I was very busy with tones of things: We purchased a new house about half a year ago. What started as a cool decoration project turnes to be a detalied complex mega project. Add to it two new products that we are launching this month and you can imagine how busy a single day can be.

But no complains. It’s about to be over. The house is on it’s final stage and the products soon will reach the market.

I discovered some new cool things in the last months which I’m going to share with you in the next comming posts.

Cheers

2009 was a very interesting year in many aspects: The global economy crises, Google slaps, Yahoo & MSN joining forces, Twitter, Facebook, these are just a grain of 2009 interesting events.

I am known to be a positive guy. Some will even say a dreamer. I do enjoy my success but I do criticized my mistakes as needed (and trust me, I do lots of mistakes). Since every end it’s a start of something new, I find this time of the year a good time for self examination.

I am surrounded with good friends and business colleagues that together contribute to my success.  You can make money online solely, but you can make much better if you will develop the right structure around it: people, business connections and even (highly recommended) business partner.

The human nature likes rounded numbers. Its motivate us. We look after symbolic elements to support our difficulty.  Those who are getting married in 2010 probably try to set their date for 10/10/2010. Those who plan to bring a baby, probably doing their best these days.

But the truth is I do believe that there is a big chance that you will do much better than you did in 2009. And here are my 5 reasons:

1. Google domination in the online adverting will start to fade out in the next decade while Yahoo, Facebook, twitter and more none search services are about to enlarge their piece in this cake.
2. Bing popularity will increase. Business agreements like HP/Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine in new computers are just the start in this interesting battle. It will not be the same as with Netscape, but do not underestimate Microsoft tactics.
3. The mobile advertising market will continue to rapidly grow.
4. Thanks to YouTube and other rich media channels, affiliate marketers are now more exposed to quality information. Conventions are now available online, taking out the boundaries than ever before.
5. The way people search on the web has to be change: Most of the people use three words and more in a search query, and still the search results are relatively poor to what you would expect.

I always look to meet my readers and always look for new business opportunities.

Cya in Vegas

So I found myself in London, at the Excel exhibition center at the suburb of London, about 30 minutes by the tube from the center of London.
The Excel exhibition center is a nice place but is located in an area that you don’t want to get stuck at night, at least not me. There is nothing around but docks and few hotels. The transportation to the center of London is so easy, so the decision to book a hotel at the heart of London definitely proved itself as the right one.

The show itself was well organized. It’s not in the scale of the affiliate summit. I would say that close to 1,000 people attend for this show.

In the exhibition hall most of the exhibitors were local companies. This is good because that was the main reason for my visit. There were some local affiliate networks along with some local merchants. I found some new business opportunities. It’s early to talk about the chance to succeed with them, but it’s a good start.

Although I didn’t have much spare time, but between one meeting to another, I took the opportunity to enter to some of the sessions. The sessions at the A4U, at least the one that I entered, were a bit different from what I’ve got used to so far: More information less people who try to sell their product or their name. However, most of the information deals with SEO rather with PPC and social networking. The sessions were less innovations but with deep saying.
I didn’t meet any “super affiliate” that managing huge amounts with PPC. However, I did meet some guys who own amazing websites with lots of organic traffic.

For me London is always a good place to visit at. I was lucky to meet a great weather: sunny but not hot!
You can’t (cont ) expect more from an affiliate week.

The A4U is relatively new event comparing to the Affiliate Summit. I believe that it will get better. See you next year at the A4U in London.

Today I would like to share with you my thoughts about this Google move. How affiliates marketers might get affected.

The display ads market is been controlled by several players like double-click (now own by Google), right media and others while the biggest Google competitor on that market is Yahoo.

The display ads market worth lots of money. The biggest companies in the world, big names like Amex, Coca-Cola, and GE are spending huge amount of money every month.

The PPC affiliate business model is based on arbitrage. We buy traffic, hopefully cheaper than what we get in return, whether it’s a CPA offer or revenue share.

When Coca-Cola advertises on the web they would like to keep the awareness for their brand. A brand campaign is different than a typical affiliate campaign. The goals are different and are been measured differently. Brands campaigns are known with their high budgets. And where the big money is, Google would like to be!

So after Google acquire double-click their next step was to integrate double-click inventory within their Google content network. Now Google enhancing their tracking system to meet the big firms brands campaigns. With the new feature that was lately released we can learn something about Google future intention, at least for the display ads market.

There is no doubt that this change will affect the affiliate industry:
1. More competition on every spot – in these case rich competitors
2. Brands campaigns, especially with the big names, includes huge budgets. This will increase the effective CPC (usually brands campaigns are been calculated by CPM).

If so far we got used to compete with performance based competitors, who are looking for a positive ROI, now we have to deal with a different players playing by a different rules.

I believe that this is only the start of a bigger move after the top advertisers on the web. The affiliate marketing industry is a major part of Google income but it’s also one of their top biggest headaches, caused by affiliates who use Google AdWords to promote gray products. At the ends of day Google is the one who need to deal with their users complains, maintaining support teams etc.

Google probably prefer to sale their inventory to the less choosy– Brands campiness. It’s not that Google have something against affiliate marketer, it’s just easier to work with big accounts rather with those who spend $100,000 per month (no it’s not a typo, Google will prefer account of $5,000,000 a month). As Google will fill those spots with Brand campaigns, more and more affiliate accounts will be banned and/or more restrictions will be added to AdWords policy. Either way, it’s not going to be easy for affiliate marketers, at least not at the Display Ads market.

I believe that during 2010 we are about to experience some major changes with the way Google treat affiliate marketers. In my opinion those who will play by Google (changing) rules will survive (Especially those who spend lots of money each month).

Affiliate marketers have ever been and will always be the smatters among the online advertising businesses. It’s something that no one will be able to take away from us. So keep your mind open and be ready to hear more from Google. I’m sure it will come soon.