In fact, I go a bit further than you do with this advice to beginners, and I tell them, just don’t do it. I tell them to just stay clear of Adords until they get a fair amount of disposabe income that won’t affect their financial status if they lose it all. They should have also learned a lot about Adwords before they dive in head first.

I realize that Google doesn’t want just junk websites showing up in the high ranks, but slapping their advertisers is not the way to solve that problem. Google is very hostile to the very people who put food on their table. Their Adwords customers.

It is never wise to bite the hand that feeds you, and most businesses that do, eventually end up suffering financially. Many go out of business, and then they wonder what when wrong. If a business is as hostile to it’s customers as Google is, then it deserve to go out of business.

Then there is the thing about affiliate marketing. Many people (many gurus included) are unsure about affiliate marketing altogether ever since the new FTC regulations came to pass.

I myself have seen a significant drop in my affiliate income. The thing is, I am already an honest affiliate marketer. I never promote something that I don’t have first hand knowledge of and doesn’t have significant benefits of some kind, and so what I don’t need is a government organization implying that I am crooked and are they are going to make me be honest. That’s nothing short of insulting and presumptious.

Now you have to have an affiliate link that says something like “I am making money from this” in every webpage, email, ebook, article, etc, etc. That practically impossible to do (I already have branded ebooks out there in cyberspace that others are distributing, that I can’t get back just to change the links.)

Not only that, but having to make these commission disclosures will have destroyed any trust that you have established with your customers. Now, instead of thinking “Hey, everything else she has recommended has been great, I could use this”, now they will think “She is not promoting this because it’s good, she is promoting this to make a quick buck”.

What are the gurus always telling us? Aren’t they always telling us build trust, build trust, build trust, build trust, and on and on? You bet they do, so I can see why many of them are now very skeptical about affiliate marketing.

Thanks to the FTC, affiliate marketing may very well go the way of the FFA sites, safelists, surfing for clicks, and other marketing strategies that were somewhat successful when they first started, but are now just a complete waste of time and money.

Just my two cents worth,
Misato Katsuragi.

I’ve passed this on to a friend of mine, Brian Peterson, who’s just starting up as well. Showed him your site and he wants to join too, not just because I have, he’d already heard of you through Jeff Dedrick (spelling?), your Marathon Phone Call i think. Hope you don’t mind. His email address is contact@bandhmedia.com. His new website isn’t quite finished, will be in a day or so, but his email is definitely working, I got two emails from him today. Any chance you could send him an invite?

All the best, Bosun