AdWords End For Affiliates?

I’ve been suffering with one of my campaigns in Adwords for the past couple of weeks. A couple of years ago, the ‘great one’ decided to only show one unique URL in a cluster of ads. This was a positive move and led to many light-weight affiliates moving on with those who were serious about it continuing to develop their own sites.

After playing email tennis with someone claiming to be a real person at Google, I thought I was going completely mad yesterday.

Exterminate, Exterminate…

Although, I’m grateful to have been given the opportunity to invest $44k with Google over the past 2 years on one campaign, it is a tad frustrating that my money is no longer welcome. I’ve worked hard to do keyword research, put them into appropriate ad groups and direct to relevant landing pages. My average CTR for this campaign is 6.9% (just over 100,000 clicks) with excellent conversions, IMHO. About 1 in 60 of every visitor to my site went on to make a purchase, presumably not upset by the fact that I’m an affiliate but now I’m getting the $1 a click and, in some cases, $5/$10 treatment

I’ve just come across a great article by Scott Jangro on the subject and, although I’m still frustrated, it’s good to know that others have noticed that AdWords seems to be going anti-affiliate. If true, this could be a worrying time for many businesses and individuals.