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FIB - Scams 101
EEE GADS!!!..... Definitely -- DEFINITELY -- give at least equal time to those other two sources!!
Posted By: MaaMaw In Response To: Re: Margaret and BANS (Margaret MacGillivray)
Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008, at 10:43 a.m.(pst)
Remember a while back, I said I had something new and I was going to share it with my Board Buddies very soon? (I was just waiting to make sure that it worked with a brand new site as well as an established one and that the income held up over time.)
I was talking about BANS, and I was excited about promoting it heavily here at FIB.
Well, I've had a change in plans, at least for now.
Here's why:
First and foremost, BANS is an absolutely *FANTASTIC* program!!
OUTSTANDING!
I LOVE IT!!
In fact, I convinced two dear friends to buy it. They both claim to be "Computer Idiots," and they have been amazed by how easy it is to learn.
But there's a glitch or two -- absolutely no fault of BANS but related, instead, to eBay and Google.
I've been using BANS for many months, starting long before eBay switched their affiliate program from Commission Junction to EPN.
My income from my main BANS store was hovering between $150 and $250 a month until May, when it dropped to $70. (I suspected that was because it was the last month to switch over to the new affiliate program and the tracking was gummed up.)
Anyhoo, I made the switch on June 1, and my eBay affiliate income immediately jumped to $600 that month.
In July, it came in in just a few dollars less than $1400, and I was ecstatic!!
In August, the first couple of weeks looked like I was going to soar past $1500 (I had some $80 days, a $100 day, lots of $60 and $70 days) -- then it crashed. I've been seeing $15 days and $10 days and $2 and $3 days despite no significant change in traffic or clicks.
Lots of people report on the forums that they have "flatlined," so I guess I should be grateful for small favors -- and in all fairness, it's too soon to know for sure that it won't bounce back.
I've been trying to blame it on the Olympics followed by the DNC followed by Hurricane Hanna followed by the RNC... but it's getting harder and harder to believe that.
ESPECIALLY...
since the entire /store/ directory in my OLD, Well-Established, Heavily-Trafficked site was...
De-Indexed By Google
last Thursday.
No explanation, of course. Just gone.
Again, I'm grateful for small favors. It appears to have been done by a human, because they did NOT deindex my entire site, thank God. And it isn't a tragedy because most of my store traffic was coming from MSN and Yahoo anyway, and as I said, my income had already tanked, so I'm not freaking out about that.
And apparently getting deindexed by Google is very common. What I'm trying to figure out is if it's more common with BANS sites. I don't believe it is...
BUT THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE:
A Certifiable Lunatic has declared war on BANS. He has said on the forums that he is going to track down and report every last BANS store to Google, accusing them of being "spam sites," which -- if they are -- has nothing whatsoever to do with BANS.
You can make positively wonderful sites with BANS, or you can make pure crapola, and if someone chooses to do the latter, it's exactly that -- their choice. It is in no way the fault of BANS.
Of course everyone says it would be impossible for Mr. Loon to do this -- but I'm not the first to report being deindexed right after he decided to dedicate his life to this "cause."
AND THAT AIN'T ALL:
Shortly before that particular income stream tanked for me (and some people "flatlined"), eBay unceremoniously dumped hundreds of affiliates (including Mr. Loon) because their traffic "was significantly less engaged" than that of other affiliates.
Many of these are people who have been sending tons of paying customers to eBay for years, years, and years, and they claim they are strictly white-hat.
Are they?
I don't know -- but several of them did get reinstated, so I have to assume at least those people were telling the truth. (It also gives me hope that eBay is trying to be fair.)
I had two new stores that were just starting to bring in some commissions, and I immediately took them down because they weren't "content" sites -- they were strictly stores -- and I didn't want to risk losing my affiliate account over them (if that had anything to do with the Mass Execution).
WHAT HAVE I DECIDED?
Absolutely nothing, except that I'm not going to actively promote BANS quite yet, and I'm certainly not going to rely on it until they revise it to include feeds from other affiliate programs (which I believe is a possibility in the future).
Why?
When Adsense tanks, I often freak out (as you can tell by my posts on this board) -- and while this is the first time I've been able to explain it (sports, politics, and natural disasters), it comes back slowly and steadily and I feel comfortable with it except for those rare PPA's (Public Panic Attacks).
But it's hard to relax when you see affiliates dropping like flies around you and your 2,500 indexed pages suddenly disappear from Google.
If I had been counting on that income, I would be back at Below Poverty Level now. I've always known it was important to diversify if you make your living on the net, but never has it been more clear to me than it is right now.
Luv,
MaaMaw
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