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Originally Posted by jasdon11  In fact you don't even need a domain or a website - the URL on your PPC can be your affiliate link. |
Not so easy anymore with AdWords. Google has again tilted the tables in favor of the bigger companies and put the strangle hold on affiliate marketers.
We used to be able to insert affiliate links into browser meta http-refresh and/or use 301 redirects; throw ad spend at those URLs and make a killing.
Google started requiring ads to be labeled as affiliate links, eg: "Aff" in your ad copy (no big deal, this didn't seem to have any severe impact on conversions). Then Google dealt a more crucial blow - the display URL in your ads could only be that of the parent company and then the real crippling blow: only 1 link per parent company will show up in the search results.
Now if you want to advertise affiliate links with AdWords you need to create landing pages where the user has to click through to get to parent company (thus requiring 2 clicks to get to desired product/service -- how does this enhance the "user experience" Google ?!?). Then you face the frustrating challenge of getting a high enough quality score to not get hit with $10.00 minimum bids.