Hitler gets Google slapped

Funny video I found on Peter Dunbar’s site, http://www.vtmarketer.com/

Affiliate, do you still keep your day job?

Do you remember the time when you still had your day job while doing affiliate marketing in the nights? Remember that you had almost no sleep because you were working on your PPC campaigns? You were so passionate about it but still couldn’t quit your day job because you were scared it wouldn’t work.

If you are in affiliate marketing long enough, you probably remember those times. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you are probably living it right now.
So let me ask you something. Why don’t you quit your day job?
Yes, I know it’s scary, but don’t you think you are wasting your precious time there?

You know what? I understand that you are scared. I’ve been there. But I think I have the solution for your problem. Go and find yourself a job as an intern in a SEM agency. I don’t know about the US, but here in Israel the agencies are looking everywhere for smart and sharp interns.
So if you are too scared to quit your day job at least go and find yourself a job that will actually help you in becoming a successful affiliate marketer. Go and learn from the bests in the fields of PPC and SEO. Don’t you think it’s a better way to “waste” your time? I’m still calling it a waste because you still have a job and fix hours, but it’s a much better waste than your current day job. And hey, who knows – you might like it better than being an affiliate.

I worked for a company called easynet. I learned a lot there. I learned from the best there is how to do PPC and how to think like a PPC marketer. If you have a long run plan, and are willing to spare 2 years to work as a PPC manager, they are actually looking for someone. If 2 years are too much for you, there are many others in the field.

I will end this up with a very powerful advice I truly believe in:
Don’t just wish for money, KNOW you are going to get it.

Why I got banned from AdWords – Google’s side of the story

Lately I almost can’t find the time to post here and there is a lot of updates.

This post, as the title says, is about Google’s side of my banning story.

Yes, I finally got an honest answer from an AdWords rep’ about why exactly my account was terminated.  This is the email I got from AdWords about a week ago:

hello Erez,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about the
recent suspension of your AdWords account due to repeated submissions of
ads for low quality landing pages. Specifically, you are concerned that,
due to a previous incorrect evaluation of one of the sites you advertiser
by our system, this suspension is also incorrect.

I’ve researched why your account was disabled, and found that this action
was taken for the following reasons:

o The URLs cited for a very poor-quality landing page experience are:
smiley-center.com, and gov-resources.com
o The account was disabled because of the following: smiley-center.com -
Data collection site that uses quizzes in order to collect private
information; gov-resources.com – Bridge site that the primary purpose of
which is to drive traffic to another site with a different domain

As you know, we are committed to making the AdWords experience safe and
effective for our users and our advertisers. We disabled your AdWords
account after a review of your landing page quality evaluations because we
believe that this kind of poor-quality site creates a seriously negative
or possibly harmful user experience.

The decision to disable your AdWords account was not taken lightly, and we
appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

 OK, so at leasy  there is a reasonable explanation for my AdWords ban, gov-resources.com, as some of you are fermiliar with if you worked with clickbank, is really just a fraud. The other site mentioned in the email is a poor try to send traffic to smileycentral.com . I don’t really get why they claimed it to be a data collecting site but I do agree it’s a poor quality landing page.

The thing is that I didn’t promote these websites from more than a year or 2 when I was a “baby affiliate”. And back then, many affiliates promoted these poor clickbank sites like I did. After all, this is how all the “gurus” told us we should start as an affiliate.

I did asked AdWords for their mercy and understanding, but as you figured out, there’s no one to answer my emails any more.

Few things we can all learn from my case:

• Never listen to gurus claiming they know the “secret” and especially ones in the affiliate marketing scene.
• Before you promote offers as an affiliate, check closely if these offers are valid and do not violate any guideline.
• Create GOOD QUALITY CONTENT.

Before I sign off I want to leave you with a small tip that might “help” you if you got banned from adwords:

Try to open a new adwords account. I say no more.

I got banned from AdWords – AGAIN!

OK, now this is ridiculous. I got banned again from AdWords. And why? who the hell knows?!.

As you probably remember, last time I got banned, I asked AdWords to re-review my account, and it the day after I got an email saying that I am no longer banned and that it was a computer error.

Now, a month later, I got banned again! This is crazy and annoying. I didn’t promote anything that Google doesn’t like, and in fact, in the previous time I got banned and then un-banned, AdWords help guys told me that everything I’m promoting is OK. So what the hell happened now??

By the way, my friend, of which I told you about last time, who also got banned and un-banned, also got banned again. Something is really F***ED UP with Google’s banning algorithm. Why we don’t here anything from the blog-sphere? Why no one at Google is taking the blame and admit to everyone “I’m sorry, but the machine and algorithm I created really suck”? But no! everyone should dance according to Google and no one can make the all mighty “G” to admit he’s wrong.

Google has too much power and it’s starting to get too late for us to see it.

Fortunately I already have some nice campaigns running on Facebook. You should try it too. Google is no longer relevant for me as an affiliate. Too bad..

Now go and make some money!!!

Erez.

Google is rewinding AdWords bans

The AdWords banning saga continues.

After I was banned from AdWords and got back a few days after, I hear that I’m not the only one who got back on AdWords after being banned.

My friend, of whom I told you about in the last 2 posts, that came up with the idea that Google shut me down because they connected our accounts to each other, also got his ads running again. Since yesterday I noticed that this series of bans is in fact automated, and it got me thinking that Google must have realized that something went wrong with their machine. I wonder what caused them to notice it. I think it’s either Google decided to pay attention to all the noise the banned advertisers made, or, something that I find more likely, that Google noticed that their bank account is growing slower than they hoped. They even banned a million dollars per month affiliate. This affiliate has some really good notes and comments about this issue in general.

So are we going to see a mass of banned advertisers gaining back access to AdWords? Will Google kill this EVIL machine that they have created? God I hope so, because this entire chain of events got me to a place where I’m afraid of trying to promote new stuff on AdWords. How know? Maybe their algorithm wouldn’t like my landing page and will ban me again, killing all the other “good” campaigns I got running.

I got un-banned from AdWords!!

24 Hours After I posted that I was out of AdWords for good, and not by choice, I got an email from Google saying that a specialist team re-reviewed my account and found that I was following all the guidelines.

Here’s the exact words:

Thank you for your email. I’m happy to let you know that our specialist
team re-reviewed your account and has overturned their decision to disable
your account. I’ve confirmed that your website was not correctly evaluated
by our system, and we’ve fixed this error. Keep in mind that we’re
constantly improving the way the AdWords system evaluates landing page
quality. However, there’s no guarantee that your account won’t be affected
by a poor landing page quality in the future. To prevent this from
happening, we recommend ensuring that your site complies with our landing
page quality guidelines, found at
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46675&hl=en_US. If
you continue to have difficulty viewing your ad, please reply to this
message with the keywords you’re using to search for your ad. I’ll be
happy to research the problem further.

So basically, my account was banned my a machine!! and after I asked for and got a human review on my account I got un-banned. I wonder how many people got banned automatically but didn’t do anything about it. What I think happened is that because a good friend of mine got banned a week ago (with a good reason) and he sometimes used my PC to get into his accounts, Google connected between the accounts and automatically banned me as well. This is just a guess though.

You can’t imagine the joy I felt inside when I saw this email! I’m not even angry that I got banned at the first place cause after all I did promote some stuff that are worth been banned for when I took my first steps in affiliate marketing. And besides, I’m too happy to be angry

Anyway, I suggest everyone who got banned to ask for a human re-review. First though, delete all of the campaigns you think are worth been banned for. I think all affiliates out there that has yet to be banned, try to do the same – If you once ran campaigns that might look “fishy”, delete it before your account is reviewed.

One important thing I learned from it, is that I got to find new sources of income (Bing & Yahoo don’t count). I think I will put some efforts in learning media buying. I know many affiliates are in this position as well, so how are you going to escape from your dependency on Google?

I got banned from AdWords

I’m not sure what just happened, but today when I looked at my account I realized that I didn’t get any click for 4 days. I got nervous since I know Google is on a crusade to find affiliates and kill their accounts. So before I freaked out I checked my keywords, and all of them were with QS higher that 6 when most of them with quality score higher than 8. Then, I checked if my ads were disapproved for some reason, but all my ads were on “active”. This is when I thought to my self that my account is probably under review and my ads will run again soon. After all, I didn’t get any warnings about low quality score. Boy was I wrong!

I contacted AdWords support, asking them when will my ads be active again. I got an email saying that I got banned! :

Hello Erez,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about your
ads not running. Please know that your Google AdWords account has been
disabled due to multiple violations of our advertising policies, including
violations after final warning, related to Landing Page and Site Quality,
in a related account. As a result, your ads will no longer run though the
Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in
the future. Please note that future AdWords accounts you open will also be
disabled.

As part of our commitment to making the AdWords experience safe and
effective for our users and our advertisers, we routinely review the
landing pages that our advertisers promote through our search and content
networks.  If we find that an advertiser has submitted poor quality
landing pages that do not comply with our advertising policies, including
the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines, we reserve the right to take
account-level action.

Landing pages advertised via AdWords must have relevant, original content,
and must be transparent about the nature of the business being promoted.
Further, advertisers are prohibited from promoting certain types of sites,
which include, but are not limited to:

* Data collection sites that imply delivery of free items, etc., in order
to collect private information
* Arbitrage sites without relevant and original content that are designed
for the purpose of showing ads
* Affiliate sites without relevant and original content that are designed
to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
* “Get-rich quick” sites that make unrealistic promises
* Sites that are deceptive
* Sites that distribute malware or spyware
* Extremely misleading/unverifiable or inaccurate claims

Please note that this action is related to sites that have recently been
advertised through your related account. In a review of your related
account’s history, we found that your related account had submitted
multiple sites that merited poor landing page quality evaluations.
Although these sites may have been corrected or removed since our latest
review, advertisers that have a history of promoting poor quality landing
pages are subject to account-level disabling.

Then I got really nervous! and angry! I didn’t get any warnings! Ever! . Not only that, but I really had no active campaigns that where promoting any of the site they mentioned as prohibited for promoting. I did try to promote the acai berry once but this campaign ran for about a week and that I paused it. I was promoting everything “by the book” and didn’t use any method that an SEM agency wouldn’t use.

I was really clueless, and I still am. Google won’t return my emails since then.

A friend of mine, that was banned last week, came up with a theory that Google some how noticed that his account was once used from the same PC as mine, and then they thought they are linked to each other and this is why I got banned. But I guess I can’t really know.

I guess what I need to do now is find a way to get back on AdWords. I heard some people managed to do that, but it might be just a rumor. I also heard of people that tried many times but Google always got on their tracks.

This is a real pain in the ass. I got tips from people that I need to open a new company and use its CC, change my IP and billing address, and even replace my computer. Oh, and I not can’t use any Google product so they won’t get on my track. Seems difficult, but i worth the shot. I hope it works.

Few things are on my mind right now:

• Is this the end of affiliate marketing in Google? Or just the end of the lazy, scheming, and just wrong affiliate marketing? Anyway, I’m sure things are going to change.
• I guess that more people will promote their affiliate offer in Bing and Yahoo. Maybe these engines will get more search volume because of it. After all, if many affiliates are now using Bing and not Google, other people might start using it too.
• The final and most important thing that is on my mind is – will I ever get back on AdWords or will I need to find income from other sources. I hope that the answer is yes for both parts of the question.

If anyone that is reading this post has ever got banned and managed to get back on AdWords, please contact me. I would appreciate it.

Google Slap? Where?

Lately I’ve noticed many affiliates and blogs of affiliates are talking about slaps they got from Google. For those of you that might be new to this business, “Google slap” is a term to describe a massive drop in you campaign performance and quality score and that is not being caused by something you changed.

Let me just tell you that I didn’t get slaps in any of my campaigns so it’s not like the first Google slap that occurred in 2004 (as I remember), when Google “unleashed” the quality score.

If you are wondering why Google slapped you – it’s probably because you did something wrong that is against Google’s guidelines. First of all go and read the AdWords guidelines and policies. If you don’t want to rad it all, just ask yourself if you did PPC that includes:

• Flogs – also known as fake blogs.
• Scams – Google got a lot of complaints about this recently, specially in the “make money online” niche, but also in the “free-trials” scams such as acai berry.
• iframes – Google hates it.
• Government records sites – for those of you promoting the government records/background check niche, I know of 1 clickbank vendor that got slapped.

Keep in mind that Google like quality content and if you are promoting scams, your campaign will die eventually.

If you insist on keeping your campaign, you can try to:

• Switch domains.
• Open a new account and upload the campaign there.
• Google cloaking – just google it.

The methods described above are not recommended at all. I suggest to start something new with a real, quality product.

photo by: Vermin inc's

Michael Jackson and PPC

When Michael Jackson died, the entire web was instantly filled with news and information about his death and life.

What does that have to do with PPC? well, the web was not just filled with information, it was also filled with people searching for this information: Yahoo broke a record of 16 millions (I think) unique visitors, Google’s servers were slowed down, and CNN got more traffic than ever before. To make things clear, traffic was all around, and you just had to catch it and turn it into money.

Monetize search trends

Imagine you had a PPC ad selling Michael Jackson’s CDs on Amazon. Or maybe some posters, or books. Jackson’s fans searching for Michael Jackson will probably like to have some kind of souvenir. I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you how to benefit from someones death, because that’s just sound mean. But hey, Amazon sold out everything they had that has any kind of connections to Michael Jackson. Why Affiliates can’t joind the ride? Why can’t a PPC manager of some music company put a PPC ad, make his client a lot of money, and get his boss to praise him and give him a raise even for doing a great job?

It’s Not too late

Although it’s a few days late, you can still take advantage of this search trend. Affiliates – well it is pretty clear what you can do. PPC Managers – think of a way you can take this traffic and turn it into clients for your client. Not all industries can do that, but I’m sure everyone related to the entertainment industry can do it. And how about advising your client from the travel industry to make a Michael Jackson special?

It’s not just Michael Jackson

You should keep an eye on search trends and know how to take advantage of it as early as possible. Being there first can mean a lot of money.

I would like to hear what you have to say about that. Anyone can share a trend that he caught on time?