HP needs to get rid of the affiliate marketers. To me this makes no sense - if HP gets rid of the people actually earning money, they lose big.
   
   I understand that some people write pure crap. I'm confused as to why this is being blamed on affiliate marketers.
   
   Am I mistaken, overlooking something? Are we evil, and ruining adsense for the 'good' writers?
   
   Any thoughts?

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      Kdban101posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      First of all, affiliate marketers don't exactly compete for adsense, they sell products. However, as a reader I can say people are very upset with affiliate marketing. When I type a query, I want to see the relevant information on the resultant pages. But basically what happens is...."Hey, you want this information, buy this ebook for $7, this will give you the relevant information.
      
      If one types "origin of galaxy" plenty of pages deals with the Samsung Galaxy Tab. No doubt people are upset.

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      Hestia DeVotoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Why not just get rid of the crap?  That seems to be the actual problem, not affiliate marketers in general.

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   skyfireposted 14 years ago

   Hint: 'buy', "top 10 XYZ', "ABC-Product cheap free now", "Download uncle aunty hot pics", "Free ringtones lady gaga".

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3. 61

   Pandoras Boxposted 14 years ago

   So I guess what you're saying is that the internet shouldn't be - or at least, there are people who do not want the internet to be a marketplace.
   
   Huh. Yeah okay. So that's what I see now this is all about in a way. I really have trouble with the obvious.
   
   So money-minded people are turning the internet into more of an effective marketplace, and some people dislike that, and plus there's the tax issues of our way behind government.
   
   I still can't think it's fair to blame affiliate marketers. Blame low quality sites, or pages, or hubs, but don't blame affiliate marketers.

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4. 87

   Len Cannonposted 14 years ago

   Whatever, maybe I am the problem, maybe I'm not.  I've written "Top (JUNK YOU CAN BUY) lists", but there's never been a list where I didn't believe in my picks or have experience with the products. I haven't written about top weight loss machines because I sit around on my time off and read video games and comic books and that's what comes out here.
   
   I like to think that I've done well without it because I've written high quality info about what's worth getting for people who aren't in the know. My target has never been people who are big gamers or dorks, but parents, friends, and relatives looking to purchase gifts for the nerdherd in their life. I don't think it is curing cancer, but I think my sales articles are actually useful and might even be interesting to people who aren't my audience anyways.

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      ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      The way I see it Len is that if you make are honest and accurate with your pitch and make a sale as a result then you have successfully provided the buyer with the information that they were seeking via a search engine. I can't see anything wrong with that.

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      1. 61

         Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         The way I see it is that we save them from making uneducated decisions, or doing a good deal of research on their own to get informed. One page. You get everything you need to know. By the second click, you're prepared to make an informed purchase. 5 minutes.

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5. 70

   ThomasEposted 14 years ago

   It will be up for hubpages to decide that, but frankly I has seen the list of affected sites, and quite a number of them are higher quality than hubpages and have no affiliate marketers at all.
   
   Suite101 and wisegeek come to mind.

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   1. 61

      White Teethposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Yep, some of the sites did not have affiliate marketing at all, and some sites had stronger editorial control that Hubpages, requiring human approval of articles. And they were hit just as hard (so far). It is kind of early to go on a witch hunt to get rid of “bad” hubs.
      
      The JC Penney issue was one of the main things that publicly embarrassed Google, and I believe in that instance content farms were mainly used just to bolster backlinks to the JC Penney pages.

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