URGENT - WordPress.com is cracking down on Affiliate Marketing Blogs
In my daily search for news on what is happening in the world of blogging it’s came to my attention that Wordpress.com is cracking down on blogs with the primary reason for existence being Affiliate Marketing.
Although this news doesn’t affect me because I host my own blog and I don’t just promote products for affiliate commissions, I thought I better let everyone know just in case it effects your plans for blogging in the future.
I’ve included links to the terms of service at WordPress.com and what you can possibly do about it.
Terms of Service:
http://wordpress.com/tos/
“…content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites.”
Types of Unacceptable Blogs:
http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
“Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs.”
What can you do?
You can try telling Wordpress support your blog is for posting honest and unbiased affiliate product reviews and also ask them what you need to do to comply with their terms.
As an alternative, you can use Blogger.com, but as we have heard in the past, Blogger does delete blogs from their server sometimes, although there is nothing in their terms about affiliate blogs.
Blogger.com Content Policy:
http://www.blogger.com/content.g
Feel free to post comments below if you find out anything you would like others to know, or me for that fact so I can keep up to date.
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You might like to read this as well:
Thanks for the great heads up!
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Of course hosting your own blog is a way around the TOS, but unfortunantly too many people pay for their hosting one website at a time.
Years ago I set up an old PC as an Apache web server and hung it on my home DSL line. A static IP address allowed me to do this. Alas, static IP’s and running a server from home is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Two years ago I found a site that lets me rent a dedicated server for about $30 a month. Since it’s almost like being in my own house, I can do almost anything I want to with it, including hosting an unlimited number of domain names, and can put almost anything I want to on it. Google ‘dedicated server’ but be sure to read the fine print and compare prices, bandwidth, etc. 200Gb of bandwith per month is usually plenty, but I push the envelope by having daily puzzles that get downloaded about 8000 times a day. If you are serving mostly text and images, 200Gb is more than you will ever use.
The downside - you will have to learn a little about how to run a server and how to configure the web server software such as Apache.
The good news - it’s not that hard, and there are tons of tutorials on line to teach you, and communities full of people willing to help.
Wayne
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Hosting your own blog is something I always tell my customers and I think Wayne you misunderstood.
You can get a hosting account where you can host multiple blogs for under $10 a month: Hostgator, Blue Host. Why would you want to go through trouble managing the server itself? I used to do it too and then got smarter - do what brings you profit!
Cheers
Alex’s last blog post..Combining Fan With Profit
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As the other commentators said, I think what the TOS is talking about are the free sites on blogger, etc.
Now a days you can get cheap hosting, so affiliates don’t be cheap and spend a few bucks. This way you don’t have any trouble!
Make Money Online’s last blog post..Need a Second Job? Why not Start an Internet Home Business.
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Wow! amazing site.
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Hi,
i must admit that i’ver never seen it this way.
But to succeed with making money online, i ‘d strongly advice that you get yourself a treasure map - a roadmap to Affiliate success …*-)
Michael
Emarketscout’s last blog post..Discover An Easy Way To Do Profitable Business Online
[Reply]
I had no idea they were cracking down. Thanks for the heads up. I don’t know why they have such a problem with it.
Who do you host your blog through? Any suggestions?
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I personally only promote worthy affiliate products that I have tried and tested when blogging and feel there should be some criteria other affiliates have to meet when promoting a affiliate product rather than simply promoting it for the sake of the amount of commission the company offers, offer good products as an affiliate and think about commission second and I think worpress etc will stop clamping down so hard.
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Why is everybody so down on affiliate marketers. If you listen to Matt Cutts talk, you would think those guys are the scum of the earth! I have gotten some of the best tools I use for my business from affiliate marketers. So for all the crap you put up with, the SERP and pagerank punishment you endure and the disdain from so called “pure” bloggers:
I salute you affiliate marketer, I salute you.
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Most affiliate Blogs are not “Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs.” they’re primary purpose is to create sales. You can always use a redirect to avoid the new TOS
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Hi, i must say thanks for writing such an informative article and i will be coming back to your blog for more information.
Juniors last blog post..Learning the Basics of RSS
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I don’t understand why people are putting down affiliate marketers. Why not just put down the spam affiliate marketers instead?
I’m looking forward to more of your posts! Keep it up!
: )
Matthew Castro - Prodigious Online Money Making Ecourses last blog post..The Importance of Submitting Articles
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I wonder why WordPress is doing this. I feel it is kind of strange and well, maybe discrimination too. Correct me if I am wrong, but, a genuine blog about affiliate programs is publishing as well. I agree that they would not allow pure spam blogs to be opened and maintained with link bombs etc, but, someone who is genuinly working on a blog with reviews etc, like you mentioned, should be allowed. A way out for them, well get a web hosting account, some are very affordable and just host your blogs on that. Great blog and thanks for sharing this aobut the blog platforms.
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My affiliate wordpress.com blog hasn’t run into any trouble yet. I am not going to give out the name though. I host my other blogs myself, I just wanted to see what would happen after I read this post and nothing has happened so far. I will keep you posted.
Jasons last blog post..Web Design Trick: Javascript Column Heights
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Its better to use hosted Word Press anyway, there have been a lot of complaints about peoples Blogs deleted by Blogger’s automatic “spam blog killer” bot not the real name but their system is deleting a lot of genuine blogs. As for free WP no way hosted WP is the way to go there are plenty of cheap hosting offers out there $80 bucks a year is almost free and you can host a lots of sites with some offers.
Archie Penniess last blog post..Made for ads sites and how they profit from your web sites
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