Affiliate marketing has now been the key secret to success of most online businessmen. From the peak of merely browsing websites of global brands to putting up personal blogs and even riding on free accounts to start up your own website, affiliate marketing managed to leverage itself as a promising financial tool. The idea behind affiliate marketing is that other websites of products and services will pay you for the advertising space you provide to them in your own website or blog.

Affiliate Marketing,however, is somewhat a complicated thing. Owners of product and services will not necessarily pay you right away for the space you have allotted to them. The payment comes in the form of revenue sharing. If they get a sale because of the clicks they receive from your website, you get a part of their income. The payments can vary really, and there are no limits to how much you can earn?from zero to hundreds, probably even more.

One of the giants who have emerged from the affiliate marketing technique is Google. Yes, you heard it right. The leading search engine has diversified and moved on to strike the affiliate marketing business with their own product?Google AdSense. Through this new sensation, advertisers and publishers have found a spot where they can gather and be as one in earnings. However, so many services and onlinemarketers have contended for the huge earnings Google is offering. Some even hid themselves in dishonest internet marketing strategies which promise you solid rewards, but in the end you end up in zero. This made some people gear up for an internet marketing revolution…

…like Steven Lee Jones and Andrew X, the names behind the new product Google Masacr. With a website designed to simulate death rearing its ugly head, Google Massacre gives us a foretasteon how average web marketers can finally succeed in their AdWords campaigns.

The innovative internet marketing product leverages itself because of the background of its promoters. If you have been a close follower of Google?in both the good times and the bad?chances are you have come across Steven and Andrew from the Google Magic Formula. This particular edition overtook Clickbank with a gross amounting to $200,000 copies sold. Although at first look it seems like the Google Massacer is abhorring Google, that’s not what it is all about. It simply wants to give you an image of how much “carnage” you can do to maximize your earnings through Google, and eventually trash your competitors.

Google Massacre Reviews : Trademark Infringement Issues For Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertisers

Yahoo has just announced they will no longer allow PPC advertisers to advertise or bid on trademarked terms.

Could this be a trend of things to come from the other major search players?

MSN’s new adCenter (still in beta) states you are not allowed to infringe trademarks within their editorial guidelines (see policy below).

However, Google still maintains a strong stance in allowing advertisers to bid on trademarked search terms as long as the trademarked term is not used within the advertiser’s ad-copy.

Numbers to Consider

Next to click fraud, trademark violations are the second largest concern to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Out of the total number of searches online, 20% are trademark searches. Meaning, company owned trademarks such as “Pontiac”, account for 20% of all search traffic. While 1 in 5 searches for trademark terms may seem high, most conversions do not originate from trademarked terms. A study by comScore and Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) found most buyers do not search by manufacturer or product name. Rather, buyers use broad search terms that do not include a manufacturer’s name. Broad search terms account for 70% of total searches and 60% of total conversions.

Search Engine’s Policy on PPC Trademark Bidding

Yahoo on Trademarks:

“On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial
guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks.
Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers
to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed
comparative information about the trademark owners’ products or
services in comparison to the competitive products and services
that were offered or promoted on the advertisers’ site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when
users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing
has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords
containing competitor trademarks.”

MSN AdCenter on Trademarks

“Microsoft requires all advertisers to agree that they will not bid on keywords, or use in the text of their advertisements, any word whose use would infringe the trademark of any third party or would otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party”.

Google Adwords on Trademarks:

“Google takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we’re happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners. Also, our Terms and Conditions with advertisers prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers and make it clear that advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.”

Solution or More Problems

With all Engines moving toward a TM standard, it would have many benefits to both advertisers and searchers. This standard would be good for marketers who would have to be more creative in their copy creation creating increased demand for qualified marketers which would translate into higher fees. Search Engines hosting the ads would maintain revenue levels, but online public relations firms may lose as they would not be required to police search engines for their clients with trademarks. Lastly, the mark owner would continue to be protected and user experience would not be affected.

Case Study:

I’m currently working with an AdWords client in a circumstance where their competitors are bidding on their trademarked search terms. Aside from the constant policing and reporting for trademark violations used in the ads themselves, adspend to secure top positions for their ads has skyrocketed from an initial $2.00 per click to $15.00 per click. Additionally, monthly spend has increased from $1,200 to nearly $30,000.

I have to go back to my client with an estimated budget of $500,000 for the rest of this year to control the space for their own branded trademarked term. I am reluctant to do that as it doesn’t make sense with the announcement from Yahoo on their new trademark policy. Given the level of aggression by the competitors and the extortionate cost now been borne by my client there is only one solution and that is to stop all advertisers from bidding on the terms. In my opinion, it is simply not right that a business owner has to spend $500,000+ to buy their own branded term that has already cost them millions of dollars to build. This is $500,000+ in revenue for Google which is being generated by a policy that is beyond elementary business terms. Yahoo and MSN have recognized the injustice of this policy and have taken steps to change it.

If we cannot treat this policy on a case by case basis, then I have no alternative than to advise my client that we cannot help them any further and their only option is to resort to legal action against Google.

Google also advises that you take the matter up with individual advertisers which in many cases are impossible with private registrations and foreign companies. You could add to your high costs dramatically to have to send cease desists to all infringers. Many will ignore you.

The classic bait and switch does not seem to apply to the Internet. Many companies are okay with their terms being bought for comparison shopping and by re-sellers. The solution here is for those companies to give permission to Google to allow their re-sellers to purchase the name. With the strength and sophistication of Google’s technology how difficult can this be? I doubt it is any more cumbersome than filtering search results for China.

Your Defense Against Trademark Violations

Website companies where the majority of their revenue is generated through online sales depend heavily on search engines to generate traffic to their website. In order to defend against trademark infringements you will need to conduct search audits at least once every month. You not only need to look over organic search results, but also paid search results or PPC contextual ads. You should look through the top 30 results of the search listings.

For organic search engine results you should look at both the questionable result and the site displayed in the result. When looking over the possible violator’s site, don’t just look over the visible content on the site; look over the code as well to uncover hidden text, image alt tags and keyword meta tags that may include your trademarked names.

Then document your findings. For search engine results and PPC results use a “screen capture” of the page displaying the mark infringement. For mark infringements that are visible on a website, save the entire page’s code as a .txt file.

What about if you are you seeing an infringement in organic search results, but when you click on the page, there is no infringement? They may be using a cloaked page which includes your trademark. To check this out you will need to view the search engine’s cached page on file. Make sure to save a copy of this code as well.

You will need to document your findings properly by dating the violation as well as the site owner’s complete contact information. Use www.dnsstuff.com to get the whois information for the site. Once you have all of this documented you will need to send your findings to the appropriate search engine.

You may also want to take the legal route, in which case you should keep a record of all your documentation to present to your legal counsel.

The best way to gather evidence is to hire a third party to collect evidence against the infringer of your trademark or copyrighted material. Recently at Search Engine Strategies in New York City during February of 2006, Deborah Wilcox, Partner of Baker & Hostetler LLP who specializes in trademark and copyright areas of law said, “Use a third party to make print outs and audit the search results. If the case goes to court you will need hard evidence for the judge.”

Contact the Search Engines

You can also contact the search engines directly if you believe an advertiser is infringing on your trademark. The respective search engine contact information is below.

Google
Google Inc.
Attn: Google AdWords, Trademark Complaints
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Yahoo! Search Marketing
Formerly: Overture Services, Inc.
Attn: Business & Legal Affairs - Trademarks
74 N. Pasadena Ave., 3rd Floor
Pasadena, California 91103
Fax: 626 685-5601

Microsoft Corporation
Attn: MSN Search Trademark Concerns
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA

Trademark Infringement Resources
International Trademark Association
American Patent & Trademark Law Center
Internet patent, copyright, trademark, and legal issues
Trademarks on the Internet

Bill Younger writes for Elixir Systems, a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit http://www.elixirsystems.com

More info about Review of Google Massacre on eUserReviews.com

Even though internet affiliate marketing can often be a fantastic means to produce extra income, sometimes there are problems. Does this scare you? Likely you and your associates are very skeptical by our statement

Nevertheless we are convinced of our stance. In some cases we have heard of enraged affiliate marketers who have had extreme troubles collecting pay. Our hope is you won’t your plan for internet affiliate marketing.

The internet is rife with many fake websites that actually serve as landing pages for affiliate marketers. The content contained therein is sometimes plagiarized from other sources, or may contain spurious information (such as fake reviews) in order to persuade the visitor of the veracity of the products being mentioned. It can be difficult though to determine whether a site is genuine, or whether it is merely one of many landing sites marketers are using in order to generate commissions.

Affiliate marketers are quickly becoming the scourge of the Internet as a result of their heavy handed (and sometimes black-hat) methods to generate revenues. They do not generally operate the same way spammers do, since their content is not generally unsolicited (and they must rely on commissions to earn income), but they have become just as shady in tricking readers into purchasing products for their own profit.

However, Affiliate marketers do follow a common pattern that may be easy enough to spot once you know what you’re looking for. Once they decide on a niche, they then sign up for the most lucrative affiliate programs that appeal to that particular niche, and then they’re off to work their dark magic. For a case study at how these affiliate marketers might operate, I provide an inside look at affiliate scams.

Anyone involved with a business on the Internet has heard about affiliate marketing programs. As you may have already noticed more of these programs are appearing all the time. You may be wondering why affiliate marketing programs are so popular. First of all, you need to understand that these programs are used by online businessmen to promote the sell of products and services of other online merchants. There are a lot of programs available so when you are ready to get started using one of these programs you need to make sure you do your research and look for one that is legitimate.

Some of these programs are free and others you will have to pay for. Once you choose your program you will be ready to set-up you website and begin receiving the benefits. One of the largest benefits is the fact that you do not have any inventory to worry about. You will not have the expense of storing the inventory or having it designed and manufactured. This makes it a lot easier for new entrepreneurs to get started with their business. In fact, using affiliate marketing programs makes it possible for just about anyone to have an opportunity to have a success Internet business.

When you use an affiliate marketing program it will reduce the amount of money you need to get started and lower the amount of financial risk you have to worry about. The company you are promoting will take care of all the shipping expenses and they will also handle all customer service issues. As an incentive for using these programs you will receive a percentage of all the profits made by the company that was sold through your website. You will be provided with the tools needed to ensure you get the credit for all the customers you send their way.

Many of these programs offer high commission percentages and have the potential of making you a lot of money which is why so many people are interested in getting in on the action. However, the amount of money that you will make will greatly depend on the effort you put into it. The more methods you use to promote the products the more successful you can be. Before you begin using an affiliate marketing program it is advised that you learn as much as you can about using them, this will help to make sure the business you start up is a successful one.

Thinking about affiliate marketing software, but not quite sure where to start? Read our detailed affiliate elite software review and get the answers you need! Visit www.dealdotcom.com/blog/affiliate-elite-software-review for complete details.