One of these companies running on CJ has just given me the boot from their program and retracted all of my earnings. This is a loss of about 2k and a few weeks of time. So what happened?

Lets call this company “Widgets” for the sake of this post. My first attempt at promoting this site was with a site called WidgetsCoupons.com a highly searched term. The company freely mails out these coupons to affiliates each month to help with promotions.

A few weeks go by and CJ contacts me about my trademark infringement and demands I fix the problem and gives me the terms again.  Yes I know I was breaking them by having “Widgets” in my domain but it was just for SEO reasons. I never claimed I was the company or had anything to do with them other than trying to promote the use of the coupons.

So I get a new domain, one without the term “Widgets” in it. I write them back saying I was sorry and everything had been fixed. I received an e-mail back thanking me and I move on. A few weeks pass and I have worked on the site even more. Suddenly I am presented with an email once again from CJ stating I am banned from this campaign and all earnings are being retracted from its sales.

They gave no reason this time, just stated that I was banned and could never run it again. I am waiting on a reply from them but having read their terms once again the only thing I can see is meta tags.

That’s right. CJ has listed in their terms that you cannot have the term “Widgets” in any meta tags on your site since that is trademark infringement.  This is where I feel things are getting out of hand. How can you ask people to promote your products and basically say that you cannot put the term “Widgets” anywhere on your site.  I say anywhere since my site was auto generating its meta tags based on the content of the page.

So because my page was about “Widgets” my meta keywords, and meta description both included the term. I was there by breaking the rules according to CJ and removed from the program.

I have two degrees in business and I understand the reasons behind this but many companies are just taking things to the extreme. They are so insecure with their online presence that they are afraid their affiliates will out rank them or some how confuse their customers. But in doing so aren’t they just hurting them selves more though a reduction in sales? If I make a site saying how great “Widgets” are and how everyone needs to buy them and then send that traffic to the “Widgets” home page. Isn’t this in fact helping the business make more sales?

Companies need to realize that affiliates are not the enemy. The whole reason you have an affiliate program is to gain marketing and sales. Affiliates should be seen as partners in your marketing efforts. They should be afforded just as much use of your trademark as you would if you hired a marketing company. By crippling us you are only crippling your selves. Allow us the use of your logo and brand name, we are not all scammers and fraudsters.

Campaign reinvesting is when you reinvest any profits made by a new campaign back into the campaign. This of course is pretty basic shit that everyone should know and if common practice for PPC campaigns. But it also should apply to any SEO sites your doing, since when working with SEO you need to be constantly adding new links and content to keep you rankings.

The thing to work on is the mentality of how we pay our selves. Often at midnight I will check though stats and say to my self “Nice, I made X amount today.” This in some ways is correct but also a horrible way of doing things since it leaves out any reinvestment you need to do.  It is much better to think “Nice, X campaign made X today.” as this keeps the idea of it being your money out of your head.

So what do I do to reinvest cash back into SEO campaigns?  The most common expense I have is outsourcing.  I have a list of people I go to when I need link building done, I have a list of content writers, and so one and so on. It is always beneficial to spend 100% of a site’s first weeks of earnings back into the site.  This way the site will gain more and more traction and should make you more money.

Each site I build tries to follow these lines.

Week 1: 100% Reinvestment

Week 2: 100% Reinvestment

Week 3: 80% Reinvestment

And so on.  Of course this all depends on the site and situation. Often I also use a new sites income to invest into some other part of my business rather than the site its self. This is how I acquire most of my programs and scripts such as WFReview, LFE, BANS, etc.  Often these scripts can even be used on that they were funded by which makes it even better. It is much easier to drop $200-300 on a program if you stop thinking about it as being your money.  Just remember that it is not your money until you accountant says so.