Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online
website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have
seen their Adsense profits and income flatline... seen their
four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight.
For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst.
What happened?
First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting
advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search
results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search
won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results
convert better than content ads.
Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like
they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated
re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say
the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or
'affiliate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for
many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped
marketers build an opt-in list or use permission based email.
The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many
online marketers.
Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes
could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer,
Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death
of Adsense".
Many affiliate marketers would agree with Boulch on some
of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense
on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online
marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per click with
Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered
that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affiliate links,
they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages.
Why earn pennies per click when you can earn $5, $10 or
OVER $100 per click?
But the fine people at Google are catching on...
In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action
direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser
and giving webmasters credit for signing up Adwords and Adsense
accounts.
Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these
baby steps and open their Adsense affiliate program up to third
party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google
offered some hope: "We're always looking for new ways to provide
effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users,"
the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently
testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers
more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue
through AdSense."
Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads,
purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the
click fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially
make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.
As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for
such diverse services as insurance, real estate, telephone,
marketing, web hosting, travel, mortgage loans, cable TV,
banking... you name it, almost any service or product sold
in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers
and lifelong clients.
Enormous sums of money will change hands. Perhaps, the most
lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are
turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring
these lifelong customers for their respective services and
products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying
an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business.
They quickly build a client base for their services or products
and quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run
these leads will generate huge profits.
It can also mean huge profits for the CPA networks like
ValueClick's Commission Junction and Rakuten's LinkShare who
supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers
to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for
all involved, especially for those online marketers who
have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche
markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items
pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market
online.
Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action)
will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making
any profitable site much more profitable. It will and is
opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that
never existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex
structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affiliate/CPA
companies that connect the two.
Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even
a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more
webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly
with companies, rather than going through a middle process like
Google Adsense or the countless other affiliate/CPA networks
... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.
For an online marketer when you get a phone call or email from
the CEO or the affiliate manager with a company or service
you're promoting with your website - you know you have made it!
Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions
and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.
Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business
wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the
idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments,
promotional materials... they just like to sit back and build more
websites and content. It gives the affiliate marketer a lifestyle that
they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote
with their sites and let someone else worry about the details.
Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like
Google Adsense...
"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."
However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense
contextual ads?
Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there
ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google
brand name is trusted online, any product/service promoted
through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google
already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to
handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.
On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to
its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a
few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have
lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding
the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls
at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you're one of the
unfortunate few who get trampled in the process.
...
The author is a former teacher who now works full-time online
operating numerous websites, including two sites on Internet
marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try:
Internet Marketing Tools
For the lastest trade information in your own industry try:
Free Trade Publications
Copyright © 2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be
freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
