Google Really Hates Ringtones
February 5th, 2009 by Peter Glaeser |
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As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Google hates ringtones and other mobile content products. About six month ago they installed a manual approval for mobile content ads.
I’ve just been forwarded an email from a partner who is doing a lot of PPC in the mobile content industry. Google will require mobile content providers and their affiliates to put the price and billing interval for subscription services in the actual AdWords ads. Quote:
In the coming weeks [...] we will require text and image ads for these services to display the price and billing interval (such as per week or per month) in the ad text, e.g. ‘£5.99/month’. We will no longer accept text or image ads that don’t contain the price and billing interval when promoting mobile content services. When we make this change, Google will suspend all campaigns identified as being in violation of our revised policy.
The guy is seriously scared and concerned about his income now. For more than five years he has been living off mobile content stuff as an affiliate. The only advise I can give him is to move on to other niches. Mobile content has become a somewhat outdated product anyways. I wonder for how much longer people will actually be willing to pay money for this.
Anyways, I just wanted to take this instance as an occasion to reiterate three fundamental principles in affiliate marketing:
- Never ever ever rely on Google alone. It’s never good to bet all your money on one horse. If you want to generate additional profit from AdWords campaigns, that’s fine. But the core of your business must be independent of the big G.
- Do not copy but innovate. Focus on niches that are up-and-coming and not the ones that are going down the hill. This way you will generate much more sustainable profit.
- Something that works today might not work tomorrow. Invest in new ideas and test them to prepare yourself for the future.