I can think of lots of things that Google has done wrong, but as you say, they are a business working to make huge amounts of money.

I thought that by opting out of the interest-based advertising that it would help prevent Google from putting cookies on visitors to my sites, but that proved to be incorrect. All their advertising now, interest-based or not, cookies visitors.

I’ve found that the only way to prevent it is to no show their ads on my sites.

I have removed them from some sites, but not from others.

I’m still debating with myself what is the right thing to do.

I guess each of us has to decide for ourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

Sire´s last blog post..There Is No Way In Hell That A Man Can Please A Woman

I know some people who make a lot of money through Commission Junction – several in the thousands of dollars per month category.

I’m not one of them, and it hasn’t been for the lack of trying.

I’m obviously not promoting the right products to the right market, and, yes, that’s my fault, not theirs.

Or, perhaps I’m promoting the right products to the right market, but doing it incorrectly. It still leads to the same results.

Congratulations on earning that $100 commission. That’s good news, and I hope you’re able to repeat it often and reliably.

For myself, I have never made substantial income through CJ and I’ve earned several times more this week from one company than I’ve earned from CJ over the last few years combined.

Deciding on what we want to promote, how we want to do it, and to whom we want to make the offers is one of the great things about owning our own business.

We each get to decide what works well for us and what we enjoy doing.

For myself, I’m much happier promoting a company that produces a product that I really like and which works well for me as a customer. When I earn nice commissions for promoting that company it is a bonus.

Again, I’m not saying that I’m right and others are wrong, and I would never presume to tell someone how to run their own business. It’s great that each of us gets to decide for ourselves what is worth doing.

It’s one of the main reasons I remain so interested in the Internet marketing niche. I want to share some of what I’ve learned and compare notes with others.

But, just because I love something doesn’t mean I’ll earn a living by promoting it.

I’ve been a Macintosh fanatic since I used the first one a week before they were introduced. I placed an order for one that day and received one of the first Macs that was delivered to anyone in Arizona.

Over the last 25 years, I’ve bought maybe a dozen Macs and I know I’ve been responsible for people buying hundreds of them from my recommendation.

Before leaving Arizona, I was earning nice commissions for selling Macs in a computer store.

Yet, I’ve never earned a dime in affiliate commissions by promoting them through various companies, including Amazon.com. So, I grew tired of trying and removed the affiliate links a few years ago, yet I still share my opinions and link directly to their site now and then.

It’s just one more example of promoting a company I like without expecting to get paid for doing it.

Of course, I’m just a tiny little fish in a big ocean when it comes to Macs, so it makes sense that I don’t earn anything in that niche. Still, I remain a very happy customer.

Who knows? I may be entirely wrong about all of this. I may be shooting myself in the foot, and I know I will not earn commissions if I don’t promote using affiliate links.

Perhaps it’s better to earn at least something rather than nothing?

I don’t really know the answer to that question.

Act on your dream!

JD

Yes, removing the competition from the ads is an important consideration, but would not have been the impetus to do all the work I’m doing had Google not changed what they were doing with the ads with little warning and no choice about the cookies and the privacy statement.

I always re-evaluate an agreement when the other party changes things unilaterally.

Each of us has to decide how we focus our time and effort and what we believe to be a good return for our work.

For example, as a consultant, I’m sure you would quit working with someone if they might send you a few dollars a month – or might not.

If you had a few dozen clients sending you $100 a month, and none of them required substantial work on your part, the accumulated earnings may be worth the low revenue each provides.

However, if one of those clients started demanding more of your time and effort, changed your agreement and only told you about it afterward, and still provided no more income than other clients, and less than some, that’s a different story.

Right?

So, for me, looking at all my sources of affiliate commissions, I want to focus on the ones that are making money, and not on the ones that may do so, eventually.

By focusing on the profitable parts of my business, I can increase revenue with less effort.

I prefer to focus on my strengths, not to focus on overcoming my weaknesses. (While improving in all areas is important, some things produce much better returns than others.)

I’m not saying that I’m right and you’re not. I’m just saying that this is how I view the world and want to run my own business.

I’m not trying to tell anyone else how to run theirs.

I’ve made a few sales through Commission Junction, but have earned only about $22 from them in the last year. It seems that the companies I promote through them just don’t convert well for my audience.

I like CJ and I’m not saying anything negative about them. It’s just that I earn much more from other companies.

When CafePress had their own affiliate program, I was starting to build a nice income stream. When they moved to CJ to manage it, it sank like a stone. I was advertising to the same audience, but the results were drastically different.

I’m a proud customer of VistaPrint and I’ve promoted them a lot on various sites, yet I don’t think I’ve had a single sale or earned anything as a result.

Since I like VistaPrint, I’ll continue to link directly to their site when I recommend what they offer, but I won’t be doing it through their CJ affiliate links.

Similarly, I am a big fan of WordTracker, but they recently made changes to their affiliate program and I don’t like those changes, so I’ll stop promoting them through the affiliate links and just link directly to their site.

I won’t be losing anything, and I’ll enjoy promoting companies that offer great services that I use regularly.

While I will rarely give actual numbers, I’m happy to share what I’m learning about building a business around affiliate marketing.

I like the business and love working at home, but for most who try it, it is not a reliable model for earning a full-time income.

I have tried hundreds of affiliate programs and I earn the bulk of my income from about a dozen.

Google Adsense ads are in that dozen, but the majority of my income from them comes from a couple of niche sites that have nothing at all to do with marketing.

Still, I’m wrestling with the ethical issue, as I mentioned previously.

If opting out of the interest-based advertising meant that they were not requiring modifying the privacy page on all my sites, and meant that they would not drop DoubleClick cookies on my visitors’ browsers, then I would not have a problem with them and this would not be an issue.

Up until this month, I’ve been very happy with Google and the income I receive from showing their ads, but the recent changes do not set well with me. It’s not the right way to do business.

Act on your dream!

JD

Sire´s last blog post..An Aspect Of Affiliate Marketing That May Lead To Higher Conversions

First thought is if you remove Adsense because it’s competing against your other products, that I fully understand.

Second is if you’re removing it because it’s not making enough money, well, that one I’m not overly sure on. True, the one on my blog makes little money, but accumulative on all my sites, at least at this point, I’m not doing all that badly, as I’m getting close to averaging $100 a month. Having said that, I do agree that, when it comes to ethics, if you disagree with someone then you shouldn’t work with them; ethics is big on my list.

Commission Junction, well, I think I may be using that one incorrectly for the most part, and thus I’m not making the money I’d like to make. Still, I like keeping it around, just in case.

I hope you keep us all informed on how you’re going to make money through affiliate programs, because it could be an important lesson for all of us, seeing how you progress.

Mitch´s last blog post..More Free Ebooks On Internet/Forum Marketing

I’m looking at a couple of factors for each site:

1. What do I earn from Adsense each month on this site?

2. Do the ads complement or compete with the content? (Or, are they generally irrelevant?)

Additionally, there are considerations regarding what Google is doing with their DoubleClick cookies and their requirement that I update my privacy policy, even if I opt out of the interest-based ads.

If I’m not earning, and if the ads aren’t providing service for my readers, and if they’re dropping cookies (which I didn’t know until a week or two ago), why show them at all?

I know I don’t have to remove the ads, but this is part of my annual refocusing. If a site does not earn much from Adsense, then there’s no point in having the ads there. I’m not going to promote something if it isn’t helpful to my readers and I don’t earn anything from it.

It’s why I’m going to be dropping CommissionJunction, and several other affiliate programs, too.

I’m showing thousands of impressions for some ads, a few clicks, and practically no sales. It’s time to take them down and stop participating.

I’ve stopped actively promoting ClickBank products for several reasons and I’m removing links to them, too.

Cleaning up all of this will take substantial effort, but I’ll feel better when it’s done.

Back to Adsense…

Yes, you’re correct that I don’t want Adsense ads to compete with what I’m trying to market.

Why earn a few pennies or a dollar or two from Google, when some of the things I promote pay much more and some have monthly or annual residual commissions?

On my local sites, the Adsense ads are helping to promote local businesses, and that may be worth dealing with the new privacy policies and whatever else Google may change in the future.

For the affiliate marketing sites, I’m finding that it just isn’t worth the hassle, any longer.

I’ll be rebuilding AYearFromNow.com in the coming week or so and removing all Adsense ads and other things I no longer want to promote, such as all the ads I have for Amazon.com, which no longer earn but a fraction of what they once did.

On that site, I’m going to be building more informational content with no advertising as I try to share what I’ve learned over the last few years. Sure, I’ll continue to link to things that pay my bills, but I’m going to be much more selective.

Finally, there’s the ethics issue…

If I disagree with something a company is doing, is it morally right to earn money from them?

This is an issue I’m wrestling with. I haven’t decided, yet.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

I’m assuming, though, that on the affiliate marketing sites, you’re removing it so it doesn’t end up competing with what you’re trying to market; would that be accurate?

Mitch´s last blog post..Is Google Reading Your Robots.txt File?

Several blogs were completely deleted.

As I update these blogs, I am removing Adsense ads from them.

I’m not giving up on Adsense, since it brings in a respectable income every year, but I am going to be more selective about which sites I show Adsense ads on.

At least for awhile, I’ll continue showing Adsense on my local blogs for Murphy, NC and Cherokee County.

I’ll probably show them on JohnDilbeck.com and GeorgiaDragRacing.com.

I’ll be removing them from my affiliate marketing blogs, and I’ve already started that process. I’ll be removing them from this blog in the next few minutes.

The last straw was learning that I’ll have to update the privacy page on all sites that show Adsense ads, even though I have opted out of the interest-based ads.

At this point, I only have a few sites that make any real money from Adsense, so it’s not much of a loss to delete these ads from most of my sites. Still, I’m not all that happy at giving up the hundreds of dollars I earn from Google every year.

I’m still on the edge, however, about whether or not I’m going to give up on Adsense completely.

I really don’t like the way Google is moving with this.

Act on your dream!

JD

I’m happy to hear that you got it straightened out.

It’ll take me some time to get caught up on new blog posts and reading the comment threads, but I’ll get there.

Thanks for your (very fast!) response.

Act on your dream!

JD

I commented on Sire’s site, and I thought you’d see it, but I guess not.

Turns out the reason I couldn’t see anything was because of the Adblock Plus on Firefox. Once I turned that off, it came up. Of course, that was after I’d deleted all my cookies and history, did the same on IE7, shut down my firewall and virus program,… wow.

I was not a happy camper, but at least all is back to well now.

Mitch´s last blog post..Where My Traffic Comes From

I’m sorry for the delay in responding. I was sick most of last week and I’m just now getting back to work.

As far as I know, blocking the DoubleClick cookies should stop you from being tracked by them, but there are always new developments and ways of doing things, so I’m not confident in saying it will definitely stop them.

Can you see the place to opt out on the Adsense site, yet?

Act on your dream!

JD